By: Jim Hebert
“Mike and Corey Guitreau win out of the Ditch”
The EASL Bass Club met at the Gonzales FD in
Gonzales on February 12th to plan for the upcoming Tournament on the
16th.
Before the meeting got started we enjoyed a delicious Jambalaya with potato
salad and drinks with Oreos for desert. The meal was provided by Terry Molea
and we thank him for being one of our volunteer cooks. I would like to remind
everyone that the volunteers who cook for each meeting pay for the ingredients
themselves and they are not reimbursed by the Club, so the $5 that the cook
collects from each member is to recover their costs for providing the meal.
After the meal, George signed up 15 boats to fish
the tournament while Terry collected the optional Big Bass side pot and Micha
signed up the optional $20 jackpot participants.
We had another rod and reel combo donated to the Club by Byron Mire so after
drawing the boat numbers we drew numbers for the combo and Mike Guitreau won
the Rod and Reel. He said that it would
go to his young daughter who would undergo surgery later that month. Byron,
thank you for donating the Rod and Reel.
Mike opened the meeting and took nominations for Tournament location. The nominations were Bayou DesAllemands, Attakapas Landing and the Ditch. After voting, the club decided on the Ditch. We also voted on a 3:00 PM weigh in time. The weigh masters chosen were Chris Keller and Clark Sanchez.
Mike then held a short discussion to let everyone
know about the optional $20 pot for anyone who catches a Bass weighing 5.5# or
greater.
The meeting was adjourned and after a short cleanup, everyone left anticipating
a good Tournament on Saturday.
Saturday morning we arrived at the Launch and were
surprised to see the great amount of vehicles already in the parking lot. Turns out they were mostly early arrivals who
left the area heading to Bayou Black.
We gathered and again had to wait out the fog that had hampered visibility and
created a less than safe condition for running a boat. Finally it cleared up a short time after
daybreak and Chris called out the numbers while we left one at a time. Mostly
everyone went North with a few boats going toward the Marsh.
We went northward and slowly made our way to our first location. The water didn’t
look that great there and the fishing was like-wise. We left after about an
hour after catching one short fish. Our
second location looked promising but the fish weren’t there either. We spent a
good amount of time there and we caught one keeper and missed two others that
would have kept.
Our next stop produced another keeper and another missed keeper. Our third stop
looked more promising than anything we had seen yet but we fished it quickly
without a bite. Our two keepers would weigh in at 3.21 lbs. Even if we had not
missed a fish this day we would not have placed.
At 3:00 everyone had arrived back and were loading up the boats. Chris had the scale ready and the fish were coming in. It was a great day for the top three teams and others like us had struggled to catch their limit or had small limits. 9 boats did have their limits of fish.
When the weigh in was complete, George announced the
winners.
First place went to Mike and Corey Guitreau with 5 fish weighing in at 14.30
lbs. They also won Big Bass side pot with their largest fish that weighed 4.24
lbs.
Second place with 5 fish that weighed 13.2 lbs. went to Brothers, Julian and
Scott Day.
Third place went to Dirk Anderson and Brandt Fairchild with 5 fish that weighed
in at 12.40 lbs.
Big Bass winner of the Tournament was Jason Beck fishing with Tony
Arceneaux. His fish weighed 4.55 lbs.
Congratulations to the winners of the February Tournament. Our next event is scheduled for March 16th. For more information on the EASL Bass Club visit www.easlonline.org.
