Bulliard’s 6.10-pounder in Hawg Fight Classic gives runners-up team another $215

Published 9:30 am Sunday, August 30, 2020

MYETTE POINT – Until Aug. 23, the biggest bass Danny Bulliard hooked and boated in the Atchafalaya Basin was a 5.7-pounder in the summer of 1975.

Bulliard one-upped that personal best but good a week ago today when he and Carroll Delahoussaye, both of St. Martinville, were fishing the Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series Classic out of Myette Point Boat Landing. Nineteen boats were vying for the top prize of $1,700.

Bulliard, 72-year-old plant manager at Cajun Chef Products LLC, caught a 6.10-pounder between 9 and 10 a.m. the day of the Classic. It was released alive at the boat landing after the weigh-in and the team’s runner-up finish with 15.68 pounds for $900, less than a pound behind the winning five-fish limit of 16.46 pounds by Braxton Resweber and Austin Theriot, both of rural St. Martinville.

The 6.10-pounder was the tournament’s lunker bass worth $215. And a source of pride for the modest Bulliard.

“Ah, it’s all right. He was thick. I’m glad I caught him in a tournament,” he said.

He will never forget his original biggest bass in the nation’s last great overflow swamp. Coincidentally, Delahoussaye was with him that day in 1975.

The 5.7-pound bass bit on a black Fle-Fly while he was fishing for sac-a-lait at Shaw’s Island. That bass zigged when it should have zagged and, as a result, wound up being a taxidermist mount.

“It was so stupid. It went into a stump. I reached in with my hand and got him,” Bulliard said Wednesday morning from his office at Cajun Chef.

“He’s sitting right here. I’m looking at him. It’s the only fish I ever mounted,” he said.

Fast forward to last Sunday and many, many sac-a-lait and bass and bass tournaments under the belt of Bulliard and Delahoussaye, 70, a legendary high school football coach who won two state championships during his career at St. Martinville Senior High. They captured last year’s Classic with 13.17 pounds after a run to the Atchafalaya Basin from Fairfax Foster Bailey Memorial Boat Landing in Franklin.

Bulliard wasn’t impressed by the runner-up showing this year.

“Huh? Second is second. If it wouldn’t be for the money it wouldn’t have been any good,” Bulliard said.

They finished second a few years ago in a Hawg Fight Classic. They took off from here in Bulliard’s Ranger bass boat and didn’t stop until they were in Lake Dauterive-Fausse Pointe, where he learned a costly lesson that probably prevented them from finishing first.

“The other time we were second I missed a fish because I was lazy and it cost us. I caught a 10-inch gar that wrapped around the line (fraying the line). About 10 minutes later, I hooked the 3-pound fish we were looking for and it took my spinnerbait. Every time I think about that I retie. Don’t be lazy,” he said.

Bulliard’s fishing line held up just fine to the 6.10-pounder after it bit on a California 420 (“That’s the only color I use.” – Bulliard) Baby Brush Hog at a tree that’s been good lately to the veteran team of Bulliard-Delahoussaye. He set the hook and it was game on, sort of at first.

“As a matter of fact, it didn’t pull hard until I pulled it up a little bit and it realized it was hooked. Then he decided to pull,” he said.

He handled the extra oomph the bass gave and his long-time buddy netted it. They admired it momentarily.

“Yeah, that’s incredible. It’s such a big fish,” Delahoussaye said. “I took it out of the net and said, ‘Look how wide it is.’ It made us think it was close to 6, a high 5. You don’t see many of those.”

That was the extent of their celebration.

“We’re not big on whoopin’ and hollerin’. We just catch the fish, put it in a livewell and keep fishing,” Delahoussaye said, noting their lines were back in the water within a minute of depositing the big bass, their fourth or fifth keeper of the day, in the livewell.

“After we caught it, we kept fishing. Excited? Not really. We were a little more excited when we caught that 5-something in the lake for one of the tournaments,” Bulliard said, recalling his 5.02-pound bass that anchored their 9.18-pound limit that won the fourth WN Hawg Fights BTS tournament held May 20 at Lake Fausse Pointe.

The tree it was around has given up big bass and good-sized bass each time they have fished it, both bass anglers said. It also gave them two of their three bass for a recent Hawg Fight.

Before they weighed their bass, the bass to beat was a 5.31-pounder carried to the scale by Jacob Shoopman of New Iberia, who fished with his father, Don Shoopman. Jacob Shoopman caught it at approximately 12:45 p.m. on a buzz bait in a borrow pit near Myette Point.

That big bass couldn’t match Bulliard’s new PB.