ZWOLLE – The winning bass tournament weights were nearly identical. The artificial lures responsible for the wins were the same.

The only major difference was the location March 18 and March 19 at Toledo Bend for Levi Louviere and Seth Comeaux, both of Broussard, formerly of Franklin, and Bubbie Lopez of Centerville and Dicky Fitzgerald of Charenton.

Louviere and Comeaux won the Louisiana Bass Anglers first tournament on Friday with 18.22 pounds. Then Lopez and Fitzgerald, the bass club’s three-time defending Angler of the Year, captured the second tournament with 18.24 pounds.

Lopez said he and his long-time fishing buddy fished grass in 2- to 6-foot depths in the Solon’s area with shad-colored Chatterbait Jack Hammers. The bite was either hard or soft, he said, noting “sometimes you didn’t know one had the bladed jig in its mouth.”

The second-day winners nearly had even more weight to their limit.

“We should have had more weight than that. Dickie had about an 8-pounder that went down in the grass. He couldn’t do nothing with it. The bait came flying through the grass. He was sick when that thing came out of the water,” Lopez said.

The winning team weighed a smaller limit the day before.

“It was kind of tough the first day with the wind blowing,” he said, noting they caught about eight keepers compared to 12-14 on Saturday.

“The first day we should have had 17, 18 pounds. We lost one (in the last 30 minutes of fishing) between 4 and 5 right at the boat.”

Instead, Lopez and Fitzgerald had 14.49 pounds to finish third on Friday, a little more than a pound behind the runners-up team of James Fredieu and Louis Daigle, whose five-bass limit weighed 15.82 pounds.

Louviere and Comeaux ruled the first tournament on a rotten day weather-wise. It was cold, wet and windy at their spot in the Blue Lake area, so windy the trolling motor batteries were drained halfway into the day.

Nevertheless, they caught 20-30 bass, including the day’s biggest bass, a 5.34-pounder.

“Imagine if the wind wasn’t blowing as hard,” Louviere said.

Their fish were caught mostly on white Chatterbait Jack Hammers adorned with a white Skinner Dipper, he said. Retrieving the bladed jigs around grass triggered the bite.

“Basically, scattered grass. Oh, man, it’s nice having grass again,” Louviere said. “We both caught big fish. I caught a 5 ¼ and he caught a heavy 4.”

Matt Hebert and Josh Sutton, who finished fourth Friday with 14.04 pounds, were second on Saturday with 15.39 pounds. Daigle and Fredieu were third the second day with 14.57 pounds following by fourth-place finishers Tony Sinitiere and Anthony Sinitiere, whose limit weighed 14.33 pounds.

Travis Harmon and George Merrifield’s 5.97-pound bass was the heaviest on Saturday.