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Avoiding Tennis Ball Behavior at Neely Henry
In addition to several folks asking Caleb Sumrall why he was carrying around a tennis ball, concerns about catching a limit of bass from Neely Henry’s flooded muddy waters were running high Friday morning, minutes prior to the start of competition at the Whataburger Bassmaster Elite.
“I’ll bet I’ve had five people ask me why I have a tennis ball in the cupholder of my Xpress this week – from service yard mechanics to fans at the boat ramp, and PR and media dudes too, everybody wants to know about the tennis ball,” grinned Sumrall.
The answer is simple. The former oil field supply yard worker spliced a tennis ball he borrowed from the family’s silver Labrador “Sky” and uses it to cover the hard-angled bracket of his sonar unit when he covers his boat, to avoid tearing the boat cover.
That was an easy fix. What’s not so simple is catching a bass from Neely Henry’s high and muddy waters. And even more concerning is catching them consistently to avoid bouncing around in the standings like a tennis ball.
Sumrall’s close friends and fellow competitors Darold Gleason and Brock Mosley agreed.
“I caught 14 pounds to lead Day 1 at the Bassmaster Open here last fall, but then only had 8-pounds on Day 2,” recalled Gleason. “Consistency is super tough to achieve here.”
To which Mosley added, “My dad and I had a 20-pound limit here in the Spring of 2015, and that was only good enough for 5th place. But this week I feel like Neely will be tougher to get a bite and stay consistent than the Sabine River,” says Mosley who finished 2nd at the Sabine Elite last month.
So while Sumrall has never played tennis in his life, admitting the only sport he played in high school was golf, the goal at Neely Henry this week is to give a Roger Federer like effort to avoid bouncing the wrong direction in the Bassmaster Angler of the Year standings where he currently sits a very respectable 11th.
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Lester Attacking Muddy Neely Henry with Simplicity
Toyota pro Brandon Lester utilized part of his unplanned day off Thursday at the Whataburger Bassmaster Elite on Neely Henry to wipe mudlines off his boat with a rag and a spray bottle full of cherry blossom and pomegranate scented Lysol his wife Kim gave him.
“I don’t know how many bass we’re gonna catch in this muddy water, but at least we’ll look good and smell good,” laughed Lester.
While he’s guessing he’ll need to average 12-pounds a day to take home a Top 10, he’s certain he’ll lean on simplicity in his lure selection to help establish productive patterns now that 6-inches of recent rainfall wiped out much of what he learned in practice.
“When you’re dealing with water that’s as muddy as this, you really only need to focus on the depths of less than 3 or 4-feet because the bass’ ability to see at depths any greater than that is pretty darn limited, so your lure choices and colors don’t need to be complicated either,” reasons the Tennessee pro.
Hence, Lester will lean on two of bass fishing’s all time most tried and true baits to begin competition – a chartreuse/black squarebill and a ½-ounce black and blue pitchin’ jig.
“Since everything has changed so much since earlier in the week, I can use this squarebill as a search bait around everything from rocks to laydowns while moving quickly down a stretch of shoreline. It’s a super visible color and it deflects well off all kinds of habitat,” he explains.
If Lester is fortunate enough to locate a concentration of bass in the currently flooded Coosa waters, then he’ll pick up the bulky black and blue jig and pick apart every piece of visible habitat, or swim it quickly around vegetation if he spots any.
When asked why he favors the jig over a Texas-rigged creature bait or other soft plastic, he reasons the bulk of the jig displaces more water to help bass find it easier in the mud.
“I’m not freaked out by this high and muddy water because I know you can still definitely get some bites. These are river fish. They live here. They’ve seen this before, and they gotta keep eating. My job is to pick a couple proven lures I’ve got confidence in and put ‘em in front of their face,” concluded one of pro angling’s most consistent top finishers.
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Harrison, Tennessee pro Earns Third Career Victory on Bass Pro Tour, $100,000
AUSTIN, Texas (May 5, 2021) – In a crazy finish that had bass-fishing fans watching the MLF NOW!® livestream on the edges of their seats, Academy pro Jacob Wheeler of Harrison, Tennessee, held off a late charge from Berkley pro “Big Fish” Bobby Lane of Lakeland, Florida, to win the Major League Fishing (MLF) Bass Pro Tour Berkley Stage Two at Lake Travis Presented by Mercury event in Austin, Texas and the top prize of $100,000.
Wheeler caught his last fish of the day at 2:19 p.m., a 2-pound, 2-ounce bass that gave him a total of 13 bass weighing 28 pounds, 13 ounces, and a 9-pound, 4-ounce lead with just under an hour left in competition. Then, Lane caught fire. Lane boated five scorable bass in the last hour to rally to within 2-ounces of the lead with just three minutes remaining in competition. But Lane never caught another fish, and Wheeler walked away with the win by just 2 ounces, a new record for the closest margin of victory in Bass Pro Tour history.
