Given that Jacob Wheeler won the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year award three times in the past four years, including in 2024, he had to be considered the favorite to take home the $100,000 prize entering the 2025 Bass Pro Tour season. Still, prior to the season-opener on Lake Conroe, a few questions needed to be answered by the world’s No. 1 angler.
For one thing, the Bass Pro Tour introduced new forward-facing sonar rules in 2025, limiting pros to one period per day during which they can utilize the technology. While Wheeler has shown the ability to win multiple ways across his eight BPT victories, it’s little secret that he’s embraced forward-facing sonar as much as just about anyone.
Plus, the schedule, particularly early in the season, didn’t exactly align with Wheeler’s wheelhouse. In fact, across 50 career events entering this year, Wheeler had only finished outside the top 50 three times – at Conroe in 2019 (63rd), the Harris Chain of Lakes in 2021 (51st) and Lake Murray in 2023 (75th). It just so happened those represented the first three stops on the 2025 schedule.
How has Wheeler answered those questions? By finishing fifth on Conroe, sixth on the Harris Chain and second on Murray this time around. He’s the only angler to make all three Championship Rounds to start the year, and as a result, he’s back atop the AOY standings with three of seven regular-season events in the books, 6 points ahead of Drew Gill and more than 30 clear of Matt Becker in third.
Wheeler said he didn’t realize entering the year that he’d have to face three fisheries that had gotten the better of him in the past, but he’s thankful for such a strong start.
“I think some of that I learned from my mistakes; some of it, the fishery just changed – different times of year, different patterns playing,” he said. “It was great to have three solid events. Obviously, it’s awesome when you can get a little bit of momentum to start the season off.”
Don’t start engraving Wheeler’s name on the trophy yet, though. Gill, who finished second to him as a rookie in 2024, hasn’t finished worse than 11th, and he just bested Wheeler in a one-on-one duel down the stretch to win on Murray.
“I love the competition,” Wheeler said. “Drew had to catch them the last period fishing, and off of gut intuition. And it probably forced him out of his comfort zone a little bit. But he rose to the occasion, and that was really cool to me to see.
“So, congratulations to him. But the battle has just begun.”
Bass Pro Tour Angler of the Year Top 10 through Stage 3:
- Jacob Wheeler – 230
- Drew Gill – 224
- Matt Becker – 199
- Alton Jones Jr. – 198
- Mark Davis – 192
- Jake Lawrence – 192
- Jeff Sprague – 187
- Ron Nelson – 184
- Justin Cooper – 183
- Colby Miller – 183
Wheeler not even in AOY mode yet
As badly as Wheeler wants to win his fourth Angler of the Year title in the past five years, he hasn’t taken the water each day this season thinking about points. So far, his focus has been solely on adding to his trophy collection.
“To be honest with you, I was not trying to get in the middle of this AOY race,” he said. “I was trying to win these tournaments.”
Those objectives might seem to go hand-in-hand, and clearly it’s worked out well for Wheeler so far. But he said fishing for AOY points and fishing for a tournament win require two distinct mindsets. He typically waits until the fourth or fifth event of a season to shift his focus to the points.
“It’s not that I don’t want to win Angler of the Year,” he said. “It’s the fact that it is a completely different mindset when you get in the middle of an Angler of the Year race to gain every single point you can. Like, last year, I won two (events) on the front end, and then I didn’t win one the rest of the year because I’m sitting there playing some things safer than I would normally.”
As for the forward-facing sonar limitations, he said it hasn’t made a drastic difference in his approach. He noted that he barely utilized the technology on the Harris Chain, where he won the Qualifying Round by flipping reeds.
“It’s just business as usual,” he said. “I’m not as committed to utilizing the technology at every single tournament. That’s not my game. My game is, ‘hey, what is going to be the deal?’ And then I’ll adjust my game plan, whether that’s utilizing electronics or not utilizing it.”
If anything, the fact that BPT pros now have to come up with multiple different approaches – one for forward-facing sonar periods and another way to get bit without the beam – plays into Wheeler’s strengths. He’s a strategic master, particularly when it comes to keeping up with a changing fishery as an event progresses. He pointed to that as the biggest key to his season so far.
