The world of high school bass fishing just got a lot bigger for Catholic High School.

Approximately 35 boys, girls and one or both of their parents were at the first organization meeting Aug. 22 for the CHS Fishing Team. They were getting ready for the upcoming 2023-24 season in the Louisiana High School Bass Nation.

Jacob Shoopman, the team’s founder, went over the details and answered questions about the program.

Twenty-two high school, middle school and elementary school students signed up at the preseason meeting, Shoopman said, noting a few more students were unable to attend. The CHS Fishing Team could field 11-12 teams with as many as eight teams in the Junior Division.

Three CHS fourth-graders showed up.

“The turnout was great. I wasn’t expecting that many numbers to be there, so it was exciting. I think with the success we had last year, with a team qualifying for nationals, they are pumped up and there’s excitement around the school,” Shoopman said.

Dr. Shawn Baquet of New Iberia, who has had a family practice here since 2005, also was impressed by the attendance that Tuesday.

“When we first started off, we had four teams. Now it looks like we’ll have 11 teams. It’s a great thing we have to see all these teams. All of those kids will learn how to fish. This will help them when they get out of high school. They’ll know how to fish,” said the captain of one of the original teams formed after August 2021. That’s when the CHS Fishing Team was started by Shoopman at the urging of Baquet’s wife, Jeneen Jarrette Baquet.

The program has grown considerably since then and recently boasted national tournament qualifiers in the Junior Division team of Hollis Daigle and Vincent Soprano. They competed in the 2023 Bassmaster Junior National Championship in mid-July at Lake Hartwell in South Carolina.

”We’re going to have the numbers. It’ll be exciting to see more of our teams out there representing our school,” Shoopman said.

The 35-year-old sales supervisor for Coca-Cola United said Daigle-Soprano will be a team to be reckoned with during the regular season and again at the LHSBN State Champion on May 3-5 on the Calcasieu River.

“We’ve got some good young anglers,” Shoopman said, noting Roman Segura, who has been a regular with his grandfather, Vic Segura, this year on the Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series, has joined the CHS Fishing Team. “I think it’s going to be a good year.”

Baquet is ready to take his son Jarrett Baquet and teammate Seth Switzer on the water in his Ranger bass boat for the 2024 East Division opener Sept. 9 at Manchac. Both high school bass anglers are juniors at CHS.

The Baquets and Switzer will be joined on the water in Manchac by others from the CHS Fishing Team, including Daigle and Soprano and two of the new Junior Division teams of Roman Segura and Walker Hidalgo, captained by Vic Segura, and Cannon Leger and Greyson Young, captained by Mark Leger.

“I’m excited about it. I hope we have a good year. I hope everyone has a good year,” Baquet said about the first tournament of the year.

The Ville Platte native grew up fishing Chicot Lake and Miller’s Lake, he said, recalling he and a fishing buddy would be dropped off at Chicot Lake to rent an aluminum boat. He’d put a small outboard motor on it and fish to his heart’s content.

“I was always hunting or fishing growing up, either in the woods or on the water,” he said.

Baquet, a candidate for Iberia Parish Coroner, began fishing Toledo Bend in 1980. Now he has a camp on the Louisiana side of Toledo Bend.

He’s proud of his team’s progress through the first two years. So is Jeneen Baquet, the avid fisherwoman he married in May 1998.

“I’ll put Seth and Jarrett against any high school kid in a place neither knows. I think they can compete with anybody. Now they’re going out on their own. That makes a difference. Before, they couldn’t drive. Now they take the boat,” the team’s captain said. “Last year was a big jump. The kids knew what they had to do and were much better fishermen casting and stuff with much less backlashing.”

They all traveled to Manchac and prefished the area this past weekend.

“We’re going to hit a few of those bayous and a few docks” in an effort to target cooler, deeper water in this heat wave, Baquet said.

He also tipped his cap to the CHS Fishing Team’s Junior Division bass anglers and their captain, Brock Daigle, who fished their way to Lake Hartwell.

Baquet said, “That was great to see CHS boys go and make it to nationals. What a great experience, huh?”

He wants to take his boys to the big stage next summer.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.