Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
Recently, I wrote a couple of articles on the Progressive Angler of the Year race. “Six Thoughts on AOY” is mostly about the top end of the AOY battle and who still has a realistic chance to win the gold shield. “The Other Side of AOY” is about another race that’s going on in the standings—the fight for a top 40 position and a berth in the 2026 NPFL Championship.
Now I want to go into another aspect of the AOY race that has long fascinated me, but I’ve never sat down to write about it: the “damage control” aspect.
When I think “damage control” in tournament bass fishing, I think of the anglers who consistently vie for AOY honors because they rarely have a tournament finish that completely upends their season and takes them out of the hunt.
Instead of fishing 112th after an ugly first day, letting a small failure turn into a big one, they find a way to turn things around and finish 49th or 58th or 61st.
After a bad start to a tournament, you can generally lump tournament anglers into three groups.
The first group—and it’s the largest group—never found anything good in practice, so they go out and continue to struggle. This situation happens to every tournament angler from time to time.
The second group starts every tournament with the express goal of winning. Anything less is a disappointment. If they have a bad Day 1, they feel they must have a fantastic Day 2 to earn a check … maybe even crack the top 10. These anglers will take a big chance on Day 2. They’ll make a long run. They’ll try an area they didn’t fish in practice. They’ll pick up a big glide bait and throw it all day in the hope of five bites.
Sometimes that works … but not often.
I admit that I have some admiration for the anglers in the second group. Legends are made by hoisting trophies, not by pecking at a calculator and tallying AOY points.
But I really appreciate the final group: the AOY strategists.
This group—the anglers who generally see their names near the top of the AOY leaderboard and rarely need a late season miracle to qualify for the Championship—are masters of damage control. After an ugly Day 1, they don’t risk their season on a sketchy plan to jump 75 places in the standings overnight. They look for a way to move up 15 or 20 places each remaining day and log a respectable finish, grab some valuable points and live to fish another day.
The anglers I’ve known through the decades who were the best at this were thinking about AOY and AOY points on the very first day of the season opener. These are the anglers who have claimed the lion’s share of trophies through the years.
It only takes one bad tournament to lose AOY. There’s very little room for error when your destination is the top of the mountain.
In 2022, Gary Adkins put together a career season and tallied 1372 points to win Progressive AOY honors. Taylor Watkins was second, but 23 points back. Watkins posted some historic numbers that year. He won two events and had a third-place finish. If not for a 61st at Lake Hartwell, Watkins might have been AOY.
A year later, Todd Goade had what is arguably the best season in League history. He finished in the top 10 of every event—all six—and accumulated 1470 AOY points, which is the record for the NPFL and one that may never be broken.
But Patrick Waters was arguably better than Goade. For five of the tournaments in which Goade was top 10, Walters finished ahead of him every time. In those events, Walters earned 1242 of a possible 1250 points, winning twice.
What about the other tournament—Stop 2 on Wright Patman Lake in Texas? Goade finished an impressive fifth there. Walters missed the event entirely. The Bassmaster Elite Series was at Lake Murray that week and Walters elected to fish there rather than Wright Patman. Nevertheless, he was entered in the NPFL event and took last place points (175). It left him 53 points short of Goade’s total. If Walters had fished Wright Patman and finished in 22nd place or better, he would have been AOY.
Did Goade deserve AOY? Of course, he did. Did Walters miss a chance at the most dominating season in modern tournament history. Probably.
Fortunately, no additional scheduling issues will impact this year’s AOY battle. The St. Lawrence River (Stop 5), Logan Martin Lake (Stop 6), and a series of angling decisions will determine the winner of the 2025 Progressive Angler of the Year award.
It’s heating up!