“Wow, that was unbelievable,” said Wheeler, who earned his third career Bass Pro Tour victory – most all-time. “I knew that I was going to have to have a good first and second period, and I just didn’t know how long I could prolong it. I grinded all day long. I felt like the best chance that I had was just to keep a topwater bait and a vibrating jig in my hand, so I threw those all day long and just fished for big ones. I never got a real big bite today, but I got more bites today and it was enough.”
Wheeler’s 1-2 pattern with the vibrating jig and the topwater bait centered around the docks. Wheeler would pick apart the dock with the vibrating jig, then throw the topwater bait in between while making his way to his next dock.
“The big key with the docks was that there was only a certain zone of the lake that had a little bit of dirtier water. The water clarity was the key more so than anything,” Wheeler said. “I couldn’t catch them on the flatter docks, it needed to have a channel bank or deeper bank adjacent to it. If it didn’t have 10 feet of water or more, I wouldn’t get a bite.
“The little ones would stay on the outskirts,” Wheeler continued. “I realized the big ones were in the top five feet of the water column and that was the key with the vibrating jig.”
Wheeler said that he threw a ½-ounce vibrating jig and caught them on four different colors. He fished it on his own Signature Series Duckett Jacob Wheeler Casting rod with a Duckett Paradigm Jacob Wheeler Baitcasting reel, using 20-pound Sufix Advance Fluorocarbon line.
Despite coming up 2-ounces short, second-place finisher Bobby Lane was still very optimistic after a red-hot start to his Bass Pro Tour season. After two events, Lane leads the 2021 Bass Pro Tour Angler of the Year race.
“I fished hard today, stuck with it, had a positive attitude and kept my confidence,” Lane said in his post-game interview. “I love Lake Travis, and I love the way I was catching them today. But congratulations to Jacob Wheeler, he out-fished me today and he earned it. Two ounces shy, it just wasn’t meant to be this week. It’s been a great start to the Bass Pro Tour for me this year and I couldn’t be more excited. I’m ready to go for the Harris Chain.”
The top 10 pros at the Bass Pro Tour Berkley Stage Two at Lake Travis finished:
1st: Jacob Wheeler, Harrison, Tenn., 13 bass, 28-13, $100,000
2nd: Bobby Lane, Lakeland, Fla., 15 bass, 28-11, $45,000
3rd: Mark Daniels Jr., Tuskegee, Ala., 10 bass, 23-11, $38,000
4th: Brent Chapman, Lake Quivira, Kan., nine bass, 22-4, $32,000
5th: John Cox, DeBary, Fla., 10 bass, 22-0, $30,000
6th: Zack Birge, Blanchard, Okla., 11 bass, 20-10, $26,000
7th: Casey Ashley, Donalds, S.C., seven bass, 17-1, $23,000
8th: Brent Ehrler, Redlands, Calif., seven bass, 12-3, $21,000
9th: Stephen Browning, Hot Springs, Ark., four bass, 10-1, $19,000
10th: Cody Meyer, Star, Idaho, four bass, 9-0, $16,000
Full results for the entire field can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Overall, there were 90 bass weighing 194 pounds, 6 ounces caught by the final 10 pros Wednesday.
Browning won Wednesday’s $1,000 Berkley Big Bass Award, weighing in a 4-pound, 9-ounce largemouth that bit his bladed swim jig in Period 2. Fletcher Shryock of Guntersville, Alabama, won the $3,000 Berkley Big Bass award for the largest bass of the event with his 8-pound, 4-ounce bass that he weighed in on Day 2 of competition.
The MLF Bass Pro Tour Berkley Stage Two at Lake Travis Presented by Mercury was hosted by the Austin Sports Commission. The six-day event featured 80 of the top professional anglers from around the world competing for a purse of $805,000, including a top cash prize of $100,000 to the winner.
Television coverage of the Bass Pro Tour Berkley Stage Two at Lake Travis Presented by Mercury will be showcased across two two-hour episodes, premiering at 7 a.m. ET, Sept. 11 on the Discovery Channel. New MLF episodes premiere each Saturday morning on the Discovery Channel, with additional re-airings on the Outdoor Channel and the Sportsman Channel. Each two-hour long reality-based episode goes in-depth to break down each day of competition.
The 2021 Bass Pro Tour features a field of 76 of the top professional anglers in the world – joined at each event by 4 pros that qualify from the Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit – competing across seven regular-season tournaments around the country, competing for millions of dollars and valuable points to qualify for the annual Heavy Hitters all-star event and the REDCREST 2022 championship. The next event for Bass Pro Tour anglers will be the Favorite Fishing Stage Three Presented by Bass Cat Boats, held May 21-26 at the Harris Chain of Lakes in Leesburg, Florida.
| The MLF NOW!® broadcast team of Chad McKee, Marty Stone and J.T. Kenney will break down the extended action each day of competition. MLF NOW!® will be live streamed on MajorLeagueFishing.com and the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) app.
