By: Jim Hebert
“Jim & Warren Hebert win
in Atchafalaya Basin”
Left to right, Jason & Tim Fatheree, Ryan & Murray Alexander, Jim & Warren Hebert
Warren and Jim Hebert with their two largest Bass
The EASL Bass Club met at the Gonzales Fire Department on July 12th to plan the upcoming Tournament on the 14th.
Before we got the meeting started we enjoyed a delicious meal provided by Murray Alexander with help from his Deli cooks at “Murrays Supermarket” in St. Amant. We enjoyed pork stew on rice, potato salad, bread, drinks and dessert. Thank you Murray.
After the meal was consumed, Eddie signed up 11 boats to fish the Tournament.
We called the meeting to order and took nominations for the Tournament Location. We got two nominations including the Public Landing Spillway, and the Ditch. The vote was overwhelming to fish the Atchafalaya Spillway out of the Public Landing. We then all agreed to a 2:30 weigh in time after getting two nominations at 2 and 3 Pm.
Eddie and Jonathan Bowman were chosen to be the weigh masters for the event.
With no further business, we adjourned, cleaned up and locked up for the night.
Saturday morning was already a hot one before we even left the house. When we topped the levee at the Public Landing we could tell that there was another Tournament there that day. They had parking places and the pavilion blocked off and boats were already in the water. There was not a problem launching though as there weren’t that many boats fishing there. It looked like a company tournament where the weigh in was there, but the fishermen could fish other locations and meet there for the weigh in.
At safe daylight, Eddie let everyone go one boat at a time. I think most boats went northward and fanned out in all directions. We did the same and finally got to our “Plan A” spot after following another boat and hoping that they would not go where we were planning to go. Lucky for us, they kept going.
We eased up and I immediately didn’t like what I was seeing. There was salvinia covering the sweet spot that we had planned to fish. There was water converging on that spot from 3 directions and the salvinia was flowing too. We had to improvise by interrupting the flow and breaking the salvinia up enough to get a crank bait where it needed to be. We ended up fishing all around in all directions to catch our limit of Bass by 8:20 that morning. We had two very nice ones with three smaller ones that we hoped to cull. People that Tournament fish know that every once in a while it’s “just your day” and that’s how we felt as we culled a 1 pound fish with a 4 pounder at about 10:00 that morning. Later during the day we did cull all of our small fish with larger ones. It was a very hot day of fishing so we put the boat on the trailer at 2:00 and hoped for the best.
Eddie and Jonathan set the scale up and everyone started bringing in their fish. Six out of eleven boats caught their limits. 4 more boats weighed fish and one boat went home early.
When the weigh in was complete, all three of the winning teams ended up being “family members”.
Brothers, Jim & Warren Hebert took first place with our limit of 5 Bass that weighed 13.27 lbs. Warren caught the Big Bass at 4.22 lbs. so we also won the Side Pot as well.
A Father-Son team of Murray and Ryan Alexander won second place with their limit of 9.75 lbs.
Another Father-Son team of Tim & Jason Fatheree took third place with a limit that weighed in at 9.02 lbs.
Congratulations to the winners of the July Tournament. Our next event is August 11th so I hope to see everyone there. For more information on the EASL Bass Club you can visit the website at www.easlonline.org.