“A lot of times, what I see anglers do is they formulate this game plan in practice,” Wheeler explained. “They build this puzzle out. And they see the picture – this is what they’re going to do, and this is how they’re going to do it. But it’s a completely different puzzle. Like, they solved that puzzle, but they’re so locked into solving that puzzle – good for you, you solved the practice puzzle – but the puzzle to actually unlock the tournament win comes during the tournament.”
With the next three events on his schedule being REDCREST and Heavy Hitters (which have no points implications) sandwiched around Stage 4 on Lakes Chickamauga and Nickajack (where Wheeler lives), he’ll be in fish-to-win mode for the foreseeable future. He’s relishing that opportunity, noting that competing for Angler of the Year, when it feels like every fish and every point matters, can be a “mental drain.”
In the meantime, his strong start has him well positioned to chase his fourth AOY win, both in terms of points and momentum.
“Momentum is definitely a thing in this sport,” Wheeler said. “When you feel like you can catch them and you’re confident, it makes it pretty simple to go out there, and you feel like you can take on the world.”
Gill not going away
If there was one angler who figured to be impacted negatively by the BPT’s new forward-facing sonar rules in 2025, it was Gill. The 22-year-old wunderkind has based his meteoric ascent up the tournament ranks largely around his mastery of the technology.
While it’s admittedly a small sample size, so far, Gill looks like he’s only gotten better despite the limitations.
Gill’s win on Murray came after finishes of seventh on Conroe and 11th at the Harris Chain. Add in a runner-up showing at the Kissimmee Chain and a fourth-place finish on Lake Hartwell in Tackle Warehouse Invitationals competition, in which anglers couldn’t use forward-facing sonar on Day 2 of the three-day event, and it’s clear that Gill can catch them no matter what.
Even though this is only his third year as a full-time pro, an AOY title is one of the few things Gill hasn’t already accomplished. He’s been close – not only did he finish second on the BPT last year, he almost certainly would have finished in the Top 5 of the Invitationals points race had he not opted to skip the final event of the season so he wouldn’t steal a Bass Pro Tour invitation from someone else.
Avoiding a down event will be the biggest key to chasing down Wheeler. A season ago, Gill’s two AOY bids were largely undone by a 45th-place finish at Santee Cooper in BPT competition and a 36th-place showing at the Invitationals event on Alabama’s Lake Eufaula.
Becker, Jones in the mix as usual
Both Becker and Alton Jones Jr. have become fixtures near the top of the points standings in recent years. While each has stumbled once this season, they’re still firmly in the race.
Becker, who topped Wheeler as a rookie to win AOY in 2023, endured some mechanical issues at Conroe that led to his 33rd-place finish, but he’s bounced back by finishing third on the Harris Chain and eighth at Murray. He should like the upcoming schedule, as he now lives on the Tennessee River and won the last time the BPT visited Saginaw Bay, where it will end the season again this year.
Jones has finished in the top four of the points each of the past two years. A tough second day on the Harris Chain led to a 32nd-place finish there, but he’s made the Championship Round on both Conroe and Murray.
The rookie and the vet
The top four names in the points standings should come as little surprise. Past them, two anglers are tied with 192 points apiece, and that’s where things get more interesting.
Currently holding the fifth-place spot by virtue of the tiebreaker (the highest event finish of the season) is Mark Davis. The Bass Fishing Hall of Famer is fishing his 39th year on a national tour, making him the second-longest tenured competitor on the Bass Pro Tour, behind only Gary Klein. Tied with him in points is one of three newcomers to the BPT this season, Jake Lawrence.
Davis has won Angler of the Year titles before, but it’s been a minute – 24 years, in fact. He claimed Bassmaster AOYs in 1995, 1998 and 2001. He finished 35th on Conroe, second at the Harris Chain (where he led for much of the Championship Round before the wind killed his bite and Bobby Lane ran him down) and 14th on Murray.
The new forward-facing sonar restrictions look to have helped Davis turn back the clock. He never unlocked his forward-facing sonar during the first two events. While he did turn it on at Murray, according to SCORETRACKER Insider™ Presented by Strike King, he only used it to catch two fish all week.
Lawrence, on the other hand, is one of the best in the game with forward-facing sonar. He’s used his mastery of the technology to finish sixth on Conroe and 10th on Murray. With two events coming up on the Tennessee River, including one on his home fishery of Kentucky Lake, don’t expect Lawrence to slip down the standings anytime soon.