By DON SHOOPMAN

THE DAILY IBERIAN

Converting a small but popular bait shop into a bigger, improved bait and tackle shop was more than a labor of love for Ryan Sonnier of New Iberia.

It was a way to honor his father, the late Rickey Sonnier, who lived in rural Iberia Parish, and in his opinion a necessity for freshwater and saltwater fishermen here in the heart of Acadiana.

“I wanted to keep it going. It’s something we needed. I had to go to Broussard, Lafayette (for fishing tackle), myself,” Sonnier said.

“Everybody I talked to is excited about it. Everybody said we needed this in New Iberia.”

His dad built the 40-foot x 60-foot addition in 2013 for a bait shop alongside the existing building that houses Iberia Outboard & Marine Service along the frontage road at 2703 East U.S. 90.

Mostly, customers went to buy crickets, shiners, worms and shrimp. There were a few artificial lures inside the store, as well as crawfish traps, crab traps and frog cages, all handmade with wire by Rickey Sonnier.

Following his father’s death Jan. 25 at age 62, his son had options. It would have been easier to shut down that half of the building but, like his dad, the veteran outboard motor mechanic is a fisherman to the core.

Sonnier, 38, decided to bring a modern bait and tackle shop with a wide selection to the Teche Area. While the main part of the job is done, he is putting finishing touches to the store.

“He’s proud. I know it,” Sonnier’s mother, Wanda Sonnier, said about her husband, who battled lung cancer with chemotherapy beginning in 2018.

“After dad passed, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do on this side. But I knew I wanted to keep it going for him. This is what he loved. This is where he loved to be at. He’d come in in the morning and drink coffee with his buddies. I guess they’d swap fishing stories and stuff,” Sonnier said as he looked around the recently renovated, spacious shop with cards of artificial lures hanging from large pegboards along the walls.

“So I decided to keep it going but I wanted to make it bigger. We had a little bit. He had sac-a-lait stuff and bream stuff. I got more in bass baits and saltwater stuff,” he said. “So I got hooked up with distributors. I’d order direct. I got a lot of input from local fishing guys on what we needed and made an order.”

Those local bass anglers included Ron Boutte, Wrenwick Drexler, Craig Frilot and Felix Jeanminette, who are in tune with what fish are biting on and where from the Atchafalaya Basin to Toledo Bend and Lake Sam Rayburn.

Also, he said, distributors helped considerably by showing him stats on best-selling brands and colors for freshwater and saltwater products. For example, he ordered 100 bags of june bug/red Zoom Speed Craws.

Sonnier invested $20,000 in inventory from popular brands such as Spro, Scum Frog, Boo-Yah, Reaction Innovation, Missile Baits, Big Bite Baits, Cajun Lures, Delta Lures, Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits, Strike King, Humdinger, Rebel, and Bandit. Boutte suggested Delta Lures’ spinnerbaits, buzz baits, swim jigs and bladed jigs.

And Sonnier expanded the saltwater fishing line to include H&H, Norton Lures, GULP!, Matrix Shad, Vortex, Storm, MirrOlure and Four Horsemen Popping Corks.

The Teche Area’s avid sac-a-lait fishermen weren’t forgotten. The line now includes Bobby Garland Crappie Baits, Lit’l Hustler, Stinger Shad, Big Bite Baits, Crappie Magnet and Cajun Lures, plus top of the line jigheads.

Terminal tackle includes hooks, weights/sinkers, swivels, line (braided, monofilament and fluorocarbon), etc. Drexler recommended getting tungsten worm weights with the size engraved in the weight, a big assist for bass anglers who dump their worm weights in the tackle box, then wonder about the size.

And, of course, he has a selection of fishing rods and fishing reels.

Based on what followed upon placing the orders, getting the product was the easy part.

“It took three weeks to check it in and hang it up, me and my wife,” Sonnier said.

Well, he did the hanging it up, his wife said. Tables across the interior were stacked with artificial lures and other fishing tackle.

“It was very interesting,” she said with a wry smile, putting an inflection on the last word, “making sure we had the right product and keeping everything organized so he could do his magic putting it up.”

Sonnier said, “It’s weird. I had it in my mind. I knew how I wanted to put it up.”

“He dreamed about it,” his wife said.

Some of the merchandise was gone before it could get hung on the racks.

“Everything was on tables and in boxes and people were walking in and buying off the table,” she said.

Lindsay Sonnier is proud of her husband’s decision.

“I think it’s a really good thing we have in this area. Ryan’s really into the artificial tackle. I’ve been saying, ‘Your dad was more live bait and you’re more artificial bait but you use live bait.’ It’s a good mesh of what they both like and they both like(d) fishing,” she said.

The morning coffee roundtable, so to speak, lives on. Elton Landry, a veteran bream and sac-a-lait fisherman who once owned a bait shop on the Loreauville Road, works every morning at the new bait and tackle shop. Landry opens at 5:30 a.m. and leaves at 7:30 a.m., his shift taken over by Rickey Sonnier’s brother, Earl Sonnier, who mans the shop until closing time at 3 p.m. Monday-Friday.

Bait and tackle shop hours on weekends are 5:30 a.m.-Noon on Saturday and 5:30-10:30 a.m. on Sunday.

“The Sunday deal is something new. We never were open on a Sunday. It’s been working out good,” Sonnier said.

He appreciates the continuation of chat and java in the morning.

Sonnier said his uncle will start making handmade crab drop nets like his father did.

“That’s a big seller,” he said.

However, the business won’t be making crawfish traps any longer. It will offer the wire to make them.

“We can help them. We still have rolls of wire, the hog-nosed rings and the pliers for those that would want to make traps themselves,” he said.

His wife said they will continue the tradition of giving artificials that aren’t selling well to children.

And, naturally, the staples of panfish fishing or saltwater fishing are on hand. Worms, frozen grass shrimp, crickets and shiners are available.

“We have shrimp and we will have (frozen) mullet once we get somebody to start catching them for us,” he said.