LOREAUVILLE – Tony Sinitiere’s return to competitive bass fishing three years ago wasn’t much to write home about since then until the fifth and sixth Louisiana Bass Anglers tournaments of 2023.

Sinitiere notched his second straight first-place finish in the bass club with a narrow win May 13 at Lake Fausse Pointe. It followed a convincing victory in mid-April out of Franklin’s Fairfax Foster Bailey Memorial Boat Launch under U.S. 90.

“It feels good. It’s a good club with pretty good fishermen in it. I’m just happy to be bass fishing,” the Franklin angler said, adding he enjoyed bass fishing for many years before a back injury pretty much sidelined him for 11 years.

Sinitiere’s latest win was a squeaker on the second Saturday in May. His game plan paid off when he culled once and brought back a five-bass limit weighing 9.86 pounds, including a 4.10-pounder, the tournament’s lunker bass.

He needed every ounce to beat the runners-up father-and-son team of Brad Romero Jr. and Brad Romero Sr., who checked in with a limit weighing 9.41 pounds.

Third place went to the husband and wife team of Jerry Marcotte and Chris Marcotte with five bass weighing 9.06 pounds.

Bo Amy, fishing alone, like Sinitiere, finished fourth with 8.72 pounds.

Sinitiere, a 56-year-old maintenance supervisor at Quail Tools in New Iberia, relied on his favorite artificial lure, a chartreuse/white Lunker Lure Buzz Bait with a small gold blade. It accounted for the two bass he caught in Sandy Cove then, after a 40-minute run in his Southern Fabricators aluminum bass boat, and four more bass in the Quintana area.

“I pretty much throw it all the time,” he said.

Things got real soon after he started fishing after safe daylight takeoff from Marsh Field Boat Landing. He caught the tournament’s biggest bass on his fifth cast of the day in an area where he got only two bites while prefishing.

“I liked the water color. I wanted to get something early. I knew they were there where I had bites the day before. The bait(fish) was there and it was that time of the morning. I actually flipped it in the boat because I thought it was a 3-pounder. It hit it pretty good around isolated clumps of that cut grass in Sandy Cove,” he said.

Sinitiere hooked and boated a 2-pound class bass and when he ran out of bites, he cranked up and ran to the Quintana oilfield area. His buzz bait pulled four keepers from around grass and cypress trees with cypress knees.

Buzz bait and a special plastic frog propelled him to a comfortable margin of victory in the bass club’s fifth tournament out of Franklin. He fished Quintana exclusively to boat five bass weighing 13.44 pounds and also boasted the day’s biggest bass, a 3.96-pounder.

His black plastic frog was made by his nephew, Josh Baudoin of Franklin. Sinitiere has caught 50 fish on it, he said, and it’s still like it came out of the package, he said.

Following Sinitiere that day were the Marcottes with five bass weighing 9.13 pounds for second; Dicky Fitzgerald and Eric Guillory third with a limit weighing 8.76 pounds, and R.J. LeBlanc , fourth with 8.61 pounds.