How special was it to be in the Basin Boys Bass Club? In a word, v-e-r-y.

New Iberian Kirk Segura’s voice softened last week when he recalled how his maternal grandmother followed his accomplished bass club career by cutting out results and stories with his name in them in The Daily Iberian from 1977 to 1988. The late Mary Gulotta Randazzo,

whose father, Paulo Gulotta, opened up a shoe repair shop in New Iberia when he arrived here in 1916 from Sicily, used the scissors a lot because her grandson won many tournaments and Angler of the Year titles in the Basin Boys.

Memories like that were shared Thursday night when Segura and 13 other Basin Boys reunited at Landry’s Seafood & Steakhouse on U.S. 90 in New Iberia, where owner David J. Landry (June and my best man in 1983) was Angler of the Year multiple times in the Basin Boys.

The reunion, long past due in the mind of so many former members, was organized by Kirk Kuykendall of Scott, formerly of New Iberia.

We all strolled down memory lane. Joining myself, Segura, Landry and Kuykendall there were Lynn L. Landry, his son David L. Landry, Tam

Delcambre, Michel Fox, Bucky Crowson, Dalton Thibodeaux, Dennis Worsham, Royd Picard, Jim Gaspard and Vic Segura.

We’re a little older, ahem, grayer and, perhaps, wiser now, and some of us are significantly heavier. A handful still fish in a bass club but most of us continue to fish bass tournaments of some kind. Two don’t fish at all, one of them concentrated on deer hunting

and the other enjoys outings in an RV.

Back then, many of us were raising our children. Now many are doting over grandchildren and bragging on their accomplishments, such as casting ability and softball playing talent.

Since that night, a list of 30 other former New Iberia-based Basin Boys has been compiled by Lynn Landry, Kirk Segura and Kuykendall. Four of those men on the list, which can be seen at acadianabass.com, thanks to Lynn Landry, have died — Amadee Delcambre, James “Jay” Trimble, Kenneth Derouen and Mike Zaunbrecher.

The Basin Boys, born in 1977, broke up after 1987. Many of those members formed the New Iberia-based Atchafalaya Basin Boys, which also has folded.

The reunion was great and befitting a bass club that made its mark from here to Toledo Bend. The Basin Boys ruled.

We had our squabbles, like any extended family. And make no mistake, we were a family, proud of our identity as the largest and most competitive bass club in Acadiana, as one middle-aged outdoor writer kept penning in the hey-day.

The Basin Boys were those magnificent men in their flying, er, fishing, machines; hell on wheels when it came to extracting

bass from an underwater bush, branch, dropoff, drain, etc., with just the right artificial lure and technique. I still swear some of these guys were as good or better than the top bass pros of that era.

We fished for trophies, not money, in those days and were, if memory serves correctly, the last bass club to determine the point standings on individual catches rather than team catches. To this day the two-man team concept seems a cop-out but that is the way it has evolved, along with higher gas prices, heck, higher everything.

Segura, 62, remembers those glory days well. He has a box full of newspaper clippings, mostly cut out by his grandmother, who also lit a candle each time he fished a tournament, he said.

“She didn’t clip out every one. There were some (tournaments) that I forgot to tell her about. I fished 20 years,” he said, his voice cracking at the memory.

Since Mary Randazzo died July 11, 2006, Segura said he has lit a candle for her every night in his workshop at home in New Iberia.

The reunion moved him.

After all, it was pretty poignant and emotional seeing the guys, some who we haven’t seen in two decades.

Segura got out the clippings, pored over the headlines, stories and results, then emailed 17 in a zip folder to me and Lynn Landry. (Who would’ve thunk that back in the early 1980s?)

“It’s something I wanted to do years ago. I finally got motivated last night,” Segura said Friday afternoon.

“After reading all this, I really forgot a lot about this stuff.”

But he hasn’t forgotten his grandmother and the way she followed his career.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, she was almost energizing. She would call and check with my wife (Jessica Segura) to see how I did if I didn’t call,” he said.

Most of the reunion-goers came with their better half or significant others. We talked before, during and after dining on some delicious

food. We swapped fish tales and true stories, like the one David J. Landry remembered about him swapping his bass boat for a satellite dish.

Ummm, apparently, we’re getting up there in years. Average age of those ex-Basin Boys at Landry’s was 60.9 years. Of course, that

number was skewed by two veritable young pups, Royd Picard and Michel Fox, 44 and 47, respectively.

The dean of the old bass club’s members is Lynn Landry, 81, followed by his brother-in-law Tam Delcambre, 71.

Thirteen of 14 former bass club members on hand that night filled out an informal survey. Here are some of the results.

Favorite places to fish?

Seven picked the Atchafalaya Basin, five chose Toledo Bend and one tabbed Lake Sam Rayburn.

Favorite artificial lures then and now? There were two incompletions on this one but six wrote spinnerbaits then and five wrote spinnerbaits now. Two wrote buzz baits then and one wrote buzz baits now.

Two wrote plastic worms then and none wrote plastic worms now, although one chose creature baits now. Two wrote crank baits then and one wrote crank baits now.

Other favorite artificial lures now were one for jig-n-pig, one for swim bait and one for Fluke.

Of their favorite pro bass anglers then, three chose Larry Nixon, three chose Bill Dance, two chose Hank Parker and one each chose

Rick Clunn, Roland Martin and Tommy Martin. Now?

Six chose Kevin Van Dam.

Why did they enjoy the bass club so much? That was answered, too. The people. The scouting experience. The competition. The day of the tournament and fishing to the last possible second.

Crowson wrote: “The camaraderie and the instruction given by older members sharing their know-how to land the big ones.”

It was and is in our blood. There was talk of a reunion tournament with all former Basin Boys.

Count me in.