CYPREMORT POINT – The Southcentral Fishing Association’s winningest boat the past two years has some unfinished business.

The yellow, 24-foot long Blazer Bay’s captain and two-man crew are proud without a doubt of their second straight Angler(s) of the Year title in the Southcentral Fishing Association. New Iberians Keo Khampvilaong, the yellow boat’s owner and captain, Craig Landry and Randy Migues sewed up the back-to-back titles with their third win of the five-tournament regular season on June 17.

“Two in a row. What do you think about that? And our big fish stayed, too, for the Calcutta,” Khamphilavong said, referring to the 9.05-pound “slot” redfish they caught in the season opener on March 25 that survived any and all challenges the rest of the regular season. Their winning two-fish limit that day weighed an eye-opening 17.55 pounds.

The AOY team’s other triumphs were on April 22 and March 25. However, their season ended on a down note when they scratched on a scorching hot recent Saturday in the regular-season finale July 29.

A crew of young anglers who had 17 pounds with three “slot” redfish nailed down first place in the SFA’s fifth and final tournament on the last Saturday of July. No other details were available. The winning boat finished ahead of the field of six other boats, which was the smallest field of the season (the previous smallest turnout this season was nine boats on June 17).

Khamphilavong, 58-year-old owner of Keo’s Construction Inc., said the AOY champs’ long-term goal is yet to be realized as they want to notch their first-ever win in the Southcentral Fishing Association Classic set for Aug. 12 out of Quintana Canal Landing.

“This one (SFA Classic) is the one we really want to win. We really want to look around (prefish before the big event). Oh, yeah, we definitely want to put more effort into this one. We want this one because we’ve never won this one,” he said about the final tournament with a winner’s take all pot of more several thousand dollars.

That’s our goal. We really would like to win the championship. We’ve been in it for a while. We’ve never even come out in the Classic and we fish hard, man. Maybe things will change for us and we’ll have some luck. It’d be nice to win everything. It’s one of those things that might never happen again.”

That the lucrative season-ending tournament comes after their worst showing of the season concerns each man on the boat going into the finale.

Migues, 67, who retired in 2019 as carpenter foreman in the maintenance department for the Iberia Parish School Board, agreed and said about the pending SFA Classic, “We’ll regroup, put our heads together and see if we can’t come up with something. I’m sure everybody will be doing that. All we’re looking for is two. Just looking for the right fish at the right time.”

Migues fished every regular-season tournament this year for the first time in several years as he rejoined the team. After undergoing multiple back surgeries, he fished none in 2021 and only one in 2022.

He enjoyed contributing to a second straight AOY.

“That feels good. We put our time in for that. It’s a good accomplishment,” Migues said, adding his captain “don’t give up.”

“We had a great year. We got on some fish early. The last few have been tough. This one (SFA Classic) will be tough.”

Khamphilavong said, “We did good this year. We all put 110 percent in. We fish hard when we get in the boat. We don’t give up. We fish hard to the last minute.”

While they didn’t have a “slot” redfish good enough to hit the digital scale a couple Saturdays ago, the tournament wasn’t a complete loss, the skipper said. They caught two “good fish” in the last few hours, plus saw others “pushing” (or waking) in the water in their spot inside Marsh Island.

That’s something to go on while scouting for the SFA Classic, he said.