LAFAYETTE – Young Bennet Billeaud of Lafayette, who reeled a blue marlin to the boat for the first time earlier this summer while sitting in a fighting chair, caught his second blue marlin a little more than month later the old-fashioned way, with standup tackle.

Bennet, 13, was fishing Aug. 10 aboard the family’s 31-foot long Contender skippered by his father, Stuart Billeaud, a 43-year-old general contractor for J.B. Mouton LLC. Bennet is an eighth-grader who plays football and tennis at Our Lady of Fatima. They were on a one-day trip with a mission that took them 125 miles south of the eastern tip of Marsh Island. It was a blue marlin quest.

“We were kind of stretching it out. Left Cypremort Point about 4 a.m. and got out there about 8:30,” Stuart said, noting the first 60 miles in the predawn darkness were brutal in rough seas but the blue Gulf waters smoothed out the farther south they traveled.

It was a drenching experience, Bennet said.

“It was so rough on the way out there. I wasn’t on the beanbag any more, it was on top of me” in an effort to keep himself dry as waves crashed inside the boat, the teen said.

Also on board that day were two of his dad’s fishing buddies, Jean Pitre of Lafayette and Michael Freeman of Lafayette, formerly of New Iberia.

“We had an excellent crew. We set out to go catch one sportfish in one day out of Cypremort Point … we did it. We had a blast and had fun. We’ll probably do it again next August. Try,” Stuart said.

Bennet’s father, whose wife, Keisha Romero Billeaud, a Coteau native, often fishes aboard the big boat, was impressed that their son fought the blue marlin standing up.

“Sure. Very proud. He hooked one last year and it got away, so he had a whole another year to get excited to catch another one, finish it off,” the elder Billeaud said.

The 31-foot long Contender glided into their first fishin’ hole, Green Canyon 52, around mid-morning and began pulling baits. The skipper continued trolling to the Joliet Rig at GC 184, a floating rig (first-ever tension leg platform) in 1,500-foot depths installed in 1989.

Stuart had five poles out. The rod tip on one fishing rod with a greenish Kona Ahi trolling lure behind a flash metal Jet Lure head jerked hard when a blue marlin slammed into it in the wake of the Contender.

The crew faced a challenge immediately. The fishing rod was stuck in a rod holder connected to the T Top, 7 feet higher than the deck.

“All three of us were grabbing the pole trying to take it out,” Stuart said.

Without losing the rod to the runaway billfish, they managed to unseat it from the rod holder. However, by that time the blue marlin had nearly spooled the Shimano 50 Wide reel loaded with 60-pound test line and a 400-pound test leader approximately 20 feet long.

“We could see the gold” of the baitcasting reel’s spool,” Stuart said.

They got some of the line back before the fight began between the monster of the deep and Bennet, who’s also an avid skeet shooter. The 240-pound blue marlin won the early rounds of the 20- to 25-minute fight against the 130-pound eighth-grade student who plays defensive tackle this season for Our Lady of Fatima.

Bennet was feeling it as he stood, barefoot, bent and stooped while straining against the weight of the fish.

“It was tough, a lot harder than in a chair. After 10 minutes my legs felt like they were going to fall off they were burning so much,” he said, admitting soon his arms felt the same way. “After 20 minutes my arms kind of went numb and didn’t hurt as bad.”

Bennet scored the knockout and got it to the boat, where the crew pulled it in through a door in the stern rather than releasing it. Its head was bleeding from the hook and its tail was damaged at the point where line wrapped around it, Bennet’s father explained, which is why they decided against releasing it.

“I was pretty excited when I got it in the boat,” Bennet said.

That he stood on his own two feet for the battle was the coup de grace.

Bennet’s practice routine over the past few years paid off the first week of July when he caught his first-ever blue marlin, a 300-pound class fish, while fishing aboard local skipper Lee LeBlanc’s offshore boat, Houdini. For his initiation into the blue marlin club, Stuart got tossed in the drink off the front deck by crew members before the beautiful big boat docked.

However, Bennet was in a fighting chair for that memorable period of bliss over the Fourth of July holidays.

Practice routine? Yes. Bennet practiced for a few years in a fighting chair affixed to the porch of the family’s camp at Cypremort Point. He’d get in, strap down, then use a fishing rod to crank in a sled 100 yards away and loaded with weights.

“I’ve been practicing for a couple summers in the chair,” he said.

His father said the fighting chair was passed down to them by the Richardsons, who fish on the 58-foot long Jarret Bay, Whoo Dat. Kaleb Richardson, an accomplished billfish fisherman, practiced in it when he was a kid, before traversing the oceans catching marlin and bluefin tuna, including an 835-pound monster from the chair at age 14, in April 2017 in the Green Canyon area.

That fighting chair has seen its glorious moments. And Bennet had his once with one and again without one.