LOREAUVILLE – If Brad Romero checked the boxes for water conditions May 14 before the fifth Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series of 2025, they all got a failing grade.

“The water was high. The water was muddy everywhere, no matter where you went,” Romero said after teaming with Raven Owens to buck the odds on a swollen and ugly brown Lake Fausse Pointe.

Romero’s assessment of the situation wouldn’t get an argument from anyone in the other 18 boats that left at 5:30 p.m. and returned for “chip on the board”/weigh-in at 8:15 p.m. His Bullet bass boat, however, returned with one of only two three-bass limits in the entire field and they won with a hard-earned total of 4.98 pounds worth $428.

Romero and Owens nearly grabbed the big bass pot of $95, also, but that payout went to the team of Gerard “G.D.” Dupuis and Todd Robertson. Robertson’s 2.97-pounder was the tournament’s lunker bass and also garnered third place for $170.

The runners-up spot went to Jeremy Girouard and Garret Vannoy, whose limit weighed 4.25 pounds for $257.

Ten of the 19 teams managed to bring at least one keeper to the digital scale manned by WN Hawg Fights BTS first-year director Rusty Owens. The lake, heavily stained by runoff from torrential rains and kept high by strong, southerly winds, gave up its bass grudgingly.

Romero had four bites despite the water conditions and capitalized on each of them.

“I ran some stuff that I ran the other day,” he said, noting he caught the team’s biggest bass, a 2.93-pounder, in a borrow pit along the levee, which was “chocolate”-colored front to back.

“(Then) I went try somewhere else. That didn’t work. I went back to an old faithful hole by the landing and that was it.”

He pulled three keepers out of that last spot and culled, he said.

“I pretty much ran water where I found fish scouting and didn’t take a gamble. You only have so much time,” he said.

The bass he caught bit on a soft plastic creature bait, Romero said. There was no set pattern.

Well, one probable key to his success was his high-water approach.

“I guess the pattern was (fishing) as close as you could get to some bank. You had to get some bank, in shallow water. I guess when water gets high like that they push back in the woods. I always look down the line for banks in high water,” he said.

As for his biggest bass, he said, “I must have hit the fish on the head.”

Romero and Owens kicked off the season with a second-place finish in the season opener on March 19 on Lake Fausse Pointe, then fared well in the second contest there two weeks later on April 2. They fared not so well in their next two outings while giving up their lead for Angler(s) of the Year.

Thanks to the W, they’re on top again in AOY.

Romero was pleasantly surprised by the hard-earned win May 14. After all, their roll had slowed.

“At the rate we were going, I’ll put it to you like this … We knew the water was muddy. We found one place with clean water but it was too clean and might have been bad,” he said.

The sixth WN Hawg Fights BTS is scheduled to be held at Lake Martin on May 28.