MYETTE POINT — When Daniel Bryant and Hunter Thibodeaux culled a 2.18-pound bass in the last hour or so of a fundraising bass tournament July 10, the fate was sealed for the rest of the 24-boat field. Everybody else was fishing for second place.

Bryant, of Lafayette, and Thibodeaux, of Sunset, had four 3-pound class bass and the 2-pound class fish in the livewell after catching at least three five-bass limits. Bryant’s 3 pound, 15 ounce bass he caught 10 minutes after making their final move gave them a winning weight of 15.97 pounds worth and first place worth $1,000.

“I told Hunter, ‘If we get rid of this one, we have a shot.’ I know his scale weighs light. We went back to where we started. I had the 3-15 in 10 minutes,” Bryant said after the weigh-in at Myette Point Boat Landing in the Atchafalaya Basin.

The Atchafalaya River was on a steady rise but that didn’t prevent the winners or the runners-up and third-place finishers from bringing impressive bags to the digital scale on a hot summer day.

The tournament with a $100 entry fee per boat was scheduled to raise money for Hunter Neuville of Loreauville and Avery Derouen of New Iberia. The Highland Baptist Christian School Fishing Team members, who graduated in May, qualified to fish the 2021 Mossy Oak Fishing Bassmaster High School National Championship scheduled July 29-31 at Chickamauga Lake near Dayton, Tennessee.

Bubbie Lopez of Centerville, who helped Neuville plan the tournament, said $700 was raised to help the team and their respective families defray expenses for the trip to Tennessee. More money was pledged by other bass anglers across Acadiana, Lopez said, that would raise the total.

The Neuvilles and Derouens have set a July 25 date to head to Tennessee.

“We try to fish every tournament we can when it’s for a good cause like that, to help the younger ones out. We fished the one for Braxton (Braxton Resweber),” Bryant said, noting the fundraiser held Oct. 18, 2020, for Resweber, a St. Martinville bass angler, who fished the 2020 Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Championship in October 2020.

Lopez was eager to help the recent high school graduates. He was pleased with the results.

“It turned out pretty good. I figured we’d get 20-25 (boats) between the water rising and a Fishers of Men (tournament out of Doiron’s Landing, Stephensville). That’s what I was hoping for at least … make a little money for those boys,” the veteran bass angler said. “I wish we had more time to get together and get door prizes and everything.

Lopez was surprised by the winning weight and that the winners were pushed so hard.

“Oh, yeah, I was very surprised. I wasn’t expecting weight like that with the upcoming water but somebody always gets on them somewhere,” he said, noting he thought perhaps 10 or 12 pounds would take it, at the most 13.

“I just wish the water wouldn’t have been coming up like it was,” he said.

Kevin Hebert and Adam Marceaux finished second with 15.29 pounds and won $400. Ryan Latch and Blake Landreneau were third with 14.94 pounds for $300, plus boasted the tournament’s biggest bass at 4.30 pounds for $240.

With the river going up to 11.0 feet at Butte La Rose after it had dropped below 10.0 feet within the previous week, Bryant and Thibodeaux relied on history.

“It was a pretty good tournament for not being able to go prefishing. We really kind of went off the past and it worked. Whenever the river gets up like that there are a lot of community holes where the water flows back in the woods,” he said, adding gamefish follow the water.

“We found this area three, four years ago. It’s not heavily pressured” and has the potential to give up 4-pound class bass, he said.

“We only caught fish in a 100-yard stretch. It’s the only place the fish were at. We stayed there all day long.”

The only hint he gave about the location was that it was south of Myette Point.

Their first stop, however, gave them three keepers and three non-keepers from 8-8:15 a.m. They were stuck on three until they left and moved to their hotspot in Thibodeaux’s Skeeter FX21 powered by a 250-h.p. Yamaha Sho.

The bass were biting the black/red and june bug Zoom Brush Hogs and black/red blue Jaboom Baits Beaver Ballz. They put two keepers in the boat to fill their first limit before 10 a.m. and the bite got even better and better during that feeding frenz yBryant lost what he believes may have been a 5-pounder that wrapped around a log.

“It was one after another for a little while. Hunter got the 3.77. Then it stopped. The fish had repositioned a little farther out and the better fish were farther out, Bryan said.

By 1 p.m., the bite faded. That’s when Bryant, the owner of DB Finishing, a cabinet furnishing business, and Thibodeaux, parts manager at Mercedes Benz of Lafayette, decided to return to their first spot hopeful of culling that 2.18-pounder.

Hunter Neuville’s parents, Tony and Donna Neuville, and Avery Derouen’s parents, Ronnie and Stephanie Derouen, watched Bryant and Thibodeaux and the other bass anglers weigh in under a tent they set up at Myette Point Boat Landing. They also brought an ice chest full of water and soft drinks for all, available in the heat of midafternoon after a long day on the water.