The director of one of the oldest, most successful outdoors-related fundraisers for charities spent the past month or so looking for and avoiding conflicts.

Tee Roy Savoy is pretty sure he found the best date for the 2025 Jackie Savoy Memorial Big Bass Classic. The Coteau Holmes outdoorsman who loves to hunt deer and catch bass, as well as pull crawfish out of commercial ponds and the Atchafalaya Basin, picked March 29 for the next Jackie Savoy Memorial Big Bass Classic out of Marsh Field Landing at Lake Fausse Pointe.

Savoy dodged local bass tournaments scheduled for this year by two large, active bass clubs, the New Iberia-based Louisiana Bass Cats and the Franklin-based Louisiana Bass Anglers. He made sure to miss both Oilmans, Texas and Louisiana, bass tournaments at Toledo Bend and also avoided conflicts with major festivals around Acadiana, particularly across the Teche Area.

“It looks like I miss everybody,” he said with a chuckle around mid-day Monday. “Sponsor letters will be going out probably next week.”

So it’s on and no one is more excited than Savoy, who took over for the Big Bass Classic’s founder, the late Elvis Jeanminette, in 2014. He’s looking forward to the challenge of raising money for charities, mainly the Lydia Cancer Association.

“Fired up? Oh, yeah, like I said, it gets easier and easier to put on. That’s why we added a cookoff. It’s just the tournament runs itself, so we added the cookoff,” he said.

As for the bass tournament side, he said, “Well, I’m hoping it’s a good turnout. Anything over 50 boats is great.”

He has noticed that more and more bass anglers who never or hardly fish other organized bass tournaments have been showing up to fish the BBC at Lake Fausse Pointe. He welcomes anybody and everybody to participate.

Savoy, 58-year-old owner of Cayenne Building Services, which constructs metal buildings and awnings, and a racehorse owner who enjoyed a good run with them last year at Evangeline Downs, Delta Downs and the Fairgrounds, said he’ll likely keep the cookoff that he started two years ago to make food available for fishermen and BBC guests alike in the big parking lot at Marsh Field Landing.

The cookoff grew from its first year to the next, he said.

“We’ll probably do the cookoff again. It got a little bigger last year. The first year we had, like, five (teams). Last year it was nine or 10,” he said.

Last year’s fundraiser took in approximately $9,000. Savoy donated $5,000 (from raffles and tournament fees) to the Lydia Cancer Association and also adopted two families recommended by LCA. The accomplished chef prepared and catered recent holiday meals for them as they cope with cancer in the family and also gave $250 to one single mother for Christmas with the stipulation it wasn’t to pay bills but to make memories for her son.

That’s what it’s all about.

“That just feels good when you can do that for people. It’s good for the heart. We’re going to keep doing it as long as people are interested,” Savoy said about the fundraiser he named after his wife, the late Jackie Savoy.

The Jackie Savoy Memorial Big Bass Classic sports a bass tournament format unique to this region. Modeled after the highly successful and lucrative Sealy Outdoors Big Bass Splash tournaments at Lake Sam Rayburn, Toledo Bend, Lake Fork in Texas and Lake Guntersville in Alabama, the local version pays the top three biggest bass for each hour in the eight-hour tournament – $250 for first, $150 for second and $100 for third (each based on a 40-boat field).

Two years ago Savoy said he added an optional “big bass stringer” to appeal to the area’s many competitive bass anglers who fish tournaments big and small. The five-bass limit is the standard almost everywhere.

Jeremy Moore and Royd Picard, both of Broussard, won the big bass stringer last year to top the 35-boat field that paid $150 per boat on April 27. Their limit weighed 10.06 pounds worth $850. They also had second-place bass in three of the first four hours for another $375.

The 2024 big bass winner was Ry Savoy of Coteau Holmes, who weighed in a 4.26-pound bass the fifth hour to win bragging rights and $215 in the tournament named after his mother, Jackie Savoy, who lost her long battle against cancer Feb. 1, 2021, at age 52.

Other hourly winners in 2024 were Scott Segura (2.42 pounds in the first hour); Don Shoopman (3.72 pounds in the second hour); Travis Meche Jr. (2.04 pounds in the third hour and 2.92 pounds in the fourth hour); Savoy in the fifth hour; Jacob Shoopman (3.86 pounds in the sixth hour); Tyler Bushnelle (3.18 pounds in the seventh hour), and Braxton Resweber (3.12 pounds in the eighth and final hour).

The big bass stringer was added to the tournament as an option two years ago. It was part of the event in 2024.

Entry fee is $150 per boat. For more information call Savoy at (337) 519-3107.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.