The Big Bass Bonanza awarded prizes to the largest three bass caught in five pools every hour from Friday to Sunday. The angler that catches the biggest bass from each pool wins $10,000, and the angler that catches the largest bass overall earns a $40,000 bonus for a total prize of $50,000.

The $10,000 winners were Lucas Wilkins, who took top honors in the Fort Smith Pool with a 7.05-pound bass, Don Douglas, whose 5.55-pound bass won the North Little Rock Pool, Bart Moore who won the Pine Bluff Pool with a 5.64 pounder, and Josh Moreland, who won the Dumas Pool with a 6.13 pounder.

Rance Warden and his father Rocky Warden, both of Searcy, won the $1,000 Willowleaf Award, which goes to the generational team (father/son, mother/daughter, etc.) that catches the biggest bass of that class. Their fish weighed 4.4 pounds.

Holman, 67, of Delaware, near Russellville, a retired plumber, caught the winning bass at Friday at 11:50 a.m., in Shoal Bay. He used a half-ounce Terminator spinnerbait in chartreuse, white and green. He used 17-pound test line, a Shimano baitcasting reel with a 5:1 retrieve ratio and a Berkley rod. He said he caught the bass while fishing a small grassline in an open water area.

“He came up out of the water, and I saw he was big, but didn’t know how big he was until I got him in the boat,” Holman said Sunday during the awards ceremony in North Little Rock. “When I saw how big he was, I cranked up the big motor and took it to the weigh-in station.”

Holman said he spent most of the morning fishing another area. He was motoring to another area when he stopped on a hunch to fish the grass line.

“It was pure luck for me to hook it there,” Holman said.

Holman, who has fished the Big Bass Bonanza for 18 years, said he’s fished Lake Dardanelle for several decades. He is familiar with Shoal Bay area in particular and said it’s an excellent place to catch big bass.

“It’s got a lot of steep banks, a lot of up and down, and a lot of stumps on the bottom,” Holman said.

This is the second consecutive year that the winning bass was caught in Lake Dardanelle. The Dumas Pool produced most of the winners for the past 10 years.

“It feels great to keep this thing going in Dardanelle,” Holman said. “I actually thought about going down there (Dumas) to fish because I don’t know the water, and I wanted to do something different.”