After 2021’s Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series opener March 24 on Lake Fausse Pointe, Braxton Resweber had a gut feeling about something, like perhaps winning Angler(s) of the Year.

Resweber and his younger cousin, Austin Theriot, both of St. Martinville, cashed in in that tournament but there was more to it than that.

“I thought we had a shot after the first one. We had second place. I told him (Theriot), ‘Austin, if we can fish all of them, we have a shot.’ We had a good start,” he said about their catch of three-bass limit weighing 6.79 pounds.

Resweber, 24, a builder and installer at Cabinets Unlimited, and Theriot, a 20-year-old outdoorsman studying to be a helicopter mechanic at South Louisiana Community College in Lafayette, took that to heart. Five months later they sealed AOY this past week with 1,054 points.

The cousins went into the 12th and final regular-season tournament this past week with a 32-point lead over the nearest challenger. The tournament was in the Atchafalaya Basin out of Bayou Benoit Boat Landing.

“If we scratched or got DQ’d or didn’t make it back, they would have won. I think we had to come out 14 places behind them or scratch,” Resweber said, adding he didn’t feel any pressure.

The finish was anti-climactic because they brought back a limit. Smiles lit up their face Wednesday after the tournament won by John Pecoraro of Youngsville and Kyle Guidry of Opelousas (see related story on on Page A13).

“It’s a good accomplishment. You know those guys are on the water just as much as me,” Resweber said.

Plus, he and his cousin said, most of the Hawg Fighters on the popular circuit are skilled and accomplished bass anglers, very knowledgeable of the waters in and around the Atchafalaya Basin. Nevertheless, he and his cousin persevered.

On June 2, two weeks after their first win of the season in Tournament No. 4 in which they topped a 26-team field at Lake Fausse Pointe, the cousins made a statement with a dominating effort that firmly established them as the team to beat. It was a literal beatdown.

The St. Martinville bass anglers still talk about it.

“Oh, yeah, I’d have to say that’s the best one. The water was falling. It was just all perfect conditions. Buzz bait(s), they destroyed it. Braxton caught that big one on a jig,” Theriot said.

That “big one” was a 5-pounder that also was the biggest bass of the 24-boat field that Wednesday night in the Atchafalaya Basin out of Bayou Benoit Boat Landing. It anchored an imposing three-fish limit weighing 12.59 pounds, which is believed to be the heaviest stringer in the history of Hawg Fights.

A day after that tournament, Resweber said, “I never had a day like that. We were catching 2 ¾-, 3-pound fish. We just had a blast. You don’t get many days like that. It’s fun. You can’t beat it.”

While prefishing before that tournament, Theriot went to the hotspot and it was stone cold. But, he said, his cousin went later and the bass had turned on, coinciding with a drop in the Atchafalaya River.

“That day right there, it’s hard to describe it. We knew we were going to catch them. We didn’t know how big they’d be but they were big,” Resweber said this past week.

With a consistent effort during the last six tournaments, Resweber and Theriot never looked back. They were confident they could catch three keepers each time out but did just that on four occasions (two keepers on June 16 and one keeper on Aug. 12).

Still, they stayed ahead of the pack and clinched AOY. Their three bass in the regular-season finale weighed 4.83 pounds, seventh in the 15-team field.

They finished ahead of Brandon Sellers of New Iberia and Blaine Miller of Loreauville, who racked up 1,018 points to finished second in the race for AOY. New Iberian Brad Romero, who charged down the stretch, was third with 989 points.

“It means a lot. I’ve been trying to get that … always wanted to get that title,” Theriot said.

Winning the fast-approaching WN Hawg Fights BTS Classic would be icing on the cake, he said about the tournament scheduled for Sept. 12 out of Myette Point Boat Landing in the Atchafalaya Basin.

The cousins have been fishing together since their boyhood days, a lot more after Resweber got his driver’s license. They’ve teamed up to fish various tournaments for the past six years.

“He’s a good friend and a good fisherman, too. He’s a good person to hang around. Me and him like to joke all the time,” Theriot said.

Resweber said the cousins make a formidable team because “we trust each other.”

“We don’t doubt each other when one wants to do something,” he said. “We do a lot of the same things but differently. Like we punch differently. Throw a spinnerbait differently. He’s always doing something different in the back of the boat. If we find they’re eating something real good, we throw the same thing.”

Theriot said one of the keys to their success — two firsts, a second and a fourth — was “keeping our head down and fishing … not getting discouraged.”

Resweber missed one tournament when he traveled to Kansas to fish the 2021 TNT Fireworks B.A.S.S. Nation Central Regional at Milford Lake near Junction City. He was proud and relieved that his cousin came through in the clutch fishing alone and earned valuable points in the third tournament April 21 at Lake Fausse Pointe.

It was downhill after that.

Resweber appreciated the bass anglers who planned and staged the tournaments.

“I want to thank Chris Vedrines, Mike Sinitiere and all the board members for another good year,” he said.