LOREAUVILLE – Defending Angler(s) of the Year Donald Romero Sr. and Bo Amy got off one struggle bus in the Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series opener March 19 but stepped onto another one in the second WN Hawg Fights BTS.

Amy, 38, a thread rep for VAM USA, confided the top team from last year was feeling a bit down after catching a smallish three-bass limit weighing 4.18 pounds in the first tournament but hoped to rebound on April 2. However, his boat and the other 20 boats faced rising water and mostly muddy conditions, plus winds gusting to 40 mph.

“Oh, no, the first one was a struggle but, oh, man, this was a struggle, too,” Amy said.

With his clutch catch late in the evening, the defending champs overcame the colossal challenge with one, big ol’ bass, a 6.14-pounder that beat all comers on a day when more than half the field of 21 boats struggled and scratched while nary a team weighed a three-fish limit at Marsh Field Landing.

Amy’s fish won the tournament for $473 and captured big bass honors worth another $105.

Hunter Neuville and Andre Weber teamed up for a runners-up finish with two bass weighing 5.20 pounds to win $284. Pee Wee Doucet and Jackson Theriot finished third with one bass at 4.42 pounds worth $188.

“I tell you what, that wind gave us, I mean everybody, real trouble,” Romero said, noting one of his casts — long after his partner’s early big bite went for naught — was right on target but the wind wrapped slack fishing line across a branch.

Wouldn’t you know it? A good-sized bass bit the watermelon/red Zoom Speed Craw he was throwing in a borrow pit along the West Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee.

“He (the bass) took off. I set the hook and that branch got me. It broke off, so it wasn’t looking good,” Romero said.

It was their second miss of the evening at a time when bites were at a premium. Soon after they started fishing, a big fish mouthed Amy’s black/blue Reaction Lures Sweet Beaver, slowly moved to the left and avoided the hookset.

Ten or 15 minutes before they had to leave, the boat’s livewell empty, Romero said, “‘Let’s go back where you missed that fish. He kicked that trolling motor in and got over there.”

Amy flipped to the same log and got the same kind of bite he had earlier, he said, noting he felt the bite better that time and slammed the steel home.

Romero said, “When we got right there, that fish hit. I tell you, it was on! He’s got that damn speckled trout net. It’s so small. I thought we’d lose that fish.”

It isn’t so much that the landing net is “small.” It just isn’t very deep.

“Donald netted her. The net’s so shallow. She jumped out of the net once. He finally scooped her into the boat. You go in the lake and you’re not expecting something almost 6 pounds,” his partner said.

“To be honest, when I first saw her, I said, ‘Man, good fish.’ I thought 4, 4 ½. After Donald netted her, I said it might be a 5 or so. Whenever we pulled her out of the livewell, I said, ‘Oh, man, that might be a 6!’ She was 6.14.”

They exchanged celebratory fist bumps but otherwise toned down the excitement because there was a tournament boat nearby, he said. Both believe it probably was the same bass that bit earlier on Amy’s Sweet Beaver.

Romero, 69-year-old retired owner of Romero Fishing & Rentals, an oilfield fishing tool business, noticed right away at the weigh-in that everyone struggled and no one had more than two keepers to weigh.

That opened the door for their “hawg” to get them back in the race for AOY.

“We needed that, too. It put us back up there,” he said as the team climbed from 15th to 4th.

“Oh, yeah, it feels good to be closer to the top. We were way down there on the leaderboard. Yeah, we were back in the running. At least we’re not way down there. On to the next one,” Amy said.