By: Mitchell Forde
MASSENA, N.Y. (Aug. 13, 2024) – For a brief moment on Thursday afternoon, the machine that is Jacob Wheeler allowed himself to exhale.
During the break between the second and third periods of the final qualifying day at Minn Kota Stage Seven Presented by Humminbird, Wheeler sat on the front deck of his bass boat. Situated in ninth place in Group B, just a few pounds clear of the elimination line, with rain from Hurricane Debby falling ever harder, Wheeler knew he would be in for a soggy and stressful final two and a half hours on the St. Lawrence River.
But, at that point, he also knew that he’d achieved his biggest goal for the 2024 season: winning the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year title on the Bass Pro Tour. So, while tying a few fresh knots, Wheeler reflected on the achievement.
“I would have never guessed in a million years that I would be sitting in this position right now in the sport,” Wheeler told MLFNOW! viewers. “I’m very thankful to be able to live out my dream as a professional angler. This is what I love to do, this is what I feel like God put me on this earth for, and there’s no rain that can damper our mood today.”
Wheeler, who has held the points lead since the second event of the season, will earn $100,000 from Fishing Clash for his triumph. After winning AOY in both 2021 and 2022 before finishing second to Matt Becker a season ago, he made it his mission to reclaim the title, which he regards as the true measure of the best angler on tour.
“Angler of the Year, to me, is so special because it’s a year-long battle,” Wheeler said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a great shallow-water fisherman or a great deep-water fisherman, you have to catch them every single place; you have to understand largemouth, smallmouth, spotted bass, depending on where we go in the year; grass, rock. It’s always changing. I’ve always tried to be a versatile angler, and I think Angler of the Year really sets up for that.”
Wheeler’s third AOY triumph in the past four years illustrated the traits that have made him the most dominant competitor on the Bass Pro Tour: his aforementioned versatility, his decision making, his drive. It also put him in elite historical company, bolstering his fast-growing case to be considered among the greatest tournament anglers of all time.
Learning from last year
For most pros, finishing second in an Angler of the Year race would represent a career milestone. But after Wheeler wound up four points shy of Becker in 2023, he admitted it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“To be honest with you, it stung,” he said. “It stung really bad. I was pretty irritated in the offseason, because I knew I messed up. It was on me.”
That mess-up was Wheeler’s 75th-place finish at Lake Murray — by far the worst event of his Bass Pro Tour career. As a result, his focus for the 2024 campaign was to win events, sure, but also to avoid a similar bomb.
Check and check. Wheeler’s season got off to a dream start. He finished fourth at Stage One on Toledo Bend, then followed it up with a victory on Santee Cooper, which gave him an early AOY lead. He poured on a second straight win on Dale Hollow.
Yet Wheeler doesn’t point to either of those victories as the moment that stands out most from his season, but the following event, Stage Four on Oklahoma’s Lake Eufaula. After the lake level rose dramatically between practice and the start of competition, Wheeler boated just two scorable bass for 3 pounds, 14 ounces on Day 1, which had him in 30th place in his group. On Day 2, he made an adjustment and fought his way inside the cut line with eight bass for 21-11.
“A lot of times, Angler of the Year is not [about] your best event; it’s your worst event that kills you,” Wheeler said. “I was way down there, and to come back after the adversity of not catching them Day 1, to build up and get a little confidence, there was a lot of things that happened in that event that made me appreciate that I could make it work. Those grinder events are always the toughest ones, too.”
Transitioning from rocky, Midwestern reservoirs to East Coast tidal rivers didn’t slow Wheeler down. He cruised to a fourth-place finish on the Chowan River, then finished 11th at the James River. Through six events, his average finish was an absurd 6.3.
Dustin Connell, who travels with Wheeler and pushed him in this year’s AOY chase, attributed Wheeler’s ability to succeed on all types of fisheries not only to his knack for understanding and finding fish but his strategic acumen. Wheeler has mastered the Bass Pro Tour format, understanding how to catch enough weight early during the qualifying rounds to allow himself to keep up with changes in a fishery, all the while saving enough fish for the Championship Round.