For complete details and updated information on the Bass Pro Tour, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow MLF’s social media outlets at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. |
About Major League Fishing
Major League Fishing (MLF) is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, producing more than 250 events annually at some of the most prestigious fisheries in the world, while broadcasting to America’s living rooms on CBS, the Discovery Channel, the Outdoor Channel, CBS Sports Network, the World Fishing Network, the Sportsman Channel and on-demand on MyOutdoorTV (MOTV). Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with offices in Benton, Kentucky, the MLF roster of bass anglers includes the world’s top pros and more than 30,000 competitors in all 50 states and 13 countries. In 2019 MLF acquired FLW and rebranded it as MLF BIG5, which expanded its portfolio of catch, weigh and immediately release events to include the sport’s strongest five-biggest-fish format tournament circuits. Since its founding in 2011, MLF has advanced the sport of competitive fishing through its premier television broadcasts and livestreams, and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for bass through research, education, fisheries enhancement and fish care.
Major League Fishing – WE ARE Bass Fishing
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Swindle Talks NFL Draft, White Gravy, and Top Lures at Neely Henry Elite
Gerald Swindle is clinging to his Positive Mental Attitude mantra as torrential rains and flooding washed most of what he learned in practice for the Whataburger Bassmaster Elite on Neely Henry downstream.
But he took a few moments on the eve of competition to talk football, good grub, and what to expect when the derby starts Thursday in Gadsden, Alabama 50 miles from where he grew up.
Q: Were you at all surprised that six Crimson Tide players were chosen in the first round of last week’s NFL draft?
Swindle: Heck no, I’m just surprised it was only six and not eight.
Q: How will you deal with the insane current in this river right now?
Swindle: If you fight the current, the current will beat you. So, I try to let the current tell me where to fish.
Q: Will practice help you at all, or did 6” of rain wash away all the wisdom you gathered?
Swindle: I lost everything I learned Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday’s practice was definitely helpful.
Q: Will you spend most of your time upriver where the water is flooding, or down toward the dam where it’s falling super-fast?
Swindle: I’ll stay sort of in the middle rather than battle either of those extremes.
Q: What four lures can fans expect to see the Elite Series anglers throw a bunch this week on Neely Henry?
Swindle: Spinnerbait, buzzbait, swim jigs, and Texas rigged pitching baits.
Q: It’s dinner time, what’s the best meal you’ve eaten since arriving in Gadsden?
Swindle: Lulu and I are camping at River Rocks Landing and she made a chicken fried steak covered in white gravy that was awesome, and a lemon chicken alfredo that was pretty dang good too.
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Yelas and others starting from scratch Wednesday at Neely Henry
Rain fell on Alabama Tuesday with the same equivalency as Crimson Tide football players being taken in the first round of last week’s NFL draft. Four to six inches of rain soaked the Gadsden, AL region during the second day of practice at this week’s Whataburger Bassmaster Elite on Neely Henry Lake.
Streets flooded, lots of lightning strikes caused major power outages, schools were delayed Wednesday morning, and pretty much everything Jay Yelas and the other Elite Series pros learned during Monday’s practice got flushed down the Coosa River Tuesday.
“We’re starting from scratch today,” said Yelas early Wednesday before launching at Coosa Landing as the current ripped past. “It’s ironic, because the same thing happened last month at our Elite event on Pickwick not too far from here.”
Adding to the hydrological dynamic is a region of this river called Minnesota Bend that’s a giant S-curve, essentially serving as a natural impedance that “stacks” the water, leaving Neely Henry higher on the northern stretches and lower toward Logan Martin.
However, no matter where anglers choose to fish along the 77 miles of the Coosa, there’s no lack of habitat or visible targets, causing Yelas to tie on a spinnerbait and buzzbait Wednesday, while keeping a swim jig and squarebill crankbait handy too.
“I’m sure there were some guys who spotted a few spawning beds Monday, but man all the tributaries have turned to chocolate milk, so I seriously doubt any bed fishing will play a factor now. And while there was a pretty good shad spawn Monday when there was very little current, that’s obviously changed too,” says Yelas
So Wednesday is the big day. A day to start over in preparation for getting dialed-in for Thursday’s start of competition, not unlike the Elite Series practice period at Pickwick last month.
“Actually, I’d say prepping for Pickwick was way worse, because it flooded so bad we basically learned nothing in practice. At least we have today to figure out something here at Neely,” concluded the always optimistic Yelas, a longtime Toyota Bonus Bucks participant.
Yelas and others starting from scratch Wednesday at Neely Henry
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