A Teche Area outdoorsman once known for his prowess and love for bass fishing, particularly tournament bass fishing, has gotten back into the game.

In a twist, however, James Fredieu targets redfish rather than bass and he’s making it a family affair by fishing the Power-Pole National Redfish Tour with his wife, Sonja Fredieu, perhaps his most ardent supporter back in his bassin’ days, and the Professional Redfish League with his son, Brodie Fredieu.

The Fredieu husband-and-wife team returned to the circuit, which they enjoyed fishing last year in their new Mamba Custom Boats 227 VX, for the circuit’s 2025 season opener called the Texas-Louisiana Go Live Division Tournament on March 22 and finished in a ninth-place tie in the 48-team field that fished both Louisiana and Texas public waters. Their three redfish weighed 24.08 pounds.

James enjoyed every minute of action before and after because he and his wife cashed in for the first time together. The JF Louisiana Crawfish LLC owner, a sponsor of the PRL, caught nine redfish.

“Me and my wife caught nine. We saw 40-50 that we either threw at or they didn’t bite or they weren’t the right size and we let them swim by us,” he said. “Like, we had an 8-6, 8-2 and an 8-pounder even.”

They both used tactics favored by bass anglers. He threw a Chatterbait and flipped a soft plastic, he said, while his wife used a spinnerbait most of the day.

The format for that particular tournament was different than most other fishing contests. The anglers or a marshal videoed from start to finish, including showing the empty livewells in a boat check before the tournament got underway, catching the action on a redfish catch, then unhooking and weighing the redfish on a digital scale provided by tournament officials.

The Fredieus had a friend, Elizabeth Blanchard, filming them. James said some teams either record the videos themselves or use Go Pros.

“It’s pretty neat, pretty interesting,” he said.

The circuit limits the field to 50 boats because otherwise it’d be a challenge to monitor more videos than that, the veteran crawfisherman said.

“We fished in the Lake Boudreaux area by Dulac. We had some people around us from Texas. You know, we’ve only got a limited time to look around. We went to Venice,” he said.

“We saw them pretty good that day (of the tournament). We saw a lot of 6-pounders but we’re not going to throw at that one. We’re looking for 9-pounders.”

Their next tournament on the tour has a different format, he said about the May 3 event out of Delacroix. There will be a takeoff, similar to a bass tournament, and each team can bring a two-fish limit to the weigh-in.

He’s unsure where they’ll wind up trying to pluck two big “slot” redfish, as close to 27 inches as possible without “busting” the line.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to look around. We like to see them. We can’t go blind fishing,” he said.

There are three tournaments remaining on the schedule, he said, including the championship.

He’s also more than ready for another crack at the PRL. This year he’ll be fishing with his son, Brodie, after fishing last year with Keith Newsom, a friend of his from Memphis.

“We were just out of the money two times, ninth and 12th. It was a learning experience for us. We didn’t do too bad. I look forward to this year,” he said, noting the circuit offers two-day tournaments in which each team works for its best five “slot” redfish. The most teams can weigh the first day is three but if they have a bad first day and weigh just one redfish they can bring four the second day.

The father-and-son team’s goal is to qualify for the PRL world series, which James believes will be out of Cocodrie.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.