Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
Take a close look at the statistics associated with bass tournaments that use a 5-bass limit format, and one thing becomes very clear very quickly.
The anglers who bring five bass to the scales each day do the best. The anglers who do not, struggle.
It really is that simple, and it makes a lot of sense.
First of all, five bass is always better than four … or three … or fewer. Second, the more bass you catch over the course of a competition day, the more opportunities you have to cull. Show me the anglers who weigh in the most fish and I will show you the anglers who win the most tournaments, cash the most checks, take home the most AOY titles, and qualify for the most championships.
Period.
No successful professional tournament angler survives on lunkers. Big bass are unreliable.
In 2025, 15 NPFL anglers limited every day of the season. That’s a very high number. In fact, no angler in the preceding four seasons of the League ever limited every day of the season. From experience and study, I can tell you that limiting every day for a full season is rare, but it’s become more common in the era of forward-facing sonar.
A lot of factors come into play when you consider “bassing average” (the average number of fish brought to the scales each day by an angler). With a five-bass limit, a perfect bassing average (“BA”) is 5.00.
To score a perfect 5.00 for a full season, you need (a) venues that produce good numbers of keeper bass, (b) good weather and water conditions, and (c) skills. Even average anglers have a chance at a perfect score if the venues and conditions are optimal, but only the best anglers have a chance when waters and conditions are tough.
Of the 15 NPFL anglers who limited each day of 2025, all of them qualified for the 2026 Championship and all of them earned multiple paydays. They claimed the top five spots in the Progressive Angler of the Year race and won five of the six regular season tournaments.
Here they are alphabetically, along with their AOY rankings:
Joey Bloom 31
Scott Canterbury 4
Jason Christie 11
Brandon Cobb 5
Drew Cook 10
Greg Hackney 3
Matt Herren 19
Shane LeHew 22
Derek Lehtonen 23
K.J. Queen 8
Kevin Rogers 33
Scott Suggs 38
Gerald Swindle 13
Patrick Walters 1
Kyle Welcher 2
It’s an impressive group. If you wanted to list the best anglers in the League for 2025, that list is a pretty good starting point.
League-wide for 2025, the BA was 4.46. Pretty impressive! It compares very favorably to any other circuit in the pre-forward-facing sonar era.
But if your BA is just average, you will qualify for the Championship — you’re not catching enough, not culling enough, not cashing many checks.
No angler who qualified for the 2026 Championship on AOY points had a BA lower than 4.65. The only qualifiers for the 2026 Championship with lower BAs than that were Chad Marler (4.41), who earned his spot by winning Stop 4 at Lake Eufaula, and Scott Hamrick (4.59), the defending NPFL champion.
So, what’s the takeaway here? Well, if you’re fishing a top-level league that uses a five-bass creel limit, there’s nothing more important than getting five keepers to the stage. More bass = more opportunities to cull = heavier weights = greater success.
Maybe that means targeting a limit before looking for a kicker … though I realize that’s a situational decision. If it’s a bedding bass tournament, get to your biggest fish right away and worry about numbers later. But generally, putting a limit in the livewell should be a priority, and if that means learning new techniques or breaking bad habits or making better decisions, you’ve got a great New Year’s resolution to work on.
Second, if you’re wondering if your tournament skills are good enough to move up a level … or two … or three, ask yourself “What’s my bassing average? How difficult is it to consistently bag a limit on waters I know pretty well?”
If you’re struggling at home, you can bet things will get tougher on the road, on unfamiliar waters, under conditions that you’ve not seen before.
Elevating your bassing average is a sure path to greater tournament success. For proof, just look at the NPFL stats.