“He’s always one step ahead,” Connell said. “He isn’t just thinking about that one day, he’s trying to formulate a plan how to win. He knows how to play this format very well, and he’s always thinking the end goal is the Championship Round.”
Clutch calls on the St. Lawrence
Wheeler arrived at the St. Lawrence with a 19-point lead that, given his track record, felt insurmountable. As long as he made the Knockout Round — something he’d done in 10 straight regular-season events and never failed to accomplish on northern smallmouth waters — Wheeler would clinch the AOY crown.
However, Wheeler’s smallmouth bite didn’t fire as well as he expected on Day 1. So, he swapped his spinning rods for flipping sticks and headed to the shallows to target largemouth. The decision paid off to the tune of 45 pounds during the second half of the day.
When he returned to the water Thursday, Wheeler once again found his smallmouth bite slow. He pivoted to largemouth and caught five bass for more than 16 pounds, which moved him from the wrong side of the cut line into the Top 10. This time, sensing that he needed to stack weight at a higher rate to make the Knockout Round, he returned to offshore smallmouth habitat during the third period and cemented his spot with seven smallmouth for 22-10.
Bass Fishing Hall of Famer Shaw Grigsby pointed to that on-the-water decision making as the aspect of Wheeler’s game that impresses him the most.
“The real key that I see in watching him live on the Bass Pro Tour is how he adjusts on the day,” Grigsby said of Wheeler. “Like, okay, this isn’t happening; let’s go here and do this. I’ve always called it fearlessness.”
Connell said the bold decisiveness fans see from Wheeler during tournaments stems from the work he puts in when nobody is watching. For instance, after Stage Five on the Chowan River, Wheeler drove an extra 12 hours and devoted five days to pre-practice the St. Lawrence. He used that time to familiarize himself with both bass species so that, if one bite wasn’t working, he had a backup plan in place.
“I would consider him a workaholic,” Connell said. “He works, eats, sleeps, breathes bass fishing. He’s always been wired that way, and that’s all he ever thinks about. He’s always working hard, putting in the time. You’ve got to have that devotion and dedication to do that.”
The driving force behind Wheeler’s work ethic? Connell says he’s crazy competitive — no matter if it’s fishing a top-level tournament or playing a board game at the house, he can’t stand not winning. He’s also incapable of sitting still.
“I wouldn’t say he’s ADHD, but I kind of think he is, because he’s just wide open all the time,” Connell said.
Wheeler acknowledged his competitiveness but said the primary source of his motivation is trying to live up to the high expectations he’s established among his fans.
“There’s a lot of fans and people out there that expect me to catch them,” he said. “They almost put you on a pedestal, like, you’re supposed to (win), so if you don’t, you’re not living up to their expectations. … I try to live up to a lot of people’s expectations of who I am.”
An all-time great run
Wheeler has been a consistent force since the inception of the Bass Pro Tour in 2019, but across the past four years, he’s hit a new gear. There’s no shortage of stats that illustrate his dominance. In 35 events (not counting Stage Seven), he has six wins and 25 Top 10s. That’s a win rate of 17.1% and a Top-10 percentage of 71.4%. He’s earned more than $1.63 million in BPT competition. He’s been ranked by BassFan.com as the No. 1 angler in the world for five years straight. Of course, he’s won the AOY title three times and finished second the one season he didn’t prevail.
Those numbers are in a class of their own compared to Wheeler’s peers on the Bass Pro Tour. It’s time to start looking at how he stacks up against the greatest pros of all time. Grigsby, who started touring nationally in 1984 and competed on the Bass Pro Tour through 2022, wasn’t afraid to mention Wheeler’s name alongside the consensus greatest ever, Kevin VanDam.
