MYETTE POINT – After missing out on winning Angler of the Year, a former Jeanerette resident grabbed the next best honor and won the Bullet Bass Club Classic on Oct. 23.

Andre “Tank” Sampay of Conroe, Texas, took a shot in the dark, so to speak, and traveled from Myette Point Boat Landing at safe daylight that day to Bayou Benoit, where he hooked and landed enough bass to top the 12-boat field that fished the Atchafalaya Basin.

Sampay, 40, won the tournament with five bass weighing 10.99 pounds. He edged out his cousin, Ron Boutte, who was runner-up with a little more than 9 pounds.

Boutte won the bass club’s AOY title in 2022. But Sampay had the bass’ number in the final outing of the year, despite missing a 5-pound class bass early in the day on a buzz bait.

“After I missed the big one, I didn’t think I had a shot. After missing a big fish like that, normally it costs you. I just put my head down and kept fishing,” Sampay said following the hard-earned win on a mostly cloudy day.

“It felt really good, man. It’s the first time I ever won a Classic. My good friend (and mentor) T-Clyde (Leonard Norbert), I could never beat him. I’d come in with 12. He got 13. I come in with 13. He got 14,” Sampay said about Norbert, who died in August 2018 while fishing a bass club tournament at age 58.

Sampay, who owns Sampay’s Solutions, which sells or leases commercial printers and copiers, had the highest weight this time in the latest Classic.

“I just happened to go (to Bayou Benoit). With the water down the way it is, Benoit has good structure and fish are feeding on shad and stuff,” he said.

“First off, I started throwing a buzz bait. I caught two on the buzz bait and missed the one about 5. Once the sun started peaking out about 10:30, they started eating a Jackhammer Chatterbait. Oh, yeah, they were eating it.

“I just fished that up and down. After the sun came up, I caught fish all day pretty much. The biggest one was 2.94. That was the biggest I had after I missed the big one.”

The 3/8-ounce bladed jig was a black/blue model.

Sampay won his first and only AOY in the Bullet Bass Club in 2020. He credited Norbert and the late Clifton “Cliff” August, who died in 2012 at age 64, for shaping his life on and off the water.

After he clinched AOY, the former high school and collegiate basketball standout said, “Sports taught me how to compete. Life is a competition. Nothing is going to be handed to you. Sports also made me understand you can pull together as one and accomplish more together as a team than an individual.”

Win or lose, Sampay said at the time, “I’m the same person when I win and the same person when I lose.”

He’s a Classic winner now.