John K. Flores: Stiff competition, big payouts at fishing rodeo

By the time the 2 p.m. weigh-in came around for the 13th Annual Morgan City Open Fishing Rodeo, the temperature outside of the Morgan City Municipal Auditorium had reached 89 degrees last Saturday. The only thing that was hotter was the free-to-the-public boiled shrimp inside and the competition for prize money, particularly in the Bass and Redfish categories.
Clinton “Red” Singleton drove up to the scales feeling good about the five largemouth bass he would weigh in. He and his teammate, Jody Howard, had fished hard all morning.
Singleton said, “We just tried to stay consistent, you know, we just worked one area real hard using mostly Senko baits.”
The two anglers fished the Turtle Bayou area below the Intracoastal hoping to hook enough fish to make a good showing.
Howard said, “We just kept going back and forth, where we’d catch one every now and then and then you’d get a big one. We lost three big ones though.”
Singleton and Howard weighed in a total of 14.15 pounds, taking over the lead from Kevin Hebert who caught 12.20 pounds of fish.
Singleton and Howard’s lead didn’t last long. Minutes later, the Tracy Alcina and Casey St. Romain team weighed in 14.36 pounds of bass. Less than one quarter of a pound separated the first and second place teams.
In the end, Alcina and St. Romain’s .21-pound lead held, and the two tournament bass fishermen took home a check for $482 in prize money.
Third place went to Hebert, who weighed in 12.20 pounds. His 3.55-pound bass was good enough to win “big bass” during the event.
Some huge catfish were weighed in during this year’s rodeo. Last year’s catfish category was won by Red Griffin from Junction, Texas. This year Griffin fished with Nick and Darlene Carter. The team weighed in a huge blue catfish that weighed 42.67 pounds.
Griffin was quick to point out that Darlene Carter caught the big catfish to which Carter excitedly mentioned, “It was a fighter!”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to win the category. First place went to the Brian Lacoste team, who weighed in another huge blue catfish that tipped the scale at 49.60 pounds, besting the Griffin team’s catfish by nearly 7 pounds. Jacob Aucoin weighed a 37.78-pound blue cat that was good enough for third place.
In describing the first place catch, Lacoste’s teammate, Horace Tucker, who actually caught the catfish, said, “We were just fishing and all of a sudden the drag on the reel went off and started clicking. It was just — like a team effort. It took us a little while to get it into the boat, but everybody worked together reeling in all the lines and getting everything out of the way so we could get it into the boat.”
Tucker mentioned they caught the big catfish in 30 feet of water along Bayou Chene and were using live mullets for bait.
First through third payouts for the catfish category were $504, $432 and $288, respectively.
Lacoste’s team also won the “trash fish” category when the anglers weighed in a huge 54.10-pound gar fish. The gar fish added another $200 in prize money to the team’s earnings.
In the redfish category, the top three places were separated by just over a pound. Third place finisher Bubba Corbin, after a tough morning on the water, was happy with his 23.70-pound three fish catch.
Corbin said, “The fishing was really good early when the wind was down. We were sight fishing from a tower. Unfortunately, when the wind starts picking up, the redfish like to go sit on the bottom. So, it’s a little harder to catch them, compared to guys fishing with a shrimp and a cork, but for the most part we did well. We caught about 10 to 12 fish today and I’m not upset about catching right at 24 pounds. I’m pretty happy with that.”
The Joshua Viet Vu team finished second in the redfish category with 23.85 pounds, just .15 ounces ahead of Corbin’s team. First place went to the Trae Falcon team who weighed in 24.72 pounds of redfish.
There were 43 entries in the popular redfish category that paid out five places. The first through fifth redfish payouts were $1,219, $1,016, $813, $610 and $406, respectively. Falcon also took home “big” redfish earning him another $452 in prize money.
In the speckled trout category, Sam Cannata weighed a 2.04-pound trout that won big speck. Cannata’s big fish and four others he weighed in was good enough for a third-place finish in the category.
Clint Colgin weighed in 6.24 pounds of speckled trout taking second place and Ricky Parvino weighed in 7.80 pounds to win first place.
First through third speckled trout payouts were $520, $312 and $208. Big speck was worth $116 in additional prize money.
MCOFR paid out $9,098 in prize money to winning anglers this year.
Through 2024, the MCOFR has donated more than $230,000 to South Louisiana Community College (Young Memorial Campus), and Nicholls State University to support higher education and other charitable causes locally. This year’s title sponsors were New Industries LLC, and Tanks-A-Lot. Organizers would like to thank all its sponsors along with volunteers that continue to make the event successful annually.
John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflo@cox.net.