Drake Menard of Carencro has his hands full with a 7.56-pound bass caught Feb. 27 during the Legends on the Lake tournament at Lake Fausse Pointe. It was the biggest bass of the day to hit the scale at Marsh Field Boat Landing.

LOREAUVILLE — What would Drake Menard do for an encore after winning last year’s Legends on the Lake tournament at Lake Fausse Pointe?

Menard, 39, had no idea how he’d fare in defense of the championship he won Feb. 22, 2020, with Chris Mouton. That first-place finish didn’t surprise him at all.

“Last year I was expecting it. This year was unexpected,” the Carencro bass angler said Feb. 28, the day after he wowed the small crowd at the weigh-in for the Legends on the Lake tournament Saturday at Lake Fausse Pointe.

Menard dropped the biggest bass of the day — a 7.56-pounder — on the scale at Marsh Field Boat Landing. He collected another large, handsome plaque in the shape of Louisiana but this time it read: “6th annual Legends on the Lake Big Bass.”

Menard, a wireline worker for Warrior Energy, and Ashby Guidry, also of Carencro, his partner this year, also finished third in the 28-boat field with five bass weighing 16.02 pounds. The highlight, though, was Menard’s 7 ½-pounder, which is the first bragging-size bass this year on Lake Fausse Pointe.

It almost didn’t happen. He nearly left the “community hole” where he fished “first cast to last cast” just before 12:30 p.m. He decided to stay with four keeper bass in the livewell.

A few minutes later, Menard pitched a Texas-rigged watermelon/red Big Bite Fighting Frog at the base of a cypress tree and let it fall. A fish intercepted it, ate it and he set the hook.

“For a while we thought it was a choupique” because the fish dove deep and stayed under the 19-foot Champion, which usually isn’t typical of a bass, he said.

“About 15 seconds into the fight we saw what it was. When we finally saw what it was then all hell broke loose in the boat. We got a good net on it, got it in the boat and saw it was pretty darned big,” he said. “Yeah, we had a little celebration, high-fives. We threw her in the livewell and went back to fishing.”

The watermelon/red Big Bite Fighting Frog he caught it on was tied to a 3/0 Owner Straight Shank Hook on 20-pound fluorocarbon line under a ¼-ounce worm weight. Menard, who works for Warrior Energy, had an Abu Garcia Revo reel seated on a 7-foot-2 MH Denali rod.

The water temperature was 68 degrees, he said, a remarkable development considering the region was locked in a deep freeze recently for about a week.

He was happy the big bass bit later in the day, he said, because if he catches it right off the bat it might lead to panicking trying to get good bass to go with it.

Menard, who fished the old BFL circuit in the late 2000s, is no stranger to getting his hands on big bass. He has “a dozen or so” 7- plus pound bass while fishing Toledo Bend, Lake Sam Rayburn, Caney Lake and Lake O’ the Pines. His biggest to date is a 9.86-pounder at Toledo Bend.

The latest quality bass may be the harbinger of more to come, like 2020. Eight bass ranging from 7 pounds to more than 9 pounds were caught in the lake last year February through May.