August reels in an 8-lb. bass in the Basin

“You know, it’s gratifying bcause I use my own baits. It’s the hours I put into making and testing them. That’s the reward,” August said as he pointed at photos of the 7-pound, 15-ounce bass on the screen of his cell phone around midday Saturday.

Don’t get him wrong. August, 64, was excited about catching a bass that size in the nation’s last great overflow swamp. There aren’t too many 7- and 8-pounders that come out of the west side of the Atchafalaya River.

But this one did on a day before the heavy rains came. August and Rochon caught a dozen bass, including that big’un, weighing more than 3 pounds.

August said he cast his “minnow”-colored crank bait and retrieved it around a tree when the big bass hit. He was using 15-pound test line loaded on a Shimano Core fishing reel seated on a 61⁄2-foot long Falcon Lowrider fishing rod.

“When it hit, we knew it was a big fish. At first we thought it was a choupique but it wasn’t fighting rite (like a choupique). It didn’t go into the mud,” August said. “Then we realized it was a big bass. After a while, it tired out.”

But without a net, Rochon had to overcome a “panicky” period when he tried to grab and lift it into August’s 17-foot aluminum boat.

“I told him to lip the fish and put it in the boat,” August said.

He reluctantly kept it to mount it, he said.

August, a widower, works offshore in the oilfield as a self-employed welder. Many of his jobs come with Offshore Energy Services Inc., Broussard, he said.

The U.S. Army veteran is no stranger to big bass. He caught a 7-pounder in Lake Dauterive-Fausse Pointe in the mid-1980s and an 8-pound bass in 2007 while fishing a Quad State Bass Club tournament at Lake Ray Hubbard in Dallas.

August also hooked and landed a 63⁄4-pound bass once in the Spillway.

His homemade artificial crank baits and spinnerbaits are coveted by the members in the huge bass club, which fishes tournaments in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. He joined it several years ago when Larry Dennis of St. Louis, formerly of Jeanerette, asked him several years ago to fish a tournament with him out of Doiron’s Landing, Stephensville.

They finished second in April in a tournament on the Red River.

“Man, I’ve got people in the club who want to get that bait from me. As long as I’m fishing competitively, I won’t put it on the market,” he said.

August said he got into bass fishing soon after he got out of the service in 1970. He quit for a five-year period before resuming again three years ago, he said.

Now he has another trophy.

“I didn’t think they had fish like that in the Basin. That fishing day was a dream day,” he said. 

“I had reservations about putting the fish back. It’d just go right back to the nest and somebody else would catch it. I usually don’t keep them, especially that big.