The numeral 50 is much on the minds of many Elite Series anglers this week. If you aren't ranked in the top 50 of the season-long Toyota Angler of the Year points after this tournament, you won't be fishing in the season-ending AOY Championship at Sturgeon Bay in mid-September. Your Elite Series season is over.
And if you aren't fishing in that event, there's no way to qualify through the Elite Series for the 2016 Bassmaster Classic, which currently extends down the AOY points list to 39th place, after double-qualifiers are considered.
Furthermore, if you don't make the Day 2 Top 50 cut at this tournament, you certainly aren't going to climb in the AOY standings, and you could fall out of the AOY Top 50, if you entered the tournament there. So, yeah, 50 is an important number this week.
That's right where James Elam is in the AOY points – 50th place – 1 point behind 49th-place Ish Monroe and 4 points ahead of 51st-place Brandon Coulter. Elam appears to be thriving under that pressure. BASSTrakk shows him with 22-pounds-plus today, which has him near the top of the leaderboard.