PIERRE PART – A few minutes after the “The Cajun Baby” finished talking about one of his sponsor’s newest artificial lures, Cliff Crochet discussed something even more near and dear to his heart.

The Pierre Part pro bass angler who started Every Fish Matters, a major conservation initiative, announced the date for the release of thousands of largemouth bass fingerlings known as F1s, a cross between two pure largemouth bass strains – northern bass and Florida bass. Bass anglers are scheduled to distribute the “Tiger Bass” on May 11 after picking them up at Veterans Park in his hometown of Pierre Part.

The outdoorsmen will get the tiny fish inserted into bags in a carefully monitored process by state biologists and stock them in public waters only north of U.S. 90 in and around Lake Verret and between the West Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee and East Protection Levee.

“It’s an exciting deal to see a lot of people come together and support our local waters. That’s a huge deal for us,” Crochet said April 15 following the second of two Every Fish Matters fish stocking events in Spring 2023.

The Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour bass angler the past five years after fishing nine years on the Bassmaster Elite Series said there will be only one fish stocking event for Every Fish Matters in 2024. Money raised at the signature fundraising event on July 20, 2023, at the nearby Assumption Parish Recreation Center.

“This year we’ll do one release. It’ll be like 82,000 fish that we release May 11,” Crochet said, noting a total of 65,000 Tiger Bass were stocked last year in and around the nation’s last great overflow swamp.

Last year’s fundraising banquet raised $79,000 with other donations made to Every Fish Matters. Crochet said rather than two fish stocking events this year some money will be saved for a rainy day, per se.

“We’ll create a hurricane account so if a hurricane hits funds will be available immediately to restock any decimated bass population in stricken areas,” he said.

The F1s are from the American Sport Fish Hatchery near Pike Road, Alabama, southeast of Montgomery. The hatchery is the only one in the country licensed to produce and sell Tiger Bass.

Crochet, whose next MLF BPT tournament is April 9-14 at Dale Hollow Lake near Byrdstown, Tenn., held the inaugural Every Fish Matters banquet in Pierre Part in 2022. The crowd filled the St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in Pierre Part, so much so that the next one the following year was set for the center in Assumption Parish.

His Every Fish Matters idea was born during the MLF’s Redcrest 2022 as he watched Kevin VanDam’s foundation donate $5,000 to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation as seed money for an F1 restocking program for Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees. Crochet believed he could do the same, or more, for the Atchafalaya Basin and surrounding waters.

The lifelong Pierre Part resident planned the first banquet after talking with the MLF Fisheries Management Division and its LDWF fisheries biologist Steven Bardin on how to get approval to stock fish in the Sportsman’s Paradise.

Crochet said Louisiana was very receptive. The wheels were set in motion after he tapped his extended network of sponsors and friends as soon as he got a commitment to help set up the event from the MLF.

Louisiana bass fishing pros Tyler Rivet, Greg Hackney, Gerald Spohrer and Brent Bonadona were among the many people who chipped in, as did Mike Iaconelli of New Jersey.