Young enough to win

Published 12:30 am Sunday, September 15, 2019

FRANKLIN — There was a familiar theme featuring two names long associated with bass fishing tournament success in the Teche Area at the Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series Classic on Sept. 8.

The Classic winners have been in the winner’s circle, or high up in the payouts, in tournaments since the early 1980s, and they struck a blow for every bass angler getting up in years. Their consistency over the years has been ageless.

“It just goes to show you fishing is a sport you can be 16 to 80 and everybody can do it at different levels. There’s not too many sports you can do that. But hunting and fishing you can. If we were playing football, those young boys would have killed us,” Carroll Delahoussaye of St. Martinville said a few days after winning $2,000 with a first-place finish in the Classic while teaming up with his longtime friend Danny Bulliard, also of St. Martinville.

Delahoussaye, 69, knows about fishing, hunting and football. He coached two teams to state championships in the early 1980s (1981 and 1984) as head football coach at St. Martinville High School, where he retired this year as athletic director. Bulliard is 72, an all-around avid outdoorsman who hasn’t missed a beat to this day as plant manager at Cajun Chef Products LLC in St. Martinville.

They topped a 21-boat field that fished the Classic out of Fairfax Foster Bailey Memorial Boat Launch. Delahoussaye and Bulliard caught 25-35 keepers after an hour-long run to one of their favorite spots in the  Atchafalaya Basin and culled to a winning weight of 13.17 pounds.

“We had two places. You’ve got to try to stay with where you are familiar with,” Delahoussaye said.

Ah, the familiar theme. Bulliard, who drove his 1992 Ranger bass boat with a 13-year-old 175-h.p. Merc to their honey hole, Grevemberg, touched on that subject as well. They caught quality bass after quality bass on black/blue and red shad plastic worms they’ve casted for decades.

“We were in familiar surroundings with familiar baits and a familiar old boat,” Bulliard said Thursday afternoon.

“We were proud of our catch. We enjoyed it. We caught fish. We caught a lot of good fish. It was phenomenal fishing,” he said, already looking ahead to Saturday’s opener of the special teal hunting season in Louisiana.

The Classic winners needed every ounce to notch first place. Braxton Resweber and Austin Theriot, both of St. Martinville, two of the young guns on the local evening bass tournament circuit, were right on their heels with a limit of bass weighing 12.52 pounds worth $1,000.

The 2018 and 2019 WN Hawg Fights BTS Angler(s) of the Year, brothers Ben Suit and Zach Suit, both of New Iberia, finished third with five bass weighing 12.35 pounds for $50. Their limit was anchored by a 3.90-pound bass.

Big bass of the day honors went to the team of St. Mary Parish angler Jerry Marcotte and Johnny Hester of Lafayette, who brought a 4.36-pounder to the scale manned by weighmaster Mike O’Brien of New Iberia. They had some bad luck with a fish’s health but still were able to weigh four bass for 11.72 pounds, good enough for fourth place and $350.

Fifth place and $200 went to O’Brien and Gregory Bourque of St. Martinville, whose five bass weighed 10.97 pounds.

The sixth and last payout spot was grabbed by brothers Cody Bourque and Gordy Bourque. The St. Martin Parish bass anglers had five bass that tipped the scale at 10.66 pounds worth $100.

Delahoussaye put down his sac-a-lait fishing rod, which has been busy putting slabs in the boat since the Atchafalaya River fell to a fishable level in early August, long enough to prefish five days, four of them in the Atchafalaya Basin, for the Classic.

“Danny went Sunday. I went four days. I didn’t fish sac-a-lait. I just fished bass. I eliminated a lot of places,” he said.

Grevemberg wasn’t eliminated. On Tuesday, he found a concentration of bass and caught, among them, a 4-, a 3- and two 2 ½-pounders on one of his oldies but goldies, a Yellow Magic, a topwater popper.

That it was a considerable haul by boat from Franklin to Grevemberg didn’t deter Bulliard, he said.

“Danny says, ‘No problem, we’ll make the run,’ ” he said.

The last time they made a comparable run in a Hawg Fight Classic a few years ago they finished second after going from Myette Point to a hotspot in Lake Dauterive-Fausse Pointe. They realized it was a gamble.

“I mean, you know, that year we had 16 pounds, something like that, and didn’t win. We win it (last weekend’s Classic) with, what, 13 pounds? Fishermen know sometimes it’s going to take a lot of weight, sometimes it doesn’t,” Delahoussaye said.

The longtime friends started working on their winning limit after arriving in Grevemberg about 7:30 a.m., he said. They caught four good-sized bass on Yellow Magics. Then they couldn’t buy a bite on the topwater.

The winners switched to black/blue and red shad plastic worms, 7 ½-inch Zoom and Culprit models.

“As soon as we went to a worm, it was every other cast, a big bream or a bass,” Bulliard said.

“Early in the morning, I lost two g-o-o-d fish that could have added 2 pounds to our total. I had them on for a while,” Delahoussaye said, noting the missed bass probably were a blessing in disguise because he changed his small worm hook to a 4/0.

“Danny caught most of the bigger ones. He fished well,” Delahoussaye said.

Bass bit “pretty good” until the late mid-morning hours. They left to check another spot, then returned, found a shady spot and ate lunch, Bulliard said.

When they resumed fishing, he said, “They started biting again.”

They had plenty of keeper bass, most of them the same size, to choose from, Delahoussaye said.

“Danny told me when he culled, we must have had 11 pounds that we threw back,” he said.

After talking about the winning effort, he tipped his cap to the board members on the WN Hawg Fights BTS, led by director Mike Sinitiere.

“I thank Blue (Mike O’Brien), Shoop (Jacob Shoopman) and Gregory (Gregory Bourque). They kept it going and did a real good job. I hope they keep it going,” Delahoussaye said.