Hunter Neuville of Loreauville, left, watches and listens as Louisiana High School B.A.S.S. Nation weighmaster Jim Breaux calls out the weight of his four bass March 27 after the tournament at Henderson Lake. Neuville, who fished alone and in a boat captained by Mike Sinitiere, finished seventh in the 131-boat field with four bass weighing 8.22 pounds.

HENDERSON — Two weeks after unlocking the pattern to get good-sized bass to bite in a high school tournament at Caney Lake in north Louisiana, Hunter Neuville found himself on a lake a lot closer to his home in Loreauville, Henderson Lake.

Neuville, a senior on the Highland Baptist Christian School Fishing Team, and high schoolers in 130 other boats caught the lake at a high level, which is normal in the spring, and an even more of a challenge on March 27. The Teche Area’s up-and-coming high school bass angler rose to the challenge, fished by himself for the second straight tournament and finished seventh with four bass weighing 8.22 pounds.

And he did it in an unfamiliar boat. His boat was sidelined and in the shop during the days leading up to the event, so he put out a call for help and got an answer from Mike Sinitiere of New Iberia. Sinitiere volunteered to be his captain and drove his Phoenix powered by a 150-h.p. Mercury.

Neuville said he knew it’d be a tough tournament and it was. Twenty-two teams in the 131-boat field managed to put a keeper bass on the scale.

He prefished the lake on March 21 and found a few fish. On tournament day he decided to fish two spots that consistently gave up bass and spent most of the day in one of them.

It was frustrating to get only seven bites and boat only four of them, he said later on Facebook, “which was disappointing to me.” Still, he had enough weight to finish seventh.

Neuville said he caught each of the bass on a black/blue Cajun Lures LLC Baton fished under a 1/8-ounce Kajun Boss Outdoors LLC tungsten weight.

Walker High School’s Luke Ferachi and Jace Martello won the tournament with a five-bass limit weighing 13.26 pounds.

Garrett Whittington and Adam Newton, who fish for Livonia High School, were runners-up with five bass at 9.71 pounds.

Catholic High School-Pointe Coupee bass anglers Benjamin Jumonville and David Gummow finished third with a limit weighing 9.54 pounds.

The biggest bass of the day was carried to the scale by Bossier Parish High School’s Jase White and Cole Golden. Their 4.88-pound bass was one of two that totaled 5.86 pounds for an eighth-place finish behind Neuville.

Earlier in March at Caney Lake, Neuville fished alone in his own boat with his father, Tony Neuville, as captain and boasted a sixth-place finish with five bass that tipped the scale at 19.03 pounds. He fished with a chrome/black Rapala Shad Rap, a jerkbait, in 5- to 10-foot depths near a long point to catch the bass averaging nearly 4 pounds each.

Neuville finished sixth in the Louisiana High School B.A.S.S. Nation North Division with 850 points.

He qualified last year as a co-angler for the B.A.S.S. Nation Central Regional scheduled April 21-23 at Milford Lake in Junction City, Kansas. He plans to fish two high school tournaments this month.