By: Jim Hebert
“Jim & Warren Hebert win Two in a Row
in the Atchafalaya Spillway”
Left to right, Warren & Jim Hebert, Micha Mire & Roderick Saylor,
Mike Guitreau & Ronald Gautreau
Jim & Warren Hebert with some of their fish.
Micha Mire & Roderick Saylor with their 3.47 Lb. Bass
Believe me, it’s hard enough to win just one Tournament against the great fishermen in the EASL Bass Club, but to win back-to-back is humbling for sure. We may never accomplish that ever again but for now we’ll enjoy it.
The EASL Bass Club met at the Gonzales Fire Department on August 7th to plan the upcoming tournament on the following Saturday. We enjoyed a delicious meal of Meatball gravy with rice, bread, cookies and drinks. The meal was cooked and provided by Julian Day. Thanks Julian for being the chef for the night.
Warren stood in for Eddie that night and signed up 13 boats to fish the tournament. We called the meeting to order and took nominations for the location. We had three nominations and those were Spillway public landing, Doiron’s either side, and the Ditch. After the voting was complete, the wining location was the Spillway Public Landing with a 3:00 PM weigh in time. The weigh masters chosen for the event were Phillip Valentine & Cameron Koenig.
The meeting was adjourned shortly thereafter and everyone pitched in to clean up and take out the trash.
Saturday morning everyone met at the Landing and got the boats launched. It was crowded as there obviously was another Tournament being held that same day. As daylight approached everyone gathered in the Intracoastal and Phillip let everyone go one boat at a time.
We headed North toward our destination with hopes of a good day of fishing. I was hopeful after a pretty successful scouting trip into the Spillway on Thursday of that week. When we shut the boat down I wasn’t thrilled with what I was seeing. Like the previous tournament, the salvinia was covering the two spots that we were hoping to fish crankbaits in. I was happy about the water movement through the area though so we just started fishing with some adjustments. We quickly put our first fish in the boat and it was a “good one”. We fished that spot until I thought we needed to make a move up the canal. That resulted in our second fish and it was “another good one”. Our next bite was soon after that and it was the largest fish I had on but getting it into the boat was another matter as it just came un-buttoned for some reason. We continued moving with the water and caught two more “good ones”. Then we caught our limit fish and it was smaller than the others. Our last fish came on a crank bait on a point and it was another “good one”. That one enabled us to cull out our smallest fish and that left us with 5 “good ones”.
We only caught 6 keepers but they were the right ones so we were hopeful that they would get us a check. We left the area and checked one more spot before heading back to the landing.
At 3:00 PM everyone had returned to the landing and gathered for the weigh in. Phillip and Cameron did a great job weighing the fish. That was their first time as weigh masters, but then there was a complaint from a member about the results.
It seems that Phillip Valentine had beaten his Dad, George Valentine and George said “there was no way”, but yes George it did happen.
This was an excellent day of fishing for everyone that participated. There were 13 boats and 11 had limits, one had 4fish, and one had 3.
When the weigh in was complete, Phillip announced the winners.
First place was the Hebert Brothers with 5 fish that weighed in at 11.90 lbs.
Second place was won by Micha Mire and Roderick Saylor with a limit that weighed in at 10.44 lbs. They also won Big Bass and the side pot with their lunker of 3.44 lbs.
Third place went to Mike Guitreau and Ronald Gautreau with 5 fish that weighed 10.37 lbs.
Congratulations to the winners of the August Tournament. Our next event is our two day Tournament on Lake Bruin. This will be our first two day event held in the Fall of the year and I expect that everyone will have a great time there.
For more information about the EASL Bass Club you can visit www.easlonline.org.
