LOREAUVILLE – Lake Fausse Pointe’s biggest bass have been a little shy the past few years since a phenomenal blitz in 2020-21.

Heavy 7s, 8s and 9s were hitting the digital scales consistently from early spring to early summer those back-to-back years, with a 9-13 added for good measure in October 2021, and then the big bass noise was all but silenced as, apparently, water conditions changed across the lake, most notably Sandy Cove.

An avid fisherman and all-around outdoorsman broke the streak the second weekend of March. He wasn’t a gung-ho bass angler in a high-performance ’glass bass boat with all the fixin’s, either.

Brandon Derouen, a New Iberia native who now lives in Abbeville, set the hook hard at mid-morning March 9 and came back with an 8-pound, 13-ounce, bass caught approximately two minutes from Marsh Field Landing.

“The craziest part about it is I caught it on a tube jig,” Derouen said the following day.

“I mostly fish sac-a-lait. That’s my favorite fish to eat so that’s what I normally fish. Every now and then I throw a bass bait but I’ve probably caught more bass on jigs than a bass bait. I like to fry them, too.”

Derouen was in a 17-foot long Alweld aluminum boat that he borrowed from an uncle, Danny Derouen, who was out of town earlier in the week. He was biding his time that morning — fishing for a few hours — before his uncle planned to meet him to fish the rest of the day together.

Brandon Derouen didn’t take the boat far from Marsh Field Landing to start fishing alone that morning in the canal he has planted Christmas trees in to attract sac-a-lait and other fish. He knows the canal well because he hunted on leased property on the road side of Teche Lake Canal.

The nearly 9-pound bass, however, wasn’t in or around one of his submerged Christmas trees. It was tight against a cypress knee and fell for a blue/white tube jig.

“I actually saw a garfish turn up. I threw in the area and popped (the cork) a couple times. It sank the cork. I reeled in like it was a sac-a-lait,” he said.

The tug-of-war didn’t last long.

“From the time I hooked it to when I put it in the boat, a minute, maybe,” he said, noting it more or less swam to the boat. “It kept the line tight. It never really fought. It kind of flipped one time. That’s when I realized it was a bass. I was in shock.”

While playing the big bass with the 7-foot long Lew’s casting rod with a Pflueger spincast reel he frantically tried and succeeded to unlock the pin to get the landing net ready. During the next few wild moments, as he pulled the hawg to the boat, he came to a sudden, sobering conclusion.

“I tried scooping it in the net but it was bigger than the net. I realized it wasn’t going to fit in the net. So I just reached in the water and grabbed it by the bottom lip. When I pulled her out of the water I realized how big she was. I was in shock,” he said, repeating that last sentence for a second time.

What he had in his clenched hand was his new personal best. His old PB weighed 1 ½ pounds.

As soon as the big bass was safely in his hands, Derouen photographed it and sent the picture to his father, Drury Derouen of New Iberia. The younger Derouen grew up fishing and hunting with his dad and his grandfather, Walter Meaux, who now lives in Arkansas.

Derouen opened the 24-quart YETI ice chest, weighed the fish,then gently laid the giant bass inside after taking a photo of it.

“I thought, man, that’s a nice fish,” he said, and kept on fishing for sac-a-lait.

The 30-year-old owner of Southern Grinding and Tree Service LLC caught one other 12-inch basss and about 20 sac-a-lait, of which he put five in the ice chest with bass-zilla and released the rest.

His uncle arrived a few minutes after 11 a.m. and at 11:09 took the photo of Derouen and the big bass that will be the envy of many bass anglers across Acadiana.

The proud outdoorsman plans to have his new PB bass mounted but hasn’t decided on the taxidermist. He’s strongly considering taking the trophy-sized bass to Atchafalaya Taxidermy LLC in Lafayette.