Kyle LeBlanc waited what seemed like an eternity to get his hands on a special fish that helped him cash in in a tournament on the next-to-last day of 2023.

The 33-year-old all-around outdoorsman from New Iberia picked up the taxidermist mount of a 1.7-pound sac-a-lait from Nick Fruge Taxidermy on May 31. The fish, mounted at an angle on wood, was a welcome reminder of the bitterly cold day he fished the End of the Year Lake Verret Showdown out of Attakapas Landing on the east side of Lake Verret.

Why is it special? LeBlanc never fished the lake until a month before the tournament when he decided to enter with good fishing buddy and former co-worker at Delta Royal Tire, Kayde Nicholas of Forked Island. They finished third in a 26-boat field with a seven-fish limit weighing 9.16 pounds, a fraction of an ounce behind the runners-up team’s 9.20 pounds and oh-so close to the winner’s 9.56 pounds.

“I had never fished Lake Verret before. When I saw that it was coming up in November, I said, ‘I gotta go scout.’ I went fish around Amelia, Bayou Cheramie and the Crackerhead (oil field canals in northeast Lake Verret),” LeBlanc said.

On five trips leading up to the tournament he hooked and boated sac-a-lait just about each place but the bigger ones were difficult to locate. He did find tournament worthy sac-a-lait in a small dogleg canal in the Crackerhead.

That was the only spot holding good fish.

“Thankfully, one canal had the bigger fish. We went fish that one canal all day long — never left,” LeBlanc said about tournament day, which began with temperatures in the mid-30s.

Using his Livescope, LeBlanc targeted sac-a-lait mostly away from the shoreline with few on structure. They fished approximately 3-feet deep with Bobby Garland soft plastic jigs in a bluegrass color on a 1/16-ounce leadhead.

They put the seven biggest fish of the 48 sac-a-lait they caught on the digital scale at Attakapas Landing, where the tournament was hosted by Jeffery Rodrigues.

That LeBlanc and Nicholas, who ties his own jigs, cashed in despite far less experience than the locals on the lake was a source of pride.

“For sure, definitely it was, mainly because we had never fished there,” LeBlanc said.

The mechanic at Delta Royal Tire in New Iberia said it’s also a testament to him gaining more than a working knowledge about forward facing sonar, which he has had in his boat since June 2022.

“It’s pretty cool. I’ve been fishing with it. Those sac-a-lait were at different depths, kind of roaming around,” he said.

The two anglers also relied on Livescope in early March on a trip to Grenada Lake in northwest Mississippi, which has a reputation for giving up heavy slabs. With the help of forward facing sonar, the lake didn’t disappoint on their first-ever trip there.

“We each definitely had our personal best,” he said, noting his was a 2.62-pounder while Nicholson’s weighed 2.24 pounds.

“We were there for three days. We caught nice ones, for sure, giants,” he said.

While the mounted sac-a-lait he picked up May 31 was smaller, it’s big in his books. That’s why he placed it on the wall just above the third-place plaque from the Dec. 30 tournament on Lake Verret.

LeBlanc said Rodrigues schedules a handful of tournaments each year. He missed a recent contest because of his work schedule but hopes to make the next one scheduled for Aug. 3.

Perhaps he’ll get his hands on another sac-a-lait to mount and bring to Nick Fruge Taxidermy in Henry.