If the bass are eating as well as the bass anglers who went to a Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series Classic meeting Wednesday, it’s going to be a shootout in the big event today in the Atchafalaya Basin.

Fifty-two Hawg Fighters who qualified for the Classic attended the traditional pre-Classic event that was held at Billeaud’s Too on Weeks Island Road near U.S. 90. After dining on co-owner and Classic qualifier Brooke Morrison’s marinated pork and fresh sausage, rice and white beans dinner, they voted to fish out of Myette Point Boat Landing.

The vote was for the all-important Classic site was 24 for Myette Point Boat Landing, 12 apiece for Bayou Benoit Boat Landing in the Atchafalaya Basin and Marsh Field Boat Landing at Lake Fausse Pointe, and four for Fairfax Foster Bailey Memorial Boat Landing in Franklin.

Twenty-six two-man teams will compete in the Classic, WN Hawg Fights BTS director Mike Sinitiere of New Iberia said, noting it was a successful meeting with plenty of good-natured banter and some tall tales.

“The meeting went great, better than I anticipated, thanks to the directors and Billeaud’s. The supper was great. They wiped it out,” Sinitiere said after the tables were cleared and some of the best bass anglers in the Teche Area went home to game plan for today’s tournament that will pay $2,000 to the winning team.

“It was the first time I had to give a Classic meeting. It was the first time we had the whole group there. A tournament setting is different than a meeting setting,” Sinitiere said, admitting he was a little nervous.

Numbers for the order of takeoff at safe daylight today were drawn the next day. Mike O’Brien of New Iberia, one of the directors, and Paul Resweber of St. Martinville got the choice No. 1 spot as pulled out by Cajun Guns & Tackle owner Ricky McGuffie.

The WN Hawg Fights BTS Classic will pay the top five teams and big bass of the day, which ends with a weigh-in at 4 p.m. Second place is worth $1,000, third place $750, fourth place $500 and fifth place $300.

Whoever catches the lunker bass of the tournament takes home $500.

Sinitiere, 57-year-old marketing development manager for Coca Cola United, said he believes it’ll take 15 pounds to collect the top prize of $2,000. Big bass could be a 4-pound class bass.

But, he said, “Our of Myette Point, as happened last weekend, it’s capable of a 6 ½-pound can be pulled out, especially with the fishermen we have out there.”