Chad Romero still remembers the banana he took aboard his Xtreme aluminum boat before he left for the biggest tournament of his life.

That fruit fell behind the ice chest and, unseen and forgotten, rotted. The Coteau sac-a-lait angler found it just before the tournament and threw it away, still blissfully unaware of the centuries-old superstition associated with bananas on a boat bringing bad luck.

Romero, 47, now knows first-hand (and painfully) that bananas and boats don’t mix due to his experiences before, during and after fishing the Crappie Masters All American Trail National Championship with Nick Menard of Coteau at Mississippi’s Grenada Lake on Sept. 23-24.

“I didn’t know about the banana thing, either. It makes you think. We sure had some bad luck. It was a rough weekend. But we tried our butt off,” Menard said.

The team scratched both days but did catch sac-a-lait the second day.

Curse starts early

Two days before the big event, Romero decided he’d put a small, thin metal plate to provide shade over the Garmin LiveScope. He was carrying it around the front of the boat, stepped over the tongue, lost his balance and fell.

The metal plate gashed the palm of his left hand in the meaty part below the thumb. The cut required nine stitches but, thankfully, he said, he casts with his right hand.

Undaunted, Romero traveled to the tournament site Wednesday with his wife, Amanda Romero, while Menard and his wife, Jamie Menard, left home and arrived Thursday evening. Nick Menard and Amanda Romero are cousins. The Menards got there just in time to eat supper and get the boat ready for a national tournament.

Romero, who owns Elite Manufacturing and Supply LLC, planned to prefish the lake with his wife Thursday, the day before the tournament began. He got to the ramp and saw a section of his Xtreme Trail boat trailer was cracked in half.

As a lifelong resident of Acadiana, steeped in the oil field industry, Romero can find a welder and shop easily around home. It was more difficult in northeast Mississippi but he finally located a welder nearby.

By the time the crack was welded, it was too late for him and his wife to go scout because competitors had to be off the water at 4 p.m. that Thursday.

“Ah, bruh, after that, I was like, ‘What next?’ ” he said.

‘What else can happen?’

Romero found out soon enough, unfortunately. Later that day, he discovered two of his favorite Salter’s Graphite Jiggin’ Poles flew out of the boat somewhere between New Iberia and Grenada.

“I was like, ‘What else can happen?’ I get up the next morning, it’s 60 degrees and the wind is blowing 20 mph,” he said.

Naturally, Romero and Menard couldn’t go far against those waves. Neither could many other competitors.

“We get out there and had to stay inside the cove to fish. Fifty boats were inside with us,” he said.

The Teche Area outdoorsmen were in for a challenging time even without the banana curse. They agreed Grenada Lake doesn’t fish like the Atchafalaya Basin, Lake Verret or Henderson Lake.

Menard said, “The lake’s really nice. It’s really beautiful out there and they’ve got a lot of fish out there.”

Many of the competitors fished “tomato stake beds,” wooden structures planted because there were no brushpiles, deadfalls, or other structure normally found in Cajun Country.

Romero and Menard qualified for nationals with a lofty third-place finish on the Crappie Masters Louisiana State Trail. They fished Lake Fausse Pointe, Amite/Blind River, Bayou Black, Lake Verret, Henderson Lake and the Atchafalaya Basin out of Belle River Landing.

The Crappie Masters members finished second at Lake Fausse Pointe and Henderson Lake and won in the Atchafalaya Basin. They also fared well in the Louisiana Crappie Masters Louisiana State Championship on April 13-14 at Bayou Plaquemines with a two-day total of 11.85 pounds.

Grenada Lake a challenge

‘We did pretty good around here,” Menard said about the regular season circuit. “Going out there to where we never fished in our life made it very challenging.”

Day 1 was the biggest challenge for the accomplished sac-a-lait anglers at Grenada Lake.

“The weather was against us. It got cold out there … blowing like 20 mph. They had whitecaps out there. We couldn’t even cross. We were all trying to get out of the wind. Trying to get into water we could fish in. It was very tuff. We just couldn’t find big fish,” Menard said.

On Day 2, Romero said, the Coteau anglers were able to get out on the lake and catch one 12-inch sac-a-lait and a smaller sac-a-lait. That was it.

“We couldn’t find the big ones. They were running from us. We couldn’t catch them fast enough,” Romero said.

Fishing pressure on the lake’s crappie population obviously has been enormous in recent months, Menard said.

“Whenever they saw a jig running down there, they didn’t want no part of that jig,” he said. “You could see them on LiveScope, drop the bait right on their nose and they’d take off the other way.”

While the Coteau anglers were going through trials and tribulations, Mississippians Dan Jeffries and his son, Hayden Jeffries, brought in a seven-fish limit both days and won with a two-day total of 33.75 pounds worth $30,000. They had 17.18 pounds Friday and followed up with 16.57 pounds Saturday.

The big fish of the tournament was a 3.10-pounder brought in by Lamar Bunting, who finished eighth with 28.26 pounds and walked away with $1,200, plus a $2,000 bonus for the biggest crappie.

The tournament was run very well, Menard said.

“They did an amazing job,” he said.

“I’m going to tell you, with 162 boats, I’ve never seen it run in the morning the way those people (officials) drop boats in the water, so smooth,” Romero said.

Romero’s gumbo a big hit

Bad luck or no, Romero gained some admirers thanks to a chicken and sausage gumbo he cooked one night. And he and his fishing buddy also came away with the utmost respect for their home away from home.

“Oh, we met a bunch of people. I cooked gumbo. They said, ‘What are you doing with that wooden spoon?’ ” Romero said about fellow campers, including Tommy Creason, who fishes the Illinois Crappie Masters Tournament Trail.

They found out and enjoyed every bite of a Cajun-style gumbo.

“He’s still talking about that gumbo on Facebook,” Romero said about his new friend.

The Romeros and Menards stayed for the duration at the Grenada Crappie Den, owned by Sarah Nail. Nightly stays are $125.

“Miss Sarah’s a first-class lady,” Romero said.

Menard, 41, who owns Menard’s Electric, agreed and said, “Man, the lady (Nail) where we stayed at, she was amazing. She really took care of us, really nice.

“I’d say if you want to go fishing up there or get away, that’s a place to go. Oh, yeah, if you head up there looking for some place to go, I’d highly recommend you go stay there.”

Romero and Menard’s sponsors include Four Point Marina & RV Park; Howard’s Trucking; Dog Lip LLC; Tutties Machine; Elite Mfg. & Supply; Menard’s Electric; J&J Processing; Boiling Point, Prop Shop, The Country Station, Outlaw Poles, Lost Key Outdoors; Master Lube; Boudreaux’s Seafood; LA 88; Royal Services; Peak Nut; Evans Rental; Friends of Beau (State Rep. Beau Beaullieu); Swampland Tackle, and Coastal Embroidery.

And Jeffery Rodrigue of St. James gave them some of his J6 Jigs & More LLC product to fish with at Grenada Lake.

“I’m ready to go fishing over here and catch some fish,” Romero said after his return.

Chances are he’ll leave any and all bananas behind on future trips. The coup de grace was a blowout on one of the boat trailer tires during the trip home from Mississippi.