Brock Mosley was proud to announce the birth of his second daughter Wednesday, and while he’d be thrilled to catch a bass as big as her, he can’t wait to get home and hold her.
Leslie gave birth to all 7 pounds, 7 ounces of Gradi Lynn Mosley at approximately 2:20 p.m. near their home in Collinsville, Miss. Brock was almost 1,300 miles away in Clayton, N.Y., preparing for Thursday’s start of the SiteOne Bassmaster Elite at St. Lawrence River.
“That was real hard,” Mosley said. “It’s not every day something like this happens. One of the cons of being a professional angler is sometimes there are life events and we are 1,000 miles away.”
Mosley reports wife and baby are doing fine, probably better than him. He had one of those worrisome days when he first learned she was headed to the hospital in the morning. She kept him updated, and while he prayed for the best, thoughts of not being able to help in any way crept in his mind.
“You never want to think for the worse, but you start thinking, what if something goes wrong? What if something goes wrong and I’m 1,000 miles away?” he said.
Even if he tried to get home, it wouldn’t have made a difference, he said.
“The way the pandemic has everything right now, the hospitals are allowing one person per woman in the delivery room. If I would have tried to get home, I wouldn’t have been able to get into the hospital anyway,” he said.
Leslie’s mother is there helping, and their extended family is watching toddler Millie James.
“One good thing about where we live is, we’re surrounded by a lot of family,” he said. “She’s probably well-entertained right now.”
She’s probably also looking forward to meeting her baby sister, named for Brock’s grandfather — his middle name — and a longtime family friend, a “mother figure” to him who passed away this spring from cancer.
Mosley said there was an outside chance the baby might have waited until he got home after next week’s Lake Champlain Elite, but the odds were against them. Being on edge might have been part of the reason he reports practice on the St. Lawrence didn’t go great, but things have changed since he finished second in the 2017 Elite there.
“It’s different this go around. This water is warmer,” he said. “Even though we’re here the same exact week, I’ve pretty sure they’ve had a mild spring and it’s already been hot this summer. I’m not an expert in smallmouth, for how hot things have been up here the last couple weeks, they went from spawning to ‘OK, it’s time to vacate and get back to deeper water.’ I think they’re so far ahead.”
Catching a 7-7, less than a pound from the state record smallmouth, would go a long way for Mosley. If he can’t, he knows there’s a 20-incher at home he’d much rather put a liplock on. He’s already made plans to leave his rig in Cleveland and fly home the Monday after Champlain, saving a couple days driving, and getting to his baby girl that much quicker.
