Colleen Morphew, background, watches as  Yana Vasylenko, a Ukraine native, picks out a T-shirt at the Strugglin Outfitters booth at the fishing rodeo site at Cypremort Point. It was part of the overall experience Vasylenko said she has enjoyed this past week.

A Lydia outdoorsman has made it a tradition to play host to out-of-state residents to the Sportsman’s Paradise to sample the food, fun and fishing each Fourth of July here in the heart of Acadiana.

Milton Davis took it to another level Friday on the first day of the 65th annual Iberia Rod & Gun Club Saltwater Fishing Rodeo. Davis, an electrician who owns Short Circuit Repair, treated a foreign-born young woman to the pure joy of catching fish in and around Vermilion Bay.

Yana Vasylenko, 22, who was born and raised in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky near the ancient city of Kiev in the Ukraine, could hardly contain her enthusiasm when she talked about her day as well as her stay so far in the area.

“I l-o-v-e-d it! I catch biggest fish we caught. I catch small ones,” Vasylenko said with a thick accent, one that definitely wasn’t Cajun.

Davis said, quickly, before they unloaded their catch to weigh at the scales, “Bull reds almost pulled her in.”

Vasylenko nodded her head in agreement. Her skipper said it was a successful trip.

“Oh, we caught about 15 bull reds. We didn’t go until 3 this morning,” Davis said about his crew, which included his daughter, Brittany Davis, and Arkansas residents Terry Reynolds and Colleen Morphew, pilots who flew their private plane into Acadiana Regional Airport last week for another visit with Davis. Reynolds and Morphew live in McNeil, Arkansas.

“We fished until about 4 (for bull reds at Boxcar Reef), then we got about 20 slot reds,” said Davis, skipper of the Strickly Bidness, a 22-foot Ranger. “Yeah, we’re going to go tomorrow. I don’t know if we’ll go for bull reds.”

Vasylenko’s first saltwater fishing trip was a memorable one, she confided.

“Oh, this is an experience and thanks to Milton, a pleasure, too. He teaches me how to fish. He shows me how to do everything in the boat. I’m sure he’ll teach me how to clean it, too,” she said with a laugh.

Ah, she proved to be the queen of one-liners before leaving the fishing rodeo site. Foreign-born and a natural born comedian. Asked how she got here, to the States, she said “in a boat, in a box.”

While her 30.7-pound redfish was being weighed, assistant weighmaster Dustin Louviere and avid saltwater fisherman asked her “how fun was that?”

She said with a knowing smile, “Oh, you know.”

“That’s a nice fish but it probably won’t be enough to win,” Reynolds said, prophetically. Her entry got knocked off the leaderboard in the Inside Division before the scales closed Friday.

Reynolds poked some fun at her napping in the boat and she said, with a smile, “Don’t let him fool you. He was sleeping on the boat. I’ve got proof. I’ve got photos.”

“She evidently got one of me taking a nap … but I had a pole in my hand,” he said.

He caught and released several redfish in the 27- and 28-pound range that they knew wouldn’t stick on the board.

Reynolds said, “We might try to catch some more.”

Vasylenko said, her impression of the area and its people was awesome, overwhelmingly so. 

Vasylenko said, “I don’t know. I love the Cajunland. Is that how you call it?”

She said Cajuns remind her of the hard-working and fun-loving people in her native Ukraine.

Hard-fishing, too, she discovered as she looked around fishing rodeo headquarters under the pavilion along Quintana Canal, particularly on Strickly Bidness.

Reynolds, president and CEO of Reynolds Forestry Consulting & Real Estate PLCC in Magnolia, Arkansas, which manages 200,000 acres of timber from Texas to Alabama, has been making the Fourth of July trip here since 2000. Davis, in return, hunts deer with Reynolds in Arkansas. They all enjoy a huge boucherie each June in Arkansas.

The Arkansas outdoorsman, who thoroughly enjoys his days on the water, said Friday was the coolest day he has spent while here in the Teche Area.

Vasylenko is in an internship at Reynolds Forestry. She entered the United States four years ago with the Work and Travel USA Program that took her to Galeveston, Texas.

She has been with Reynolds Forestry for a year and works as assistant project manager. Her job requires aerial mapping, Reynolds said, noting that is the primary part of the business.

“We break stands into natural and planted, then we break them into hardwood and pine, then we age them. You can do a timeline on Google Earth,” he said.

On Friday, Google Earth would have shown Cypremort Point, McNeil and Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky all as part of the heart of Cajun Country.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.