MYETTE POINT – Brandon Sellers won his second straight Coteau Bass Anglers tournament in the Atchafalaya Basin on Nov. 19.

The accomplished New Iberia bass angler was hopeful his third win of the year in the bass club would be enough to claim his second-ever Angler of the Year title in the CBH. After the numbers were crunched, the latest victory still wasn’t enough to win the close race with Jason Jones, also of New Iberia.

“Whew! That’s two years in a row for me,” Sellers said after the final tally left him in the runner-up spot, again.

His lone AOY was registered in 2011.

Nevertheless, he said, it was a great day on the water as he and Joey Trahan, who finished sixth in the AOY race, caught several limits of keeper bass and culled to a five-fish limit weighing 9.85 pounds.

Sellers and Trahan needed every ounce to turn back the nearest challengers, Doyle Louviere and his nephew, Levi Weber, a 13-year-old who fished his first-ever bass tournament that Saturday. Their limit weighed 9.14 pounds and included the tournament’s biggest bass, a 3.09-pounder.

Robbie Mayer and Marlin Hebert were third with five bass that tipped the digital scale at 7.36 pounds.

The winner was ultra-confident before the tournament got underway. He went to Grevemberg.

“With the Basin rising a little bit, I figured I could get in there. Fishermen haven’t been pressuring them,” Sellers said, noting other popular spots – Crew Boat Chute, Miller’s Chute, Mud Cove, etc.– have been getting pounded with the nation’s last great overflow swamp extremely low.

After prefishing in Grevemberg a few days before the tournament, Sellers was confident in the predawn darkness before the safe daylight start.

“I knew we would win when I showed up at the landing. I told that to Joey. I told him, ‘I got this. We’re going to win,’ ” he said.

Then he shared their destination with Trahan.

“We made it through to Grevemberg. We were the only ones in there. We pounded away all day long,” he said, happily. “I thought we’d get 11 ½, 12 pounds. We lost some fish. Joey missed something big. I don’t know what it was.”

Sellers, 53-year-old owner of Sellers Sheet Metal in Opelousas, said the two bass anglers hooked and boated bass on spinnerbaits, soft plastics, crank baits and buzz baits.

“It was a little bit of everything. They must have been hungry,” he said.

The water level fell considerably, however, while they were fishing and it was extremely difficult to ride out of Grevemberg and return to Myette Point Landing.

The eventual winners made it and put their five bass on the digital scale. Game over.

Sellers was happy for young Weber, who fished with his uncle.

Louviere said, “I took him the last tournament of the year and we had a blast. He caught our second-biggest bass, about a 2-pounder, on a spinnerbait. And he was excited!”

Weber, an avid baseball player, recently started bass fishing with a spinning rod and reel combo, his uncle said. The teen bought a baitcaster reel with his winning, he said.

“I’m glad he’s hooked. He just got into fishing,” said Louviere, a diesel technician and co-owner of Acadiana Diesel.

The New Iberian finished third in the AOY race with 992 points.