Caleb Sumrall is a Bassmaster Elite angler on a mission as he returns to the lake where it all started in October 2017.

The 31-year-old New Iberian planned to leave Saturday night for his third Bassmaster Elite tournament of the year at Lake Hartwell near Anderson, South Carolina. The tournament, which starts Thursday, is on the lake that Sumrall earned the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship, catapulting him to the 2018 Bassmaster Classic (coincidentally on the same lake) and a full season on the Bassmaster Elite tour in 2018.

Sumrall’s rookie season as a bass pro had its bright spots. While his sophomore season has started slower than he’d prefer, he’s ready to capitalize on the momentum from his last outing in which he narrowly missed the cut.

His added motivation is to move up in the point standings. After two tournaments, Sumrall is in 67th place with 88 points.

“I look forward to getting out there and having a good tournament. I’m going to be gunning for it,” he said Thursday night as he got ready for a guide trip Friday at Toledo Bend with Darold Gleason’s South Toledo Bend Guide Service.

“I’m very excited to get back in the groove of things. It’s been a month or so and I’m ready to get back at it,” he said.

His last time out was his best showing of the first two tournaments of 2019. That was Feb. 14-17 on Lake Lanier at Gwinett, Georgia, where he finished 42nd with 25 pounds, 5 ounces, missed the cut but collected $2,500.

Sumrall’s 2019 Bassmaster Elite Series opener a week earlier wasn’t the way he wanted to start the new season. The New Iberian finished 72nd with 11 pounds, 8 ounces, Feb. 7-10 on the St. Johns River at Palatka, Florida.

Sumrall wants his charge up the leaderboard to begin this week.

“Absolutely. I’ve got some ground to make up. I cannot have a bad tournament here. I’m looking to get out there and bumping up the points.”

It could be a challenge, despite the fact this will be his third visit to the lake in South Carolina. At last year’s Classic, Sumrall was 49th with 15 pounds, 11 ounces, after limiting out the first day but weighing one 3-pound bass the second day.

Lake Hartwell showed its true colors to him that week as the deep-diving jerkbait pattern fizzled and the spotted bass population he was on disappeared.

“The bite left. The fish left. Several (Classic) anglers in the area around there, their bite left, too. I don’t know if it was the pressure. The bite completely died and left me high and dry,” Sumrall said in December when he reflected on 2018.

With that in mind, he will keep an open mind this go-around, starting Monday with the first of three practice days.

“I’m going to go in with no preconceived notion,” he said.

“I don’t really have it mapped out. I’m going to see how it feels, run around the lake, check the water temperature and take it from there.”

For sure, he’ll fish for largemouths in Lake Hartwell, which has no grass, just rocks.

“The largemouths, yeah, I’m going to predominantly target largemouth. The spotted bass are fickle creatures, here one day and gone the next. I think the guy who wins will have mostly largemouths,” he said.

Artificials that should come into play, he believes, are jerkbaits, shaky heads and crank baits.

Bassmaster Elite angler Brandon Cobb, who lives 50 minutes from this week’s launch site, Green Pond Landing and Event Center, said he believes the spawn will be in full swing when the tournament starts.

“This year we’ve had some warm weather, but we’ve had more cold nights than we’ve ever had. So the fish are a little behind from what they were the last few years,” Cobb, a Clemson graduate who has fished the lake his whole life, told bassmaster.com on Friday.

“If the weather holds stable like the forecast says, I think it’s going to be mostly a spawn tournament. I don’t think every fish will be on bed, but there will be a lot of sight fish caught.”

A bed-fishing tournament could be benefit the entire field, he said, because all of Hartwell’s 56,000 surface acres offer perfect habitat for the bass spawn. Anglers who haven’t fished the lake much in the past should be able to find good five-fish limits.

All 75 Bassmaster Elite anglers will fish Thursday and Friday before the field is cut to the Top 35 for Saturday’s semifinal round. The Top 10 advance to Championship Sunday for a chance at the coveted blue trophy and the six-figure paycheck — $100,000.

Weigh-ins each day are at 3:15 p.m.