It’s not so lonely at the top anymore for Brandon Palaniuk. The Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year race now has three contenders. Those are Palaniuk (793 points) and now Jacob Wheeler (794) and Jason Christie (793).
Any of the three anglers can win the AOY title. All three have different styles of competing. At the top, Palaniuk fishes every day to win the tournament. Fishing conservatively is not his style. Wheeler is a gambler. If you are a Type A personality, a planner, like me, his comments yesterday were unnerving.
“Today I threw something together at the last minute,” he told me. I pressed him about his process for determining a starting point and got this answer.
“Tomorrow I’m going to mix it up, might make a long run, not sure yet. I’ll flip a coin and decide.”
Of course, he didn’t toss a coin at the dock but I got the point. Wheeler eluded that he might make a long run to Lake Erie. Yesterday he stayed in Lake St. Clair, for a reason.
“I had a spot I knew could produce a good limit in St. Clair, but it’s a bust kind of thing to repeat.”
Wheeler told me a couple days ago that he never trusts a spot on St. Clair to be reliable for an entire tournament. That adds logic to his thought of making the long run.