While the Bass Pro Tour field will be a bit more exclusive moving forward, with 51 anglers on the roster in 2026 and 50 in future years, Major League Fishing’s top circuit is still brimming with talent. The field includes 12 anglers who have won a national-level Angler of the Year award and 14 championship event winners.
Everyone who follows the sport knows about the excellence of Jacob Wheeler, Dustin Connell, Drew Gill and the other pros who have consistently hoisted trophies and battled for the Angler of the Year title in recent years. But here are seven Mercury pros that bear watching in 2026, either as dark-horse contenders for the AOY crown or because they bring a unique dynamic to the BPT.
David Dudley
David Dudley had an uncharacteristic 2025 that saw him finish 63rd in the points (although he did log a Top 10 at REDCREST). We’ll see if that lights a fire in the four-time FLW Tour Angler of the Year. The schedule should offer Dudley some chances to fish in his comfort zone with a wacky worm and/or drop-shot in his hands, and he’s won before at Beaver Lake around the same time of year Stage 5 will visit the fishery. Plus, no matter how the longtime Mercury pro performs, it’s always going to be interesting to watch.
Brent Ehrler and Jeff Sprague
No anglers are more overdue to earn their first Bass Pro Tour wins than Brent Ehrler and Jeff Sprague. The two easily have the most Top 10s of any BPT pros without a trophy – 19 for Ehrler and 15 for Sprague.
There’s reason for optimism that both anglers can break through in 2026. Ehrler performed well in 2025, notching Top-10 finishes at four events (including REDCREST) and concluding the year by winning the Summit Cup alongside Team Series partner Justin Lucas. The schedule includes a few events where his finesse prowess could play, especially Stage 2 at Lake Hartwell, where he won an FLW Tour event in 2012 and has twice finished as the runner-up. Sprague gets a pair of events in his home state of Texas, including Stage 4 at O.H. Ivie and Lake Brownwood, where he and Bryan Thrift teamed up to win the Patriot Cup in 2024.
Cole Floyd
No one was hotter than Cole Floyd down the stretch of the 2025 season. Including Heavy Hitters, he wrapped up the year with five straight Top-10 finishes, climbing all the way to fourth place in the AOY standings as a result. If the Mercury pro can carry that momentum to 2026, he should be a legitimate contender in the points race and a strong candidate to land his first tour-level win.
Alton Jones
It’s been a down couple of years for the elder Alton Jones, who missed out on qualifying for REDCREST for the second straight season after making it every previous year of his BPT career. However, the schedule looks ideal for the 62-year-old veteran to bounce back in 2026. While technology has admittedly changed winter fishing quite a bit since then, he will return to the site of his Bassmaster Classic win, which came in February 2008 on Lake Hartwell. He gets the first event of his long career in his hometown when Stage 3 visits Lakes Waco and Whitney. Then, there’s a good chance sight-fishing will play at both Stages 4 and 5, and Jones belongs on the short list of the best sight-fishermen of all time.
Spencer Shuffield
Spencer Shuffield has quietly emerged as one of the most consistent pros on tour over the past two years. He’s finished 11th in the points both times and notched seven Top 10s during that span. He’s another angler who feels overdue to break through for his first BPT win, and he could be a dark-horse AOY contender, too. The schedule should offer the Mercury pro two opportunities to show off his forward-facing sonar prowess at Guntersville and Hartwell, and later he gets a pair of events not far from his Hot Springs, Arkansas, home in REDCREST at Table Rock and Stage 5 at Beaver. You know he’ll be on the short list of favorites for the season finale on Lake Erie, too – regardless of whether he’s targeting largemouth or smallmouth, Shuffield has long been a force up north.
Dustin Smith
Each of the four newcomers to the Bass Pro Tour is talented, and it’ll be interesting to see if any of them can continue the recent trend of rookies experiencing immediate success. But Dustin Smith has to be the most interesting – not just among the rookies but perhaps the entire BPT roster. Last year’s Tackle Warehouse Invitationals season, which saw him finish fifth in the points, marked the first time he’s competed on a national tour with MLF, and he qualified for the Bass Pro Tour without ever putting a forward-facing sonar transducer on his boat. He already said he has no plans to change his style in 2026, so it’ll be fascinating to watch whether he can keep up his shallow success against a tougher field and with the BPT’s every-fish-counts scoring.