John K. Flores: La. jug-line event draws anglers from all over

Jeff Hernandez likes to tell a story about a jugline fishing tournament where he won “Big Fish.”
Hernandez, who resides in Grand Chenier with his partner Stacy Hebert, can be described as a cross between a Cajun from Southwest Louisiana and a Sixties hippie. For him it’s about a state of mind living near the Mermentau River in Cameron Parish, where he and Stacy have been hosting the Grand Chenier Jug-Off Catfish Tournament annually for the past three years.
As the story goes, on the last day of the tournament and the last jug he ran, he caught a really big one. Others at the weigh-in got on him in lighthearted banter saying he had that fish the whole time and didn’t tell anyone.
He countered, playing up the moment, insisting he literally caught it on the last jug.
Come to find out, while on the water Hernandez came across another fisherman whose boat broke down and he and his teammate stopped to lend assistance.
Hernandez said, “I told them, ‘You know why I won big fish? Because I took time to help a fellow fisherman.’ I said, ‘The fish gods will always reward you for taking care of another boater!’”
Hernandez says the Grand Chenier Jug Off Catfish Tournament idea came one day when he and Stacy were on the water fishing the Mermentau. The day was beautiful, and the couple were taking it all in.
Hernandez said, “That’s when I turned to Stacy and said, ‘We need to share this with people.’ Stacy took the idea and ran with it. She and her family were amazing and so helpful putting the Jug-Off tournaments together.”
Hernandez, who has always had a camp in Grand Chenier, says three years ago he and Hebert decided to create an RV park, where people could come and spend some time. The couple brought in 40-foot steel shipping containers and together built a welcoming facility, with plenty of space for guests to stretch out in the small, quiet coastal community.
Hebert, who according to Hernandez is very techy, enrolled their RV business online with Harvest Hosts. Harvest Hosts is made up of 9,436 host locations located throughout North America, where varying tiers of RV memberships allow campers to stay one or more nights in a unique, safe, and convenient location for free.
In return, businesses hosting the campers are compensated by purchases be they products like wine, honey, pastries, and other things, or participation in an adventure like donkey rides, skydiving, blueberry picking, and perhaps fishing.
Harvest Hosts encourages members to patronize the small businesses during their stay.
Hernandez says he and Hebert call their business down in Grand Chenier, “Air & Opportunity.” The name was born out of tragedy, when hurricanes Laura and Delta slammed Southwest Louisiana back-to-back on Aug. 27, 2020 and Oct. 9, 2020.
While driving down La. 82 to Grand Chenier with a friend to check on their property, they were overwhelmed by the destruction left by Laura. That’s when Hernandez’s friend, with a tear in his eye, said, “Man! All we got left is air and opportunity.”
Those words struck Hernandez as being one of the most profound things he’d ever heard. So much so, he wrote them down.
“It was brilliant,” Hernandez said. “Here in a time of distress, he’s still looking at it with positivity. We have air and we have opportunity now, so you get to create what you want it to be is the way I took it.”
Three years later the couple built their container get away for RV campers and have not only hosted people from around the United States, but also other countries like Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and Holland.
Hernandez, 54, said, “We’ve met some beautiful people from around the world. We don’t discuss politics. We hang out, we eat, we drink, and it always turns back into a spiritual conversation.”
“Harvest Hosts is an overnight deal,” Hernandez continued, “but, most people come and spend three days to a week — and they return. So, now they’re friends and they’re traveling and telling others about this place.”
Some of those out-of-staters, like Rick and Tamara German from Minnesota, came down for 2025 Grand Chenier Jug-Off Catfish Tournament. The “Team Minnesota Monster Hunters” duo had previously visited Air & Opportunity and like Hernandez said, subsequently became friends. This year the Germans won “Big Catfish” with a 35.5 pound blue catfish caught in the Mermentau.
Hernandez’s teammate Merv Ruggeri, also from Minnesota, flew down just to participate in the Jug-Off tournament. He and Hernandez caught 125 pounds of catfish during two days of tournament action and caught a 31 pound blue catfish that was good enough for third place in the Big Catfish category.
Following the two-day tournament, participants, family, friends, and community members gather on Sunday to clean the catfish, where everybody gets to take home some catfish. This year’s tournament netted 998 pounds of catfish, or nearly a half ton.
Hernandez says he’s not sure if “Air & Opportunity” is hippie stuff, love or kumbaya, but says he’s lived the opposite of that, and it didn’t do him any good.
Hernandez said, “It’s not about the money. It’s not about getting rich anymore. It’s not about this and that.
"It’s about having people come and hang out. And it’s the fish that gets them here.”
John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflo@cox.net.