Not quite enough to make the final cut

Published 1:26 am Sunday, March 8, 2020

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama —  Two Louisiana bass anglers, one from New Iberia, had a chance to fish on Championship Sunday of the 50th annual Bassmaster Classic at Lake Guntersville.

The bass fishing gods smiled on neither Saturday, including New Iberia’s Caleb Sumrall. They also abandoned one of his good friends, Many’s Darold Gleason.

The 32-year-old Sumrall scrambled to collect three bass, minimum 15 inches, on Friday for 9 pounds, 9 ounces, before he went out again and made a strong run that came up just short. He realized he’d have to bring in a much heavier bag of five bass Saturday and he did on Day Two.

B.A.S.S. tournament emcee Dave Mercer announced the weight of the third-year pro’s five bass the second day at 16 pounds, 1 ounce, to the crowd of an estimated 4,000 people inside the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Center. The two-day total of 25 pounds, 10 ounces, left him 3 ounces shy of the Top 25 cutoff weight brought in by Pennsylvania Bassmaster Elite Grae Buck, who finished with 25 pounds, 13 ounces.

Sumrall finished 26th and won $10,000.

Gleason missed the cut in a different way. He started strong Friday with 14 pounds, 4 ounces, but went deep into the second day without putting a keeper in the livewell. It appeared his chance was slipping away but he didn’t quit fishing and he thought about Sumrall. 

“Maybe Caleb caught them today so one Louisiana boy will make the last day,” Gleason said sincerely about his friend who also guides on Toledo Bend.

It was shortly after 1 p.m. when Gleason got his hands on his first keeper bass of the day, fifth overall at the time, and his bid to make the Top 25 was getting tougher than the bite on Lake Guntersville. The Northwestern State University graduate and former elementary school teacher gave it the old college try. 

His day ended better than it started when he socked a 4-pound bass at 2:43. That bite, courtesy a ½-ounce reddish orange Rat-L-Trap,  was late but he appreciated it.

“We ain’t done yet. That fish nailed it,” he said, noting he had 25 minutes remaining until his second-flight check-in.

Gleason had traveled near and far from the boat launch at Civitan Park. His two bass tournament director Trip Weldon put on the electronic scale in front of the big screen weighed 6 pounds, 15 ounces, for a 35th-place finish in the 53-angler field.

Charging into Championship Sunday ahead of the pack is Hank Cherry Jr. of Lincolnton, North Carolina, who has been busy catching big bass and blowing the rest of the Classic contenders away. He started Friday with a five-bass limit weighing 29 pounds, 3 ounces, and followed up Saturday with another limit weighing 16 pounds, 10 ounces, for a commanding lead of 45 pounds, 13 ounces.

Will Cherry win the $300,000 first-[place prize? Elites like Brandon Lester of Fayetteville, Tennessee, John Crews Jr. of Salem, Virginia, and Todd Auten of Lake Wylie, South Carolina, will have a lot to say about that. Or any of the others in the Top 10 after Day One and Day Two.

Lester goes into the third and final day in second with 41 pounds while Crews is in third with 38 pounds, 3 ounces. Auten holds down the fourth spot with 38 pounds.

The Top 25 roared away from the boat launch this morning at 7 o’clock. Weigh-in starts at approximately 5 p.m.

Sumrall, finishing just short of the cut in his second appearance in the Super Bowl of bass fishing, and Gleason, who was fishing his first Bassmaster Classic, will be working the Expo today inside the BJCC.

“I’m going to get in all the casts I can. This might be my last Classic,” Gleason said in the waning hours Saturday afternoon.

“My wife will be heartbroken. I’ll have to cheer her up. When you got one (spouse) like that who cares that much, you’re doing all right,” he said.

Within the next minute, thinking about what he said, the emotions overcame him momentarily. Facing to the front on the bow as he kept casting, he said with a loud sigh, “Whew.”

Then he got back to business.