LOREAUVILLE —  With 15 minutes left before it was time to leave Wednesday evening for the weigh-in in the short, pressure-packed Original Hawg Fight at Lake Fausse Pointe, Randy Durand looked back and saw his fishing partner with a fishing rod bent double by the weight of a bass.

Before Durand, an accomplished and veteran basser from St. Martinville, could get to the net, Errol “Ging” Sigue of Grand Marais boated the big bass himself. Durand was pleasantly surprised by the good fortune.

“When he hooked it, I didn’t even realize he had hooked a big one. I looked in the back and his rod was bending. He just flipped it in the boat. He got it. It was all good,” Durand said after they easily won the second Original Hawg Fight of 2018 with a three-bass limit weighing 9.13 pounds for $195.

Sigue’s sizeable bass also was the biggest of the evening. The electronic scale manned by weighmaster and co-manager Michel Fox of New Iberia read 4.08 pounds, worth another $70.

Durand and Sigue topped an 11-boat field. Closest to them was the runner-up team of Aron Thiboeaux and Brody Lanon with three bass weighing 6.08 pounds for $110. Cody Pattillo and Troy Hebert finished third for the second straight Original Hawg Fight with three bass weighing 4.93 pounds worth $85. 

Before Sigue’s clincher went into the livewell, the winners had a limit of bass, Durand said, noting once again his philosophy of not prefishing paid off. And staying in one fishin’ hole helped, too, he said.

“You don’t have time to move round in a two-hour tournament,” Durand said.

“We were steady fishing and fighting those gawd-darned gnats. I told ‘Ging,’ ‘When I stop the boat, we’re just going to go down and just fish. If we catch we catch. If we don’t, we don’t,’ ” he said.

They caught several bass, keepers and nonkeepers, on spinnerbaits and Chatterbaits around cypress trees in the Big Lake (Jeanerette Lake), he said.

“I figured we had close to 9 pounds, at least upper 8s. I missed two big fish that I thought really would make a difference. But we didn’t need them,” he said.

They had to adjust to the conditions to make every bite count, he said.

“The fish were biting funny who-hoo with the bluebird sky and north wind,” he said.

He said they left their fishing spot at 7:40 p.m. for the 8:15 p.m. weigh-in because it was getting dark. 

“We took our time and got back early. Our last two casts we could barely see,” he said.

The next Original Hawg Fight, run for the second straight year by Fox and Ricky Watkins, is scheduled to be held April 18. Entry fee is $40 per boat.

For more information call 658-4248 or 884-9920.