Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
If you’re a fan of big-time tournament fishing and the challenge of earning the greatest title in the sport—Angler of the Year—this is an exciting time for you. It certainly is for me.
The big championships are great, and the paydays are fabulous, but AOY is the most prestigious honor out there, and there’s only one of them per league. In the National Professional Fishing League, it’s the Progressive Angler of the Year award, and it’s boiling down to a three angler chase … maybe two … maybe just one.
Going into Stop 5 of the 2025 season on the St. Lawrence River, Kyle Welcher, Patrick Walters, and Greg Hackney were separated by just 5 points and 2 1/2 pounds. That’s tight! So tight, in fact, that you could fairly utter the most overused and disingenuous phrase in all of tournament fishing coverage: “It’s anyone’s race!”
You’ll never hear me use that phrase. I hate it because it’s usually inaccurate and invariably hype.
Fortunately, this article is a safe space for ugly truths, and the ugly truth is that every tournament of the season winnows down the list of anglers who have a viable shot at Progressive AOY. After Stop 5 on the St. Lawrence River, Kyle Welcher made a strong claim to his spot in the driver’s seat, and Greg Hackney is now on AOY life support. Patrick Walters is hanging in there, but he lost a little ground to Welcher … and that seems to be something you just cannot afford to do.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened.
First, Greg Hackney had a terrific tournament. He finished 16th and averaged more than 22 pounds per day on the world’s greatest smallmouth fishery. He’s been nothing less than outstanding all year long, winning at Lake Norman and posting two other top 10 finishes.
Problem is, it’s just not enough.
Second, Patrick Walters went into the final day at the St. Lawrence in second place, looking to score his fifth NPFL win. He tallied nearly 72 pounds to finish fourth.
Not good enough. Not nearly good enough.
Ordinarily, if you finish 16th—and certainly if you finish 4th—you will have helped your cause. But not this year, and not when the angler you’re chasing is Kyle Welcher.
At the St. Lawrence, Welcher was stellar … again. Going into the final day, he was third behind eventual winner Drew Cook and his AOY adversary Walters. It looked like he’d lose at least a point—maybe more—to Walters.
Instead, Welcher went out and caught the heaviest bag of the day—25-11—to move into second place and pull two points further ahead of Walters and 14 additional points ahead of Hackney. He now leads Walters by seven points and Hackney by 19. What’s more, he’s carried more bass weight to the scales than the other two. That’s important because cumulative weight is the first tiebreaker if two or more anglers are knotted in the points column.
Here are our top three:
1. Kyle Welcher 1223 points (258-04)
2. Patrick Walters 1216 points (252-14)
3. Greg Hackney 1204 points (249-05)
4th through 118—too far back to have a shot
So where does the AOY race stand with just one more regular season event to go—Stop 6 on Alabama’s Logan Martin Lake?
Well, Welcher is clearly in the proverbial “driver’s seat,” in “control of his own destiny,” and all those other cliches that would deter any reasonable person from betting against him. If he finishes 6th or better at Logan Martin, there’s nothing Walters or anyone else can do to stop Welcher from repeating as NPFL Angler of the Year.
Though just 30 years old, Walters is already one of the best anglers never to win a major AOY title. I believe he’ll eventually get it done, but so far he’s much better at winning events than he is at fishing for points, doing damage control and winning AOYs. He not only needs an extremely high finish at Logan Martin, but he needs Welcher to stumble … at least a little … and that never seems to happen. Welcher’s worst finish in two years with the NPFL was 18th at Saginaw Bay in 2024.
As for Hackney, he’s an all-time great and has already won once this year, but he trails Welcher by 19 points and Walters by 12 points. What are the odds that both of them take a tumble at Logan Martin and that Hackney puts together a top five finish? I expect Hackney to have a great tournament, but I seriously doubt that both Welcher and Walters open the door for him to become the first angler in history to claim the AOY title in three different major circuits. He’s already earned FLW and BASS honors.
Looking for another reason to bet on Welcher? Here it is. Logan Martin is about two hours from Welcher’s home in Valley, Alabama. So let’s add home field to his list of advantages.
