With a little help from a friend, Jean Trahan shows the five-bass limit he weighed in to win the Louisiana Bass Cats Ckassic on Nov. 10.

FRANKLIN — The fishing was good after a bitterly cold start to the morning but the catching was anything but good for the eight boats competing in the Louisiana Bass Cats Classic on Nov. 10.

That’s how Lafayette bass angler Jean Trahan described the day and he won the season-ending bass club event out of Fairfax Foster Bailey Boat Launch. Eight of 15 bass club anglers who qualified for the tournament fished the LBC Classic.

“That was sad fishing,” Trahan said about how tough it was just to get bit in the post-cold front conditions.

The 63-year-old owner of Southern Technologies of America Inc., which works with low-voltage systems and networking, got enough bites to catch seven bass and cull to a five-fish limit weighing 8 pounds, 13 ounces. He had no idea it would be enough to win.

Trahan texted his wife as soon as he returned to the boat ramp, saying, “Off the water. Going to weigh five little fish. She said (replied), ‘Awww.’ ”

“You know, about an hour later, my five little fish outweighed everybody else’s fish. It was good and bad. I said, ‘C’mon, guys, five fish a little over 8 pounds. That’s not bragging size,’” he said. 

“But it was nice to get a $500 check. Then I didn’t have to pay for the tournament (no entry fee for the LBC Classic qualifiers). Five hundred dollars and a good day of fishing. Any day in a boat is good.”

Mike Sinitiere of New Iberia also cashed in, as did bass club president Pete Romero and also Hagen Riche. Sinitiere’s four bass weighed 6 pounds, 1 ounce, good enough for second place and $250, while Romero’s limit weighed 5 pounds, 11 ounces, which secured third place and $100.

Riche, one of the bass club’s newest members, had the biggest bass of the day, a 3-pound, 6-ounce, fish worth $100.

Trahan witnessed Riche’s catch.

“That boy, Hagan, caught that big bass about 100 yards from me. It was his only fish,” he said, noting the two bass club anglers were in the respective areas and not budging.

Trahan’s day started off much warmer than the weather at safe daylight after he reached his fishing destination, Quintana Canal.

“I caught the first keeper about 20 minutes after I got there, right at the boat,” he said, adding that was a key indicator to the location of bass on the chilly morning.

He developed a quick pattern.

“Everybody said they caught flippin’ (soft plastics). I couldn’t catch flippin’. I was slow-rolling a spinnerbait. All of them were about 15 feed from the bank, off the bank in scattered hydrilla,” he said about the seven bass he hooked and boated. “I felt like I found a pattern — scattered hydrilla. (But) I didn’t have enough time checking all the canals.”

He was using a 3/8-ounce chartreuse/blue/white Humdinger spinnerbait with an Indiana blade and a Colorado blade. He chose that weight because he wanted to slow-roll the artificial lure and keep it deeper.

“I stayed in that canal for an hour or two and didn’t catch another fish. I went to two other spots. Then, about 11, I was in another canal and caught them all in maybe a 100- to 200-foot stretch. Two people saw me there,” he said.

He even tried, then abandoned, retrieving a crank bait through the scattered hydrilla but couldn’t trigger a bite with it, he said.

He culled that first bass he caught with about 30 minutes left before weigh-in.