Beau has replica mount, thanks to Gondron, other memento

Published 7:30 am Sunday, April 12, 2020

A 9-year-old Youngsville boy with family ties in the Teche Area has a special bass fishing memory to cherish from November 2019.

If Beau Nicholas Harrison is ever in need of physical reminders, all he has to do is look in his bedroom where there is a taxidermy mount of the biggest bass he’s ever caught and framed pages of the story in The Daily Iberian about that memorable day on a private pond southeast of Alto, Texas. Beau received the replica from Loreauville taxidermist Spencer Gondron on Feb. 8, a little more than one month after he received the framed pages Jan. 3 from Hobby Lobby in New Iberia.

Those mementos should go a long way in taking his mind off the abrupt change to his life, the lives of his parents, Beau Harrison and his wife, Brittany Taylor Harrison, a New Iberia native who is following in her mother’s footsteps as a teacher at St. Mary Early Learning Center, and all Americans. Rather than sitting at a small desk in a classroom at Our Lady of Fatima, young Beau has spent much of his time during this stay-at-home period of the coronavius pandemic catching bream and bass at a pond near the family’s home in Youngsville.

Gondron, a part-time radiology technician at Iberia Medical Center whose wife is a nurse at the office of Dr. Son Van Nguyen, a gastroenterologist in New Iberia, said he feels special about his role in perpetuating the memory for Beau.

“He’s a fisherman for life now,” said Gondron, an accomplished bass angler in his own right who opened Avian Taxidermy after studying the profession in 2013.

Based on the length and girth of the “hawg” Beau caught on Nov. 2 while fishing with his aunt and uncle, Shelby (a nurse working on the front lines at a hospital for long stretches these days) and Tim Boling of Lafayette and his cousin, Porter, the bass probably weighed 9 pounds, Gondron said this past week. Harrison and the Bolings didn’t have a scale handy the day he caught it.

That trophy-sized bass was long and lean, typical for November, Gondron said. It might have weighed more had it been full of eggs last spring before the spawn.

Beau picked up the replica mount at the taxidermist’s shop at his home on Gondron Road in rural Iberia Parish near Loreauville. Gondron was recommended to do the job by Melanie O’Brien of New Iberia, an outdoorswoman who has been spending the past few weeks with her husband, Mike O’Brien, catching as many sac-a-lait as she can at Toledo Bend.

Melanie O’Brien of New Iberia, a retired educator at Dodson Elementary School, and Cindy “Ci Ci” Taylor of New Iberia, also a retired elementary school teacher and the maternal grandmother of Beau, are close friends. Taylor told her friend all about her grandson’s catch in November.

Gondron, 45, said he primarily mounts birds — as many as 200 waterfowl, turkeys, etc., each year — hence the avian part of the business name. He’ll mount a fish as a replica but won’t do a “skin” mount, he said.

He enjoyed working on the bass for Beau, he said.

“Yeah, it was fun. I think the most fulfilling part of taxidermy work is you start from scratch and see something come to life. It’s a work of art,” the veteran taxidermist said.

Beau, a zealous young angler, caught the bass on a small spinnerbait tied to 10-pound test line on a full-length rod. He thought he was snagged at first but realized he had a “hawg” on the business end of the line.

Beau celebrated his 9th birthday on Dec. 30.