BREAUX BRIDGE – Two Louisiana Bass Anglers members staked an early lead to the bass club’s 2025 Angler of the Year title by teaming up to win the season opener Feb. 15 at Lake Martin.

Dicky Fitzgerald of Charenton, formerly of Franklin, and Levi Louviere of Broussard, also a former Franklin resident, won the first tournament of the year with a five-bass limit weighing 12.64 pounds. Fitzgerald, a veteran State Farm Insurance agent who has an agency in Morgan City, was glad to put those bass on the digital scale after making the most of an up and down day on the water.

“Ah, it’s a good feeling to start the year off right. When you fish against a bunch of good fishermen, it’s good to start the year right for sure,” he said.

Fitzgerald, three-peated as the bass club’s AOY in 2020, 2021 and 2022, but missed three tournaments last year and finished eighth in the race for AOY. He doesn’t plan to miss tournaments this year.

The winning team’s closest challenger, Bo Amy of New Iberia, returned to the lake where he hooked and boated a 10-pound, 3-ounce bass while prefishing the lake with his father, Troy Amy of New Iberia, on Feb. 6. Neither Amy nor anyone else found that “hawg” he released but the accomplished local bass fisherman did come back to the weigh-in with five bass weighing 10.77 pounds, good enough to nail down the runner-up spot. Amy fished by himself.

Travis Harmon of Lafayette and Chris Buchta finished third with 10.35 pounds.

R.J. LeBlanc of Franklin, who missed last season while recovering from a surgery, made a big splash during that Saturday tournament with the day’s biggest bass, a 6.91-pounder.

Fitzgerald, 55, and Louviere caught 15 keepers despite winds that gusted to 25- to 30-mph. Most of those bass they hooked and boated bit on a june bug soft plastic but a few others were triggered by chartreuse/white bladed jigs and a few were triggered by chartreuse/white spinnerbaits.

“We had a decent day. On and off. There was no pattern, as usual, at Lake Martin. Go and fish. Throw at every tree,” Fitzgerald said.

The all-around outdoorsman said the winning team did something different than the other 20 boats in the tournament.

“We actually fought the wind,” he said about their successful effort to get away from the crowd and put bass in the boat at the same time. “To do that we had to get in the wind.”

The winners had their limit by 9, 9:30 a.m., he said, and called it the “luck of the bite.”

“We didn’t key on anything specific. I just covered a lot of water,” he said.

As good as the water clarity is most of the time in the small lake in St. Martin Parish, the water they fished took the brunt of the wind and eventually got pretty discolored, downright stained, according to Fitzgerald. The bass club’s next tournaments are scheduled to be held Friday, March 14, and Saturday, March 15, at Toledo Bend.