One of Caleb Sumrall’s busiest offseasons wasn’t a break from fishing at all.

The local pro bass angler put in beaucoup hours on the water as a saltwater fishing guide out of Cypremort Point. That stretch from his last Bassmaster Elite Series tournament in mid-August to late December was filled with consistent catches of saltwater gamefish that kept him tuned for the fast-approaching 2025 Elite schedule.

Will the extra time on the water pay off other than helping out on expenses for nine tournaments in six different states February through August?

“Staying on the water, staying fishing, I hope it does,” Sumrall said a few days ago. “It was good. It was fun. When you get in guide mode you try to fish as much as you can.”

While he’s motivated and pumped going into the new season, Sumrall is highly cognizant that it’s a business, one that 103 other Elites also are striving to bring the five biggest bass to the big stage each tournament day at all nine stops in 2025. He has yet to get comfortable in his career entering its eighth year.

“I am (excited). (But) I ain’t liking all the stress still there,” he said.

Those words came during the first week of January as he was trying to complete his list of backers for ’25. It was going down to the last minute, Sumrall said, noting he needed to get it done in order to get a wrap on his new Xpress 21Pro bass boat powered by a Yamaha 250-h.p. Sho, which he plans to pick up this week in Hot Springs, Ark., by Lipari Sporting Goods & Specialties before the regular-season opener Feb. 20-23 on the St. Johns River in Florida.

“I am thankful for the sponsors I have. I am just looking for one big title deal to get the numbers where I need them,” he said.

It’s all about bass fishing, true, but it’s also about covering expenses while making a living, which he supplemented this past fall and early winter by being one heckuva busy charter boat captain guiding beaucoup clients to speckled trout and redfish in and around Vermilion Bay. He had trips on 17 consecutive days in December in his new Xpress Bay Boat.

The 37-year-old former oil field worker from New Iberia did his part, by the hardest, to get back on track last year following two so-so seasons with the Elites.

The New Iberian rallied down the stretch of the 2024 campaign to punch his ticket to the 2025 Bassmaster Classic scheduled to be held March 21-23 at Lake Ray Roberts with Fort Worth being the host city for its second go-around for the Super Bowl of Bass Fishing.

In danger of missing his third straight Classic, Sumrall showed out in the last two tournaments on the schedule with a 13th-place finish at Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and the clincher in the regular-season finale on the St. Lawrence River, where he finished ninth for a final payday of $26,000.

Those results pushed him into a 30th-place tie with Pat Schlapper in the AOY standings with 548 points. The 2024 Bassmaster Elite Series AOY was Canadian Chris Johnston with 758 points.

Naturally, Sumrall can’t wait to head to the heart of Texas in a few months.

“It will be my fourth Classic. It’s got some good ones but it’s tough fishing. I don’t think it will be a slugfest,” he said.

Finishing first and hoisting that hallowed trophy high is the one and only objective, he emphasized.

“Nothing else matters but winning. That would be great,” he said.

With its reasonable driving distance and proximity to south central Louisiana, he said, there’s a good chance his No.1 fans — his wife, Jacie, their daughter, Clelie, and their son, Axel — will be on hand to cheer him on in Fort Worth.

The all-around outdoorsman’s last Classic appearance was in March 2022 at Lake Hartwell near Greenville, N.C. It was his best finish, too, on the lake that started it all for him as an Elite. He finished 16th with 43 pounds, 6 ounces.

Sumrall was far off the pace in 2020’s Classic at Lake Guntersville in Alabama with a 26th-place finish on 25 pounds, 10 ounces, and at his first-ever Classic in 2018 at Lake Hartwell, where he was 49th with 15 pounds, 11 ounces.

As busy as he has been in summer, fall and early winter, Sumrall admitted he hasn’t put a lot of thought into priorities for the Bassmaster Elite Series in 2025. He thought about it for a moment, though, and said, “I want to stay competitive. I want to win one. I want to get back to the Classic (in 2026). That’ll be great. That’s the goal.”

Of course, a 2025 Angler of the Year title would be the coup de grace. That would mean an even more impressive tournament year than his 2021 season when he recorded his highest AOY finish at No.7, one that included two Top 10 showings.

He’ll be going against the best in the business, the seasoned and familiar veterans as well as the star-studded cast of newcomers to the Bassmaster Elite Series, led by Dakota Ebare of Brookeland, Texas, a Louisiana native who staked his claim to fame by raking in $1.1 million in Major League Fishing.

“There’ll be a lot of tough competition. Dakota is one of the top anglers in the world right now. He’s pretty dang good,” Sumrall said.

There are other highly regarded “rookies” joining the Elites, such as Easton Fothergill, AOY in the 2024 Bassmaster Opens Elite Qualifiers Division; Cody Meyer; Tucker Smith; Paul Marks; Emil Wagner; Andrew Loberg; Beau Browning, and Evan Kung.

Sumrall is more than capable of giving them all a run for the money this season. However, his tournament results have been up and down at both the St. Johns River and Lake Okeechobee, the first two tournaments of 2025. Historically, he said, early in the season those waterbodies have “kicked my butt”.

“I’ll try to get revenge on them this year. Okeechobee’s got a lot of big ones,” he said.

The regular season resumes in April after the Classic with two tournaments in the Carolinas – April 10-13 at Pasquotank River/Albermarle Sound in North Carolina and April 24-27 at Lake Hartwell.

Two other tournaments are bunched together in May in Texas, starting May 8-11 at Lake Fork and May 15-18  with a return to the Sabine River.

The June tournament brings the field to Oklahoma for four days June 12-15 at Lake Tenkiller near Cookson.

Sumrall and the Elites have a break in July before driving their tow vehicles and boats north to Michigan for the Bassmaster Elite at Lake St. Clair starting Aug. 7, then to Wisconsin for the Bassmaster Elite at Mississippi River near La Crosse, Wis. starting Aug. 21. Those are the last two stops of the regular season.

Sumrall has fished all the venues except the Pasquotank River/Albermarle Sound. The punchin’ and flippin’ master said when he goes there he’ll “just have to learn by the seat of my pants. Typically, that’s what I do better in, when I go by the seat of my pants.”

St. Johns River, he said, probably will be the tougher of the two Florida tournaments for him. He finished 26th there last year with 42 pounds, 11 ounces.

His best finish at St. Johns River was 15th in 2022, a year after his 83rd-place showing there.

In his only appearance at Lake Okeechobee, he was 98th in 2023.

As for Lake Hartwell, where he won the 2017 B.A.S.S. Nation Champion to punch his ticket to the Elites, Sumrall said, “It’s full of fish. It’s just trying to figure out the bigger fish, for sure.”