Cousins team up, shake off early misses to win LBA event

Published 5:00 am Sunday, August 28, 2022

MYETTE POINTE — Ron Boutte made up for missing an estimated 5- to 6-pound class bass early Aug. 20 during the Louisiana Bass Anglers tournament in the Atchafalaya Basin.

“I thought I messed up. (But) I caught a key fish at the end to cull a fish for the win,” the personable New Iberia bass angler said after he and his cousin, Andre “Tank” Sampay of Conroe, Texas, formerly of Jeanerette, thumped the bass and the rest of the 18-boat field that fished on a soggy day out of Myette Point Boat Landing.

Boutte, a New Iberia bass angler who was born and raised in Jeanerette, and Sampay’s five-bass limit weighed 13.10 pounds.

Boutte’s 3-pound class bass in the waning hours of the tournament was redemption for the big’un that got away while they fished different areas around Verdunville.

“We were running from one area to another, making milk runs back and forth. We concentrated on drains in some spots. We burned a lot of gas going back and forth,” he said.

Toward the tail end of one early afternoon storm, while it was drizzling, cloudy and windy, he decided to try a buzz bait.

Boutte had a three-fish flurry, including their biggest.

“We actually culled three fish in a matter of three trees,” Sampay said.

“I figured we’d be in the money. After I culled a 1 ½ for a 3, I said, ‘Lordy, this is going to be tight,’” Boutte, a self-employed bass angler, said.

While fishing around the landing just before weigh-in, however, they talked to other bass club members who said their limits might go 10, 11 pounds. He predicted a first-place finish.

Michael Louviere and Tabitha L. Landry, both of Loreauville, were runners-up with five bass weighing 11.57 pounds. Landry was celebrating her 36th birthday.

Dicky Fitzgerald of Charenton and Greer Billeaud of Lafayette finished third with five bass weighing 11.33 pounds.

New Iberian Bo Amy carried the biggest bass of the day to the scale. It weighed 4.15 pounds.

The winners nearly blew the field away.

“We should have had 18 or 19 (pounds). We both missed two big fish. Ron missed one about 5 ½, 6 pounds, for sure. I missed one about 4,” said Sampay, who owns Sampay’s Solutions and sells commercial printers and copiers.

The cousins caught bass on buzz baits and bladed jigs around cypress trees and had their limit around 10 a.m.

“We definitely caught enough of the right ones,” Sampay said. “We were pumped up after missing those two key fish in the morning.”

It was their first win together in the Louisiana Bass Anglers, Sampay said with pride.