GREENVILLE, S.C. — New Iberian Caleb Sumrall entered the Bon Secour Wellness Arena in downtown Greenville smiling and pointing an index finger at the large crowd that included family and friends there to watch him compete Friday on Lake Hartwell in the Bassmaster Classic.

Sumrall, after a full day of fishing, didn’t disappoint as he weighed a five-bass limit at 12 pounds, 11 ounces on the first day of the Super Bowl of bass fishing, his first-ever appearance in the Classic after qualifying by winning the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship on the same lake in October. On the weigh-in stage, Sumrall told emcee Dave Mercer the sprawling South Carolina lake is on an opposite spectrum of what he’s accustomed to fishing.

The 30-year-old New Iberia bass angler, though, said he stuck to his primary game plan and overcame some early misses on big bass to get his limit. 

Sumrall, riding boat No. 13, the B.A.S.S. Nation’s Best Phoenix powered by a Mercury outboard motor, was the 17th Classic angler in the 52-angler field to weigh his bass caught on Lake Hartwell. He missed two sizeable bass early, he said, but rebounded strong.

Basstrakk, seen on bassmaster.com, showed him with three keeper bass for an estimated 6 pounds, 3 ounces, before 11 a.m. CST. He was stuck on that number of fish in the livewell for a while before he got his fourth bass to bump him to an estimated 7 pounds, 8 ounces.

Then, around midday, 12:22 CST to be exact, he boated a bass weighing nearly 4 pounds to give him his five-fish limit.

“I’m ready to get out there,” Sumrall, anxious to get back on the lake for the second day today of the three-day tournament, told Mercer.

Minutes earlier, the New Iberia bass angler who cut his competitive bass fishing teeth fishing at Lake Fausse Pointe and the Atchafalaya Basin, saluted the large contingent of relatives and friends in the crowd. He said hello to “my little girl, Clelie. How are you doing, baby?”

Sumrall was in 30th place after the first day of fishing. He will be trying to make the Top 25 cut today in South Carolina.

The New Iberian and the rest of the field are chasing Oklahoma angler Jason Christie, who leads the way, with Edwin Evers, a fellow Okie and Christie’s roommate on the Bassmaster Elite Series, sitting close behind in second.

Christie said a change in strategy near midday of opening day helped him to his tournament-best weight of 20 pounds, 14 ounces.

“I’ve got two little deals going, and I did the first little deal for the first three or four hours,” said Christie, who claimed the GEICO Everyday Leader Award of $2,500. “But then it just kind of ran out.

 “I changed it up and actually caught a 5-pounder — and that gave me a clue. So, I just ran with it and ended up culling everything I had.”

 Christie said he caught fish all day, but patience was required for finding the type of big fish that helps an angler win the Classic.

“They’re all on the same kind of stuff, but you just don’t know where the big ones are going to come from,” he said. “You’ll catch a 2-pounder, a 2-pounder and then finally a 5-pounder.”

Evers, who brought in 19-9 Friday, got off to a fast start with a good early-morning bite that he said might have been due to bass feeding on blueback herring.

 “I honestly don’t know what they were doing,” he said. “I got really lucky and found a place that had a bunch of fish in it. It was an early-morning deal. I caught them every cast.”

Like Christie, Evers caught his biggest fish — two largemouth that each weighed 4-10 — in the afternoon hours.

With two days left to fish on Hartwell, there are several other anglers who are within excellent striking distance of the $300,000 first-place prize, including reigning Classic champion Jordan Lee of Alabama.

Lee, who raised the Classic trophy last year on Lake Conroe in Texas after struggling the first day, had a solid opening round on Hartwell, bringing in five bass that weighed 18-10.

“It was fun to come out and have a good start for a change, especially when you consider that I wasn’t really on anything in practice,” Lee said. “I fished a lot of boat docks today, and that’s what I really like to do. I didn’t get many bites, but I caught a few big ones.”

California angler Brent Ehrler is in fourth with 17-8, followed by Tennessee’s Ott DeFoe (16-8) and yet another Oklahoma pro, James Elam (16-7).

Alabama angler Mark Daniels Jr. took the lead in the race for Berkley Big Bass with a largemouth that weighed 6-11.

Lake Hartwell produced excellent numbers of fish, with only one of the 52 anglers in the field failing to land a five-bass limit. Only four anglers finished below the 10-pound mark, and it took 13-9 to get into 25th place.