Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
If you’re a regular reader of our statistics-oriented content, you know I’m obsessed with the stuff the other leagues don’t track, don’t seem to care about, and may not understand.
In earlier articles, I covered the importance of having a good Day 1 if you hope to have a successful tournament. Here, I’m going to cover the importance of having a good first tournament if you hope to have a successful season. To do that, I’ll take a deep dive into the 2025 NPFL regular season and the Progressive Angler of the Year standings. After all, it’s the AOY standings that determine who wins AOY and who qualifies for the NPFL Championship.
The first tournament of the 2025 season was on the Santee Cooper lakes in South Carolina. Jason Christie won that event and thereby took the early lead in the AOY race. He eventually fell to 11th, but the win guaranteed him a spot in the 2026 Championship, so he didn’t need to fish for points after that.
Would it surprise you to learn that 27 of the anglers who finished in the top 40 at Santee ended the year in the top 40 of AOY? That’s more than two-thirds, and it surprised me … at least a little. I thought the number would be lower and that the six-event season would allow more anglers who bombed at Santee to make up ground and get into the top 40.
It didn’t. At least not to the extent I thought it would.
The cream rose to the top at Stop 1 and pretty much stayed there. The lowest finisher from Santee who made it into the top 40 at the end of the season was Todd Auten, who finished 68th at Santee and ranked 39th at the end of the year.
After Santee, things got predictably tougher. Twenty-nine of the top 40 after two events (Santee and Lake Norman) were still in the top 40 at the end of the season. That’s 72.5%, and it means there’s not a lot of room to sneak into the Championship after two events. The lowest ranking angler who did it was—once again—Todd Auten, who ranked 88th after two tournaments.
But we shouldn’t be surprised that Auten was able to turn things around and climb back into contention. Instead, we should be surprised that an angler of his talents had slipped so far down in the standings.
Only one angler in the top 20 after two events fell out of the top 40 by the end of the year. The rest of the top 20 qualified for the Championship.
After three events (Santee, Norman, and Douglas Lake), the top 40 firms up even more. Thirty-three of the anglers in the top 40 after Stop 3 were still there at the end of the season—82.5%. The lowest ranking angler after three events who was able to dig out of the hole and get into the top 40 and 2026 Championship was Jesse Wise, who ranked 62nd.
Only two anglers—Tim Cales and Skeeter Crosby—in the top 20 after three events fell out of the top 40 by the end of the year. The rest of the top 20 will be fishing in the 2026 Championship.
After four events (Santee, Norman, Douglas, and Lake Eufaula in Oklahoma), 35 of the top 40 (78.5) would be destined for the Championship, and no angler in the top 22 of AOY would fall out.
Once again, Jesse Wise was the lowest ranked angler who would make it into the Championship … on the strength of some considerable heroics in the final two events.
Wise would finish 21st at the St. Lawrence River to move up to 47th place in the AOY standings after five events … still an uphill climb, but manageable. After five tournaments, 38 of the eventual top 40 were in place, but the race was tight around “the bubble.” The 40th place angler—Andrew Upshaw—had 1,016 points, and there were more than a dozen anglers within 40 points of that total. A great performance here, a dismal performance there … it could shake up the standings.
But the truth is, the standings get more stable as the season goes on. For one thing, the more points that are already “in the bank,” the harder it is for the points of one tournament to impact them.
For another—and this one can be hard to stomach for a pro or a fan—a professional angler is what his record says he is, no more and no less. If the record says he is in 50th place, he is the 50th best angler in that field for that season. Period. And anglers higher in the standings are less likely to bomb than anglers lower in the standings.
By the final event, all the drama is centered around 30th to 55th place or thereabouts. If you’re further behind than that, you must win to qualify for the Championship via the “win-and-you’re-in” route. Everyone else will be watching from home.
So, where were the fireworks for the season finale on Logan Martin Lake? It turns out they were with Jesse Wise and Brandon Perkins in 47th and 54th place, respectively. The “smart money” would have counted them out, but the smart money is about the odds, not about last-minute theatrics.
Wise posted a fifth-place finish at Logan Martin. Perkins was runner-up to Scott Canterbury. It was enough to boost them into 35th and 40th in the AOY race, respectively.
That’s right. Perkins rode his second-place finish to grab the final spot in the 2026 Championship. Whew! That’s about as close as you can cut it.
And who suffered the cruel fate of missing the cut—bombing at Logan Martin and falling out of the top 40? That was Dustin Williamson and Will Harkins.
Williamson was 36th going into the finale, and Harkins was 38th. A top 40 finish would have kept them both in the mix. Instead, Harkins was 64th and Williamson was 74th. They fell to 42nd and 47th.
Zack Birge was the bubble boy. He fell just short in 41st place, but it’s easy to see where things went “wrong” for Birge. It was all about scheduling. He missed several days of tournament practice and a couple of days of competition due to his commitment to another tour. Either of his lost competition days (at Santee and Douglas) would have lifted him in the standings and put him inside the cut for the 2026 Championship.
A lot of any tournament season can be explained, excused or just plain told with “what ifs,” but the takeaway here should be that the cream rises to the top early and tends to stay there all year long.
