Special fishin’ hole adds another memory as Sumrall, son, notch win

Published 5:00 am Sunday, August 7, 2022

COTEAU HOLMES – A fishin’ hole so special to a local Bassmaster Elite Series became extra meaningful Wednesday.

Caleb Sumrall of New Iberia fished his first bass tournament a little more than a decade ago in the Atchafalaya Basin’s Ruiz Canal. He took his 4-year-old son, Axel, there this past week and won the 10th Wednesday Night Hawg Fights Bass Tournament Series of 2022.

Sumrall, 35, had no plans to fish the tournament until he got a text message about it from Devin Verret of Loreauville, an up-and-coming young bass angler.

“It was about an hour before the time to go over there,” Sumrall said. “I said, ‘Axel, do you want to go fish?’ He was all excited about it.”

He quickly got his Xpress X21 Pro aluminum bass boat ready and gathered a few fishing rods, then drove to Bayou Benoit Boat Landing.

His son’s second-ever tournament experience was one to remember. They left the ramp with the other 20 boats at 5:20 p.m. and returned with three bass weighing an unbeatable 7.84 pounds for first place and $473, plus $105 for the tournament’s biggest bass, a 4.10-pounder, for a total of nearly $600.

Sumrall’s last fishing trip in the Atchafalaya Basin was before he traveled for the Elite tournament in mid-July at the St. Lawrence River in Clayton, New York. And he fished for sac-a-lait only that day.

So all he could go on was history and experience.

“I looked at the level (Atchafalaya River stage at Butte La Rose). It was at 4 something. I went to a spot that “Uncle” Jimmy (the late Jimmy Gaspard) used to take me,” he said, noting Gaspard was his mentor and “nanny.” “For my first bass tournament, I don’t know how long ago, 10-12 years ago, the Mike Zaunbrecher Memorial Tournament, that’s where he took me, Ruiz Canal.”

The canal that winds from the West Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee to the G.A. Cut hasn’t changed much, if at all, according to Sumrall.

“I expected it to be silted in. It looked to be exactly the same,” he said.

And within 10 minutes of starting there he found out it still harbors bass.

“The first one I catch is the 4. He (Axel) started whoopin’ and hollerin’. He was excited,” he said.

It was around a laydown in less than 1 foot of water.

That bass and others in there bit on his favorite soft plastic to flip, a Missile Baits D Bomb. Other bass he caught were much smaller.

“I caught a bunch of pound-and-a-halfers. With about an hour left to go, I went to the main stretch of Bayou Benoit. I caught five bass on a 3/8-ounce Kajun Boss spinnerbait with a silver Colorado and gold willowleaf,” he said.

Those fish all were about the same size as the other 1 ½-pounders until a 2 ¼-pounder bit at 8:04 p.m., minutes before the check-in time for weigh-in at 8:15 p.m. It culled one of the four “pound-and-a-halfers.”

While he caught an estimated 10-12 keeper-sized bass, Axel was unable to latch onto one.

“They were pretty tight to cover, so it was tough for him. I let him reel in a couple,” he said.

Axel, a pre-kindergartner at Ms. Laurie’s Learning Center, enjoyed his first-ever tournament when he and his dad fished the third WN Hawg Fights BTS tournament April 20 at Lake Fausse Pointe. They finished ninth in a 35-boat field.

The second try was a charm.

“Ah, he wanted to call his mama as soon as he could,” Sumrall said, adding they had to wait for cell service on the way home.

With a wry chuckle, the three-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier said, “He was telling everybody he won ‘60,000 dollars!’ ”

The 2017 B.A.S.S. Nation National Championship winner relished the win with his son. And it felt good to fish a tournament at home, he said.

“It’s always good to come home and fish against people you grew up fishing against. It’s always nice to get back to your roots. It keeps the fire lit,” he said.

Sumrall thanked Verret, who fished the 10th event of the season with Dylan Kelly and finished second with three bass weighing 7.09 pounds worth $284.

“Without him, I wouldn’t even know there was a team tournament,” he said.

St. Martinville bass fishing veterans and long-time tournament partners Carroll Delahoussaye and Danny Bulliard were third with three bass weighing 6.83 pounds for $189.

Sumrall won’t be back in the nation’s last great overflow swamp this month. He’s leaving Tuesday for the next Elite tournament scheduled for Aug. 18-21 at Lake Oahe in Mobridge, South Dakota, then heads east for the regular-season finale Aug. 26-29 on the Mississippi River at La Crosse, Wisconsin.