Team puts together 32.49-pound total to win $10,000 first-place prize.
Mark Comeaux and Mike Lee seemed to be way out of the running for the top prize of the Louisiana Sportsman Open bass tournament, which wrapped up today in conjunction with the Louisiana Sportsmen’s Show.
But when the scales settled, the team had weighed in 32.39 pounds and pocketed a cool $10,000 check in return for two hard days of fishing in the Atchafalaya Basin.
Second placed when to Todd and Wayne Murray, who won $2,300 for their 29.12-pound total. Kirk Allain and Blake Sylvester wrapped up in third with 28.82 to win $1,280.
The rest of the top 20 teams, which fished the final day of the inaugural Louisiana Sportsman Open, were:
• Owen Plaisance/Gerral LeBlanc – 28.67, $1,100
• Joe Rials/Buck Crowson – 27.95, $1,020
• Marc Lowenthal/Ken Sherman – 27.73, $930
• Jacob Liner/Adam Marceaux – 27.47, $890
• Billy Billeud/Jerremy Guidry – 27.40, $850
• Kyle Bourgeois/Douglas McClung – 27.26, $810
• Donnie Hopkins/Moonie Bergeron – 26.45, $770
• Chris Babin/Jamie Smith – 25.64, $730
• Tate Molea/S.J. Laiche – 25.42, $700
• Jeffrey Carmouche/Devin Landry – 25.39, $670
• Ivy and Casey St. Romain – 25.28, $640
• Vernon Silver/John Burns – 25.02, $610
• Frank Ducote, Glynn Scalise – 24.39, $580
• George Shaheen Jr./Raymond Loupe – 23.74, $560
• Raymond Louque/Anthony Bonadona – 22.63, $540
• Corey Bell/Russell Broussard – 19.36 ,$520
• Lee Hillman/James Parker III – 18.83, $500
Lowenthal and Sherman also collected $620 for first-day big bass, while Shaheen and Loupe collected an additional $270 for the second-place big bass on Day 1.
Allain and Sylvester pocketed the $620 big-bass check for the second day, while Comeaux and Lee earned the second-place $270 check.
Comeaux credited the win to “perseverance and a lot of good fortune.”
“When we got to our one primary spot this morning, it had changed,” he said. “The water had an oily sheen on it.”
After a short, unproductive stay there, the anglers headed to a second mid-Basin area and continued the struggle to put fish in the boat.
“We were fixing to leave and my partner (Lee) caught the biggest fish of the day,” Comeaux said.
They then went on a tear, seining a 100-yard stretch of bank for about 15 keeper bites on the day.
“Periodically over the next 1 1/2 hours we slowly culled up,” Comeaux said. “We just really got lucky and found a school of fish that pushed up and were feeding, and we had the wherewithal to know what was happening.”
The team flipped Reaction Innovations Sweet Beavers in mats of hydrilla to catch their fish, but the stiff wind presented difficulties.
“It’s difficult when (the wind) is pushing the grass that hard you have to fish in the right way to pull (the lure) through that grass,” Comeaux said.
The Louisiana Sportsmen’s Show wrapped up today at 5 p.m.