Ronnie Dore Sr., left, holds a bull drum caught while fishing with his granddaughter ansley dore in a recent fishing rodeo. Dore plans to take his granddaughter again and his wife Versa Dore. - Don Shoopman / The Daily Iberian

Respooling line on the fishing reel. Making new ready-to-go leaders. Coming up with a game plan.

Dozens of Teche Area anglers are doing that and more this week preparing for Friday’s 59th annual Iberia Rod & Gun Club Saltwater Fishing Rodeo. Count a young, hard-core saltwater fisherwoman among them, one who will be casting for her fourth straight individual title.

“Oh, yeah, she’s very pumped up. She tells me this time of year she starts to get nervous. She’s real competitive, you know,” Ronnie Dore Jr., 36, of New Iberia, her stepfather, said around midday Wednesday about Alyssa Broussard.

“She’s been putting new string on her poles and making new leaders,” Dore said about the soon-to-be eighth-grade student at Iberia Middle School who has been the Best All-Around Fishermen the past three years in the Junior Division.

Broussard, 13, realizes it won’t be easy, said Dore, who plans to fish all three days with her and her mother, Natalie Dore, who he married May 19. They will be out on the Priority One, a 21-foot long aluminum boat.

“She knows the other little guys last year did pretty good” in the Junior Division, he said. “She knows she’s got competition out there. It just makes her fish harder.”

Some of the competition will come from a familiar boat, the Wet Dreams, a 21-foot long Striper skippered by her stepfather’s father, Ronnie Dore Sr. of New Iberia. The elder Dore will fish each day of the popular fishing rodeo with his wife Versa Dore and their granddaughter Ansley Dore, 7.

Dore Sr., 58, a lead line mechanic for Cleco, said he has fished every fishing rodeo. Lately, it’s been with his children’s children.

“I’m kind of worried about the heat but we’ve got a good top on the boat and we’ve fans and we’ll bring plenty of water,” he said Wednesday after doing some chores around the house, including cutting the grass.

“I took off today, Thursday and Friday to get my yard work done. I worked all night last night. I’ve got my boat all ready to roll,” he said, noting he’ll launch in time to fish the sunrise start of the three-day holiday weekend event Friday.

Scales will be open from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday under the pavilion at fishing rodeo headquarters along Quintana Canal, Cypremort Point.

Dore Sr. expects a good turnout, despite the recent heat wave.

“I think they’ll have a good turnout. The weather’s going to be nice. I mean, the wind’s been blowing a little bit but not too bad,” he said. “We’ve been catching a lot of redfish. The redfish are plentiful.”

His son said the three-time defending champion who will be on his boat has been on the water three times this summer.

“She’s definitely been ‘practicing.’ She calls it practicing. We call it scouting,” Dore Jr., a Cleco  lineman, said.

Can she make it four in a row?

“I don’t know. She’s going to try. She wants to fish dark to dark,” he said.

Where will they go? Ah, there’s the catch.

“Alyssa says we can’t put those spots out. She’s real secretive about her spots,” he said with a chuckle.

Other individual and boat titles will be up for grabs Friday when the Iberia Rod & Gun Club Saltwater Fishing Rodeo gets under way at Cypremort Point. Anglers will be vying for Best All-Around and Boat Captain titles in the Inside Division, Runabout Division and Offshore Division.

Many of them attended an Anglers Supper meeting on Wednesday night at the American Legion building in Lydia.

Any boy or girl entered in the Junior  Division has a chance to win drawings for five lifetime fishing licenses simply by weighing in a fish Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Junior Division entry fee is $5.