With three tournaments left in the 2023 season, the race for the Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year title is more wide-open than usual.
Consider how the Folds of Honor Bassmaster Elite at Sabine River scrambled the competition at the top of the leaderboard:
- Before that event, the top six anglers were separated by 102 points and Brandon Cobb was leading the AOY race by 49 points.
- After event No. 6 at the Sabine River, 17 anglers are separated by 102 points and Kyle Welcher leads the AOY race by 12 points over second-place Cobb.
As the annual swing to northern smallmouth bass-dominant waters begins, the Elite Series schedule slows down considerably: July 27-30 at Lake St. Clair, then back-to-back events at Lake Champlain, Aug. 17-20, and the St. Lawrence River, Aug. 24-27, close the season.
Welcher, 30, from Opelika, Ala., was in fifth place in the AOY standings before the Sabine River tournament. He jumped into the top spot with a seventh-place finish. Meanwhile, Cobb’s remarkable run through the first five events – four top 10s and a 20th – came to an abrupt end with a 91st-place finish.
Cobb, from Greenwood, S.C., was one of six Elite Series anglers who had made every Day 2/Top 50 cut through the first five tournaments. Now there are only three, and Welcher is one of those. Another is John Cox, who is now third in the AOY race, 28 points behind Welcher.
Stetson Blaylock of Benton, Ark., is the other angler to make all six Day 2/Top 50 cuts. He’s yet to advance and record a Top 10 finish, but that consistency has served Blaylock well. He’s now 11th in AOY points after finishing as high as 20th and as low as 47th in six events.
Blaylock is an example of how the AOY race goes to the steady. With 104 anglers involved, there are so many moving parts in these tournament-by-tournament accumulations of points. There are other competitors rising or falling in the course of each event. Consistency is key. That’s why a 42nd-place at the Sabine River moved Blaylock up seven places, from 18th after Lay Lake to 11th.
As you might expect with his victory, Brock Mosley of Collinsville, Miss., made a huge move in the AOY standings – 20 places, from 47th to 27th. Matt Robertson of Kuttawa, Ky., experienced a similar bump after a fifth-place finish – 19 places, from 37th to 18th, as did Clark Wendlandt of Leander, Texas, with his second-place finish, from 59th to 40th.
Of those anglers now inside the top 10, Hunter Shryock of Ooltewah, Tenn., moved from 23rd place to ninth after finishing sixth at the Sabine River.
It’s when you see jumps like those listed above two-thirds of way through the season, as we are now, that you get a glimpse of how unpredictable this AOY race appears with three tournaments remaining.
