Daigle extra proud of his run to AOY title in La. Bass Anglers
Published 6:00 am Tuesday, November 5, 2024
- Louis Daigle's five bass on April 13 were enough to win the Louisiana Bass Anglers fifth tournament of 2024. The limit he caught while fishing by himself weighed 12.32 pounds. The first-place finish jump-started his run to the bass club's Angler of the Year title. facebook.com
MYETTE POINT – Louis Daigle cherishes his first-ever bass club championship for obvious reasons.
The Franklin outdoorsman’s recently earned Angler of the Year title means so much more, he said recently, because his son, Jesse Daigle, fished more than half the Louisiana Bass Anglers tournaments with him in 2024.
“It’s a big accomplishment in this club. Me and him fishing, you know, I’m proud me and my son did it together against a bunch of good fishermen. We’ve got a good club. We all get along, friendly. Anybody looking for a club, this is a good one,” Daigle said.
The father-and-son team of Louis Daigle, left, and Jesse Daigle, grip the lip of bass they caught to win a Louisiana Bass Anglers tournament Oct. 13 at Myette Point Landing in the Atchafalaya Basin. The elder Daigle recently clinched his first Angler of the Year title in the LBA. He said it was made so much sweeter because he fished most of the tournaments with his 14-year-old son.
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Daigle clinched the AOY title Oct. 20 in the 12th and final Louisiana Bass Anglers tournament in which his 14-year-old son played a key role in their second-place finish in the Atchafalaya Basin out of Myette Point Landing. The Daigle’s dropped 12.26 pounds in the weigh-in basket that day to finish behind Dicky Fitzgerald of Charenton and Bubbie Lopez of Centerville, who won with 13.41 pounds.
Tony Sinitiere of Franklin, Daigle’s closest challenger going into the regular-season finale, was third with 9.36 pounds.
Daigle amassed 805 points to turn back Sinitiere, who racked up 735, and Lopez, with 667. Following the top three in the Elite 8 standings for 2024 are Johnny Hester, 667; Levi Louviere, 655; Cody Pattillo, 630; Travis Harmon, 610, and Fitzgerald, 572.
It was mostly a two-way race down the stretch between Daigle and Sinitiere, a 57-year-old maintenance supervisor at Quail Tools.
“I had to catch fish each time. He kept pressure on me,” Daigle said, emphasizing the second word of the first sentence, about Sinitiere.
Sinitiere closed the gap to 20 points by winning the Sept. 29 tournament with Lopez in the Atchafalaya Basin. Their limit weighed 10.65 pounds.
“He gained a bunch of points on me,” Daigle said.
Then Daigle opened up a 40-plus point cushion after winning the next-to-last tournament of the season with Jesse Daigle on Oct. 13. The Daigles put 10.98 pounds on the digital scale after fishing the Spillway.
That set up the showdown in the regular-season finale. A scratch would dash his title hopes.
“I knew he’d have five, so I had to get ’em,” Daigle said about the hard-fishing Sinitiere.
Daigle, 54, got a big assist from his young tournament partner, a Franklin Senior High sophomore who enjoys raising and showing pigs in Future Farmers of America competition around the region and state, as Jesse Daigle rose to the occasion.
“This last tournament, my son caught two 3-pounders, really key fish that really put me over the top. There were several tournaments he caught key fish. Without him, I wouldn’t have won it,” the elder Daigle said.
“He is kind of the reason I still do it. He loves it so much. Just to watch how far he’s come … thinking ahead” on where to go, what to throw and so forth, makes bass fishing all the more enjoyable, the proud dad said.
Daigle joined the Louisiana Bass Anglers as a young angler when it first started in the 1990s. He got out of the local bass club a few years when he started a family but returned to the fold in the mid-2010s after his brother joined and coaxed him to fish a few tournaments with him in LBA.
“I got the fever again,” he said.
Daigle, a commercial crawfisherman who runs his traps in the Atchafalaya Basin, fished all the tournaments on the bass club schedule (12) this year for the first time. That made a big difference, he said.
Daigle’s “drop” tournaments, his two lowest point totals during the year, were the only two tournaments he was unable to put a limit on the digital scale. One was a scratch at Lake Martin, where he always struggles, he said, and the other was out of Franklin Landing, where he came back with three keepers from the Bayou Teche.
He won a tournament fishing alone in April with a limit weighing 12.32 pounds, including the tournament’s biggest bass, a 3.02-pounder.
The 2024 AOY said he relied mostly on a Delta Lures spinnerbait throughout the bass club season in ’24. It’s similar to the old Rumba Doll spinnerbaits, he said, and he prefers the Delta Lures’ model’s rubber skirt.
“I like to cover water. I like to pick up a spinnerbait and just go,” he said.
Apparently, so does young Daigle. The combination proved to be unbeatable.
