LOREAUVILLE – When a good-sized bass charged off the bank, hit and missed an artificial lure retrieved by Brad Romero, Romero’s Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series partner was ready with a comeback.

“I saw the fish come off the bank to hit it, missed it. I threw my frog right behind his bait and it smacked it,” Raven Owens of New Iberia said later about the key fish in the fifth WN Hawg Fights BTS tournament of 2024.

That 4-pound class bass culled a smaller keeper and more than made up for a late afternoon of woes that almost kept them from fishing at all.

“Brad said he was thinking we needed to catch one more good fish. I said, ‘I don’t think so. We’re good where we’re at,’ ” Owens said with a chuckle.

They left the area to fish closer to the boat ramp. The weigh-in results told the tale.

The three bass they put on the digital scale manned by veteran weighmaster Mike O’Brien of New Iberia weighed 8.09 pounds, nearly twice as much as the closest finisher. Owens’ 4.08-pound bass sealed the deal for the winners, who took home $518 for first place and another $115 for the biggest bass of the Hawg Fight.

Nolan “Pee Wee” Doucet and Jackson Theriot, fishing their first WN Hawg Fights BTS tournament of 2024, finished a distant second with a limit weighing 4.64 pounds for $311.

Third place went to the father-and-son team of Danny Bulliard and Brett Bulliard, whose two bass weighed 3.15 pounds worth $207.

How tough was bass fishing on the lake that evening? Lake Fausse Pointe, was swollen and even more discolored from some heavy rainfall the previous week, a condition compounded by hard south winds that kept the lake up and forced it to fish even smaller.

Twelve boats scratched. Four weighed one bass. Five teams had two keepers and only two limits hit the digital scale.

Owens said, “It felt great. It’s always a good feeling to catch them when everybody else is struggling.”

It was a rough beginning, however, on a trip that almost didn’t happen for Romero/Owens. Romero’s Bullet’s 250-h.p. Mercury ProXS was giving him some problems and Owens’ boat, which Romero hoped could be a backup, was having issues, too, according to Owens.

“I’ll tell you right now, I had oil leaking from the engine. I pulled the flywheel off about 2:30 p.m.to see where it was leaking,” Romero said about taking it down at his shop.

When Romero put it back together, he said, a squeaking sound could be heard. Around 3:50 p.m., he went to Himel Marine and came back with a new belt for the Bullet. With pre-tournament time ticking away, he put it on and hauled it to Marsh Field Landing.

As luck would have it, he still heard squealing inside the outboard motor and that, plus an oil leak, spooked him. As boats motored away to the blastoff’s staging area at the “T” of Marsh Field Canal and Teche Lake Canal, he and his tournament partner decided to change boats.

Romero, a Lafayette resident formerly of New Iberia, opted to replace the Bullet and fish the Hawg Fight in his custom-made, sleek 19-foot long D-Fab Unit aluminum boat built by the late David Morgan and powered by a 115-h.p. Mercury. He towed the Bullet to his father’s house, dropped it off and picked up the D-Fab Unit.

“It was right at blastoff (5:30 p.m.) when I was picking up. It was a 50/50 shot … either fix the problem or screw it. The boat didn’t run right. I just ran over there and got the aluminum boat. We lost 30 minutes of fishing time but it worked out well enough,” he said.

Romero, 30, and Owens, 37-year-old contractor for Randy’s Total Renovations, eventually took off and traveled about 10 minutes to the spot the boat’s owner had in mind. It paid off despite being a little higher and a little muddier.

Romero, who is self-employed, caught two, including one approaching 3 pounds, right away on the moving bait he was throwing parallel to the shoreline. Big bass get and stay in there, even if it’s stained, and apparently thrive in the moving water, he said, noting the spot gives up bass, some big bass, consistently.

Then Owens cast a green/white Boo-Yah Poppin’ Pad Crasher and the big’un bit after missing Romero’s moving bait. It made a ruckus and even bounced a few times against the side of the tin boat.

“I saw how big it was. I said, ‘Hurry up and get it in the boat!’ ” Romero said.

“Oh, yeah, I was in an awkward position, close to the bank, and I set hook to the left. He was making me nervous. It’s a good thing I had it hooked good or I would have lost it. It was a pretty quick deal,” Owens said, noting it was the 12th bass they caught, most of them keepers.

“We had our three fish right there. The water was clear in there Monday, kind of muddy today. Then we went fish by the boat landing but didn’t catch crap,” Romero said a few hours after the last fish of the evening was weighed.