Don Naquin displays a speckled trout caught during the 2010 Iberia Rod & Gun Club Rodeo. Naquin and wife Valerie plan to fish the event this weekend, with Valerie Naquin unable to fish the first day because of work obligations but back for the final two days. She caught the tournament’s biggest speckled trout in 2013.

CYPREMORT POINT — The fisherwoman who caught the biggest speckled trout in last year’s Iberia Rod & Gun Club Saltwater Fishing Rodeo is giving everyone a day’s head start for the holiday weekend event that begins Thursday.

Valerie Naquin of New Iberia is about as disappointed as she can be that opening day of the three-day event happens to be early, as it was last year, in a move by fishing rodeo officials to end it on Saturday instead of Sunday. The 55-year-old administrator at the Port of Iberia’s Marine Industrial Fabricating Inc. has to work Thursday but plans on fishing Friday with her husband Don Naquin.

“Well, that’s OK. I’ll just have to suffer, and cry,” Valerie Naquin said Tuesday. “Yeah, I’m giving them a head start.”

Her husband expressed his disappointment, too, but said, “I understand why the rodeo committee’s doing it.”

“That’s because he gets to fish,” she said with a chuckle when she heard about his response.

Don Naquin, 54, plans on “bach-ing” it Thursday with Richard Montet III of New Iberia, whose wife, Kathy Montet, who usually fishes these contests, also has to work. She works at W.W. Grainger on U.S. 90. They’ll go in Montet’s boat, a 21-foot Key West, Don Naquin said.

Montet is a service technician for CenterPoint Energy.

Valerie Naquin will be drydocked a day, her husband said. She is coming off a week’s vacation and didn’t want to ask for a day off Thursday, he said.

However, the Naquins will be out there targeting speckled trout along with dozens of other anglers Friday, the second day of the fishing rodeo, in their 19-foot Well-Craft. They also plan to fish Saturday, the third and final day when scales at 1 p.m. at fishing rodeo headquarters, Quintana Canal.

“We target speckled trout. We don’t go past Dry Reef. And we fish artificial. If we don’t catch ’em, good, we don’t. We use strictly artificial. No live bait. We take pride in that,” he said.

Mostly, they offer glow/chartreuse H&H Cocahoe Minnows on a 1/4-ounce leadhead, he said.  She has a knack for putting big speckled trout in the boat, he said.

Her 4.35-pound speckled trout emerged as the winner in that Inside Division category last July. It wasn’t her first winning speckled trout and it probably won’t be her last. 

“It’s patience, man. She has a patience about her that is unbelievable. She doesn’t get nervous about it. She is really patient. When I’m ready to move, she wants to stay another hour,” her husband said. “She does a lot. I’m a good net man. She has to catch ’em first.”

Valerie Naquin has been catching them ever since she started learning how to fish for speckled trout.

“Yeah, he taught me, and a couple of his buddies taught me. I guess I caught on good,” she said, noting she started fishing for redfish in the beginning, then speckled trout. “I couldn’t figure it out. It kind of aggravated me. Then I started watching everybody and I asked a couple of experienced, seasoned trout fishermen how to do it and picked it up from there.”

The only thing going against her and her husband now is Father Time. They aren’t getting any younger, they said, and fishing hard during a three-day fishing rodeo can be a grind.

“We have a cover on our boat. I don’t know how we did it in our youth. We’d go three days days, dawn to sunset, three days in the heat. But we can’t do that no more,” she said.

Her husband said, “She’s getting to where it’s harder and harder to fish them. Three days takes a lot of stamina. She gets excited to fish. She’s very excited to fish. But by Saturday afternoon, she gets worn out.”

Odds are she’ll have a smile on her face and a speckled trout trophy in her hand.

Scales are open 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday; 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. 

Fishing rodeo brochures and fishing rodeo tickets are available at Dock Side Marina, Cypremort Point; Dago’s Mobil & Grocery and Hebert’s Mini-Mart, both in Lydia, and Cajun Guns and Tackle in New Iberia.