Some of the 26 boats that fished Wednesday are lined up before the Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series at scenic Lake Martin.

PARKS – Of all the grizzled bass fishing veterans, many who fished Lake Martin for years, none drove away winners Wednesday.

Andre Weber of Jeanerette, a Catholic High School graduate (Class of 2021) who recently completed his freshman year at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, overcame the odds and stubborn bass to win the Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series contest at Lake Martin.

Weber, an all-around outdoorsman who is mowing lawns and training Labrador retrievers for duck hunting to help get through college and fund his love for bass fishing, and his friend Noah deMahy topped a 26-boat field with three bass weighing 5.79 pounds worth $585 in the circuit’s fourth evening tournament of 2022.

The 19-year-old Weber was surprised, pleasantly. He never saw or fished Lake Martin before Monday and Tuesday, when he scouted the small, scenic lake in St. Martin Parish.

“I was shocked when they said the next tournament would be on Lake Martin (site was announced April 20). I’ve never been there. It was going to be interesting scouting, no information (to go on), and so I knew I was going to have to learn a new spot. All on my own,” he said after the first-place finish.

His first scouting trip left a “sour taste” in his mouth. He dropped the trolling motor at the boat landing, fished around the entire lake and caught two bass.

The next day was even less eventful.

“So Wednesday I didn’t do anything I did in practice. I went to where I thought it would be best from my experience of fishing,” he said.

His “experience,” starting at a very young age, includes catching 7.25- and 8.50-pound bass in a three-day span in 2020 at Lake Fausse Pointe. He caught the biggest while fishing with his brother, Shay, and his grandfather, Larry Ransonet of Jeanerette.

Weber, a personable young man with a ready smile, proved he can put two-and-two together on a highly pressured, tough lake with oft-uncooperative bass.

He headed for the shallows that had duckweed, where the water generally is cooler. With 90-degree water temps, Weber decided to offer a plastic frog, a Boo-Yah model with a leopard frog pattern, a “realistic frog.”

“On my first cast I had a fish on it. In the first 10 minutes of fishing I had my limit. I knew I had something special going on. I had three fish in 10 minutes but they were all 14 inches,” he said.

“Like, five minutes later, I was working a grass mat out deep. A 5-pounder hit it. I thought it was a ’gator,” he said about the sizeable bass that got away at the edge of his older model aluminum bass boat.

There were eight other tournament boats around him. There was little or no action for them.

Weber and deMahy kept fishing hard. With five minutes left before leaving for the weigh-in at 8:10 p.m., on his last cast with the plastic frog, he hooked and boated a 3-pound class bass. Unbeknownst to him, that would put him over the top.

“I was so excited. (But) I was thinking there was no way we could win,” he said, noting he thought it would take at least 9 pounds to win.

Devin Verret and Gary Blanchard, both of Loreauville, finished second with three bass weighing 5.60 pounds for $351.

Troy Kling and Nick Alberado were third with a limit weighing 4.68 pounds worth $234.

The next tournament is scheduled to be held May 25 at Lake Fausse Pointe. For more information call Mike Sinitiere at 321-1178.