Just when Caleb Sumrall has a chance to catch the fire out of smallmouth bass for some big bags in a Bassmaster Elite Series tournament this week at Michigan’s Lake St. Clair, there’s a sobering side note:

So does everyone else.

“Oh, yeah, that’s the hard part,” Sumrall said recently.

That’s common knowledge for those going into the seventh tournament of 2023. Sumrall needs strong finishes down the stretch, i.e., chatting on the weigh-in stage with weighmaster Dave Mercer on Championship Sunday, to reach the 2024 Bassmaster Classic. .

As Elite tournament results go, this season has yet to put a smile on his face, despite making the halfway cut for the third time with a 16th-place showing June 1-4 within a few hours from his hometown at the Sabine River. It’s been a trying first half of the season, Sumrall confided. And it’s been anything but fun.

“No. It has not been a fun year,” he said, emphatically. “I’ve been getting my butt kicked. That being said, I don’t take it (his pro bass fishing career) for granted. I enjoy what I do.

“The stress to do good is always high and when you do bad the stress is even higher.”

Going into this week’s tournament, Sumrall is in 75th place with 255 points. Alabama bass fishing veteran Gerald Swindle is 74th with 264 points while Buddy Gross has 254 points in 76th.

Fourth-year Elite angler Kyle Welcher’s 511 points has the Alabama pro at the top of the list in the AOY race.

Sumrall pulled out of town this past weekend to head to Macomb County, Michigan, to arrive in time for practice days on Lake St. Clair before the tournament begins at 6 a.m. out of Brandenburg Park. He will return with the other 101 Elites for the first weigh-in at 2 p.m., rinse and repeat the schedule on Day 2 and, hopefully, make the cut for the Top 50 anglers and fish on Semifinal Saturday. After that?

“I really need to make about three Top 10s to get back in the Classic,” he said, emphasizing that task is doable.

Bassmaster Elite Series officials tout Lake St. Clair as one of the top smallmouth bass destinations in the country. They won’t get an argument from Sumrall.

“It’ll be a fun one, for sure. Any time I get to go catch

The New Iberian was 17th in the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship in 2019 and 68th in the 2020 YETI Bassmaster Elite at Lake St. Clair. He had 59 pounds, 1 ounce, there in 2019.

‘I’ve gone up there and did good in the AOY Championship when they used to have one. It’s a fun fishery,” he said about the lake that covers 430 square miles in the U.S. and Canada. (Eligible waters are the lake, the Detroit and St. Clair rivers, the southern part of Lake Huron and the western side of Lake Erie.)

The northern swing takes a break for nearly a month before the Elites swing into action again Aug. 17-20 at Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, New York. Sumrall and the other Elites will remain in the Northeast for the following week to fish the St. Lawrence River on Aug. 24-27.

Of the three tournament sites remaining, Sumrall said his favorite is Lake Champlain. He enjoyed one of his best Elite tournaments there when he was ninth with 73 pounds, 10 ounces, in 2021.

One year earlier he finished 52nd with 32 pounds, 5 ounces.

“I would say Champlain is my favorite. It’s just full of fish. It’s a very good lake,” he said.

First on deck, though, is Lake St. Clair in the upper Midwest. He’ll try to feed the smallies crank baits, tube jigs and other soft plastics.

Bassmaster Opens pro bass angler and Canton, Michigan, native Garrett Paquette recently told bassmaster.com probable patterns for the lake, which he is very familiar, include drop shots, Ned rigs and tubes while crank baits and spybaits could make a play, too.

Paquette also said, “I consider St. Clair to be the mecca of forward-facing sonar. It has a really clean bottom, not many weeks and the fish seem to suspend 1 to 3 feet all the time. You will see the guys hunting them down one at a time on forward sonar.”

Sumrall intends to be one of the guys hunting them down.

“I’m ready to get after it again. It’s time to get back fishing, for sure,” he said.