RIDGEWOOD, Mo. — After rolling with the punches all week, Caleb Sumrall finally threw one.

Sumrall, smiling proudly, reared back and pumped a clenched fist into the air here on a cold Friday afternoon when the weight of his five bass on the electronic scale was called out on the second day of the three-day Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Opens Championship on Table Rock Lake in Missouri.

The New Iberia outdoorsman’s 12 pounds, 3 ounces, catapulted him into the lead of the tournament and closer to his dream of making a repeat appearance in the Bassmaster Classic, which will be held next spring in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Sumrall, 30, had 27 pounds, 4 ounces, going into Saturday’s third and final round of the tournament. He and the rest of the Top 12 – pared from the 28-angler field – started fishing at 7:15 a.m. Saturday from Long Creek Marina.

The Saturday weigh-in was scheduled to be held at 4:30 p.m. at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World in Springfield.

After two days, Sumrall was being chased by Jarred Lintner of Arroyo Grande, California, who had 26 pounds, 1 ounces; Justin Atkins of Florence, Alabama, with 24 pounds, 6 ounces; Brandon Lester, 23 pounds, 3 ounces, and Tyler Rivet, 22 pounds, 13 ounces.

Sumrall began this past week very ill because of changing weather conditions, he said Thursday. He visited an after-hours health clinic and felt well enough to fish the next day.

That Tuesday practice trip was cut short by a blown powerhead on the outboard motor of the Phoenix B.A.S.S. Nation Champion boat he earned for the year by winning the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship in October 2017 on Lake Hartwell in South Carolina. He immediately took it to a repair shop and it was ready to go Wednesday.

On Thursday, however, the first day of the Opens Championship, the outboard motor blew again a few minutes after takeoff. Sumrall was towed back to the marina, where he switched boats and, despite the time missed, boated enough bass (15 pounds, 1 ounces) to find himself in second place going into Friday.

Sumrall, rising to the occasion in a steady rain with temperatures in the middle 40s, fished in another borrowed boat Friday, a boat stripped of all marine electronics except a depth-finder. He turned that handicap into a positive as he relied on his vision to discern a successful pattern on the lake in the scenic Ozarks of Missouri.

“Fishing without the electronics makes me think how many times we overthink, overanalyze the simple basics of finding fish,” the Bassmaster Elite Series rookie said. “Honestly, with fishfinders I would probably be more distracted, not so dedicated to finding these key areas that are visible above water.”

The Teche Area native who grew up catching bass in Lake Dauterive-Fausse Pointe and the Atchafalaya Basin, said he was looking for the right combination of trees, rock and depth that serve as rest stops and ambush points for bass migrating from deeper areas of the lake to shallower creeks to gorge on baitfish.

That’s what he did Friday. At 10:59 a.m., with two bass in the livewell, a field report noted that he was running and gunning from pocket to pocket along the shoreline, searching for the combination that would give up bass to his offerings.

“It’s likely I wouldn’t have found that combination if not forced to visually search while I fished,” Sumrall told bassmaster.com after Friday’s chilly weigh-in. 

“I’m literally going in and out of creeks, reading the water as I go, fishing with my eyes.”

He respectfully declined on stage to identify the artificial lure(s) responsible for getting those bass to bite.