Two Coteau anglers will be among the qualifiers fishing for a $30,000 first-place prize this week at the Crappie Masters All American Trail National Championship in Mississippi.

Chad Romero, 47, and Nick Menard, 41, plan to feed the sac-a-lait, er, crappie, their best hair jig, a green/red 1/32-ounce Basin Jig, when they fish Grenada Lake on Friday and Saturday. They’re hopeful the Louisiana product delivers against top crappie fishermen from across the country.

“We have never not caught any fish on it. If I put the jig in front of them, I usually catch fish,” Romero said last week.

Romero, who owns a machine shop, Elite Manufacturing and Supply LLC, and Menard, who owns Menard’s Electric, plan to leave Wednesday for the championship site a little more than five hours from New Iberia in northwest Mississippi. Last year’s Crappie Master’s National Championship was held on Lake D’Arbonne near Farmerville in Louisiana.

They’ll be competing against at least 100 other two-man teams.

The deadline to register for the upcoming tournament was Sept. 9. The two-day event begins at 7 a.m. both days with fishing hours ending at 3 p.m. each day. Anglers must be in the weigh-in line before 4:30 p.m.

The Coteau anglers qualified for the nationals by finishing third overall in the Crappie Masters Louisiana State Trail. They fished Lake Fausse Pointe, Amite/Blind River, Bayou Black, Lake Verret, Henderson Lake and the Atchafalaya Basin out of Belle River Landing.

In the season opener on their home lake Feb. 23, Romero and Menard finished second with a seven-fish limit weighing 6.76 pounds with the biggest a 1.34. They didn’t fish March 19 at Amite/Blind River but did go to Bayou Black, where they finished fifth April 9.

Lake Verret was a washout, or wind(out), because high winds May 21 prevented boats from crossing the huge lake safely. They were second June 25 at Henderson Lake with a limit weighing 4.37 pounds before closing out the year with a win July 16 in the Atchafalaya Basin, where they ran around to Myette Point and returned with seven fish for 6.33 pounds with a big fish going 1.33.

At the two-day Louisiana Crappie Masters Louisiana State Championship on April 13-14 at Bayou Plaquemines, Romero and Menard’s seven fish the first day weighed 5.10 pounds and on Day 2 had seven for 6.75 pounds for a total of 11.85 pounds.

Next up is Grenada Lake, a 35,000-acre impoundment where the team never has fished.

The Coteau anglers are looking forward to it.

“It’s always a new ballgame. I’m competitive. It’s not something you can do every day,” Romero said.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.