“I see Kevin as of course one of the greatest of all time, and I still have him as the GOAT,” Grigsby said. “But I think as Wheeler goes on, depending on what he does in the next five to 10 years, we’ll see.”
Wheeler is now one of 10 anglers to win at least three Angler of the Year titles on national tours. Roland Martin leads the way with nine such wins. VanDam won eight. David Dudley and Clark Wendlandt each won four. Bill Dance, Mark Davis, Aaron Martens, Andy Morgan, Jay Yelas and Wheeler represent the three-time winners.
While the 34-year-old Wheeler may have a ways to go to match the career accolades of Martin and VanDam, his current tear deserves to be in the conversation for the best four-year run in history. Only three other anglers have won three AOY titles in four years. Martin did it twice in the early days of Bassmaster. Morgan won the FLW Tour points crown in 2013, 2014 and 2016. VanDam won four straight AOYs on the Bassmaster Elite Series from 2008-2011.
As impressive as Morgan’s run was, he didn’t win any events during that span, and his Top-10 rate (41.67%) pales in comparison to Wheeler’s. Martin’s numbers stack up better, but it’s difficult to draw comparisons between that era, when there were very few full-time pros, and the modern landscape. Skeet Reese went on a blistering stretch from 2007-2010 during which he won four events (including the 2009 Bassmaster Classic) and finished in the Top 10 25 times. He also won AOY in 2007 and finished second two other seasons. As eye-popping as those marks are, however, he still falls well short of Wheeler’s current stretch in win percentage (8.16%), Top 10 percentage (51.0%) and number of AOY titles (largely because he had the misfortune of competing against peak VanDam).
Ultimately, the only four-year streak in the past 40 years that surpasses Wheeler’s current run is VanDam’s reign of terror — and even that is debatable. Wheeler has won at a comparable rate (VanDam won 18.2% of his events over that span) and finished in the Top 10 more often (VanDam was at 54.5%). Plus, when considering that two of VanDam’s wins and five Top 10s came in postseason events with 12-boat fields, you could justifiably add Wheeler’s 2022 Summit Cup and 2023 Team Series victories to his tallies. Ultimately, though, VanDam’s two Bassmaster Classic wins and four straight AOY titles make his 2008-11 run tough to surpass.
Wheeler doesn’t spend much time worrying about his place in the pantheon of bass fishing greats. That mindset is one reason he’s won three AOYs — he’s always locked in on the next thing. Before he’d even made it back to Massena on Thursday afternoon, he was less focused on his AOY triumph than what he needs to do to advance to Sunday’s Championship Round.
“I feel like I’m having a crazy run right now, and I recognize that, but I don’t really spend much time thinking about it,” Wheeler explained. “I realize that things are clicking, and things are happening right now that don’t happen every year. So, I’m grateful for it. But I really don’t want to think about it, to be honest with you.
“I can’t even appreciate Angler of the Year right now because I’m still in the middle of a tournament. I’m still wanting to win. That was always the biggest box for me this season, my mindset is still like, alright, accomplished, go to the next deal.”
Once the offseason officially arrives, Wheeler will take some more time to reflect on his season (but probably not much; he’s competing alongside Connell in the General Tire Team Series later this month after all). He also understands that, between the wave of young stars flooding into the sport and an increasing desire to spend more time at home with his two young children, his dominance has an expiration date. Ultimately, his goal is not to match the accomplishments of Martin or VanDam but to be remembered as “the best of my era.”
He’s well on his way.
“Michael Jordan was the best of his era; LeBron James was the best of his,” Wheeler said. “There’s an era in time of like, you were the best player for some duration of time, you were the best fisherman for some duration of time. And so, for me, that’s my focus, because you can’t really compare – in a different era of time, it was completely different. So, obviously, I have the utmost respect and look up to Roland and Kevin and some of the great anglers, but it’s not necessarily a competition with any of them. That’s not necessarily my goal to try to be called the greatest of all time, because you’ll never get that. You can only be the best of your own time.”
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