Saginaw Bay Day 4 Takeaways: Bally Bet AOY race remains four-way brawl entering Knockout Round

BAY CITY, Mich. – The Bass Pro Tour came to Saginaw Bay with four anglers duking out the closest Bally Bet Angler of the Year race in the tour’s five-year history.

With two days left at Minn Kota Stage Seven Presented by Suzuki, the competition remains anyone’s to claim.

Angler of the Year leader Alton Jones Jr. and fourth-place pursuer Matt Becker both earned spots in Saturday’s Knockout Round by finishing among the Top 20 in Group B on Friday. They will join Jacob Wheeler and Ott DeFoe, who, like Becker, entered the event within 10 points of Jones’ lead.

Jones and Becker took to the water Friday needing to catch ‘em in order to remain in contention for the AOY title and accompanying $100,000 prize. Both anglers started their first day of competition fishing for smallmouth in open water but struggled to find quality bites. Jones switched gears and started targeting shallow largemouth midway through Day 1, while Becker stuck to his smallmouth gameplan. The result was Jones entering the second day of qualifying in 20^th place — squarely on the Toro Cut Line — and Becker below it in 26^th.

Both anglers opted to chase green fish on Friday. It took Jones just 10 minutes to essentially punch his ticket to the Knockout Round, when he boated a 5-pound largemouth. Only the second 5-pound fish caught through four days of competition, it won Berkley Big Bass honors for the day. Jones climbed to seventh place after filling out the rest of his limit.

Becker started strong, too, needing a little more than an hour to top 14 pounds with his five-fish limit. However, with the rest of Group B finding the bite quite a bit better than Wednesday, Becker found himself in 20^th midway through the third period. A clutch 3-3 he caught with less than an hour left in the day boosted his two-day total to 27-15, good for 19^th in the group.

It remains to be seen whether Becker and Jones will stick to largemouth during the Knockout Round, when weights will zero, or once again strike out in search of Saginaw Bay’s nomadic smallmouth. It’s become clear that Wheeler is committed to chasing smallmouth, while DeFoe is expected to continue to target largemouth.

Regardless, the four-way points battle, which likely won’t be decided until Sunday’s Championship Round, should provide for an entertaining weekend and a fitting end to a thrilling BPT season.

REDCREST hopefuls come up clutch

Jones and Becker weren’t the only anglers in Group B who came to Stage Seven needing to make the Knockout Round to earn valuable points. There were a host of anglers hovering around the REDCREST 2024 qualification line who also rose to the occasion on Friday.

Todd Faircloth, Jeremy Lawyer and Cliff Pace all punched their tickets to Lay Lake. All three entered this week above 40^th place in the AOY standings — the cut-off to earn an automatic REDCREST invitation — and secured their positions by making the Knockout Round. Faircloth’s limit of 18-4 represented the second-largest bag of the day.

Meanwhile, a handful of anglers who came to Saginaw Bay below 40^th have given themselves a chance to earn REDCREST invitations by making the Knockout Round. None did so in more dramatic fashion than Gerald Spohrer, who started the event 41^st overall. With about 20 minutes left in the day, Spohrer caught a 4-10 largemouth. He then followed it up with a 2-12 a couple minutes later. That boosted his bag to 17-2 and moved him across the Toro Cut Line.

Cody Meyer, Mark Daniels Jr. and Terry Scroggins all gave themselves a good chance to move into the top 40, as well. All three have been fishing well of late. This will mark the third straight Knockout Round appearance for Scroggins and the fourth for Meyer and Daniels.

Finally, Britt Myers and Casey Ashley still have an outside chance to climb into REDCREST. Ashley entered this event in 52^nd place and Myers in 53^rd, so both will likely have to make the Championship Round to erase their deficits. But Myers, in particular, looks to be on the caliber of fish that could get him there. His two-day total of 33-10 tied him with Jeff Sprague for the top spot in Group B.

Crochet, Jordon fall just short

The other points race to keep an eye on is the battle to requalify for the Bass Pro Tour. The top 67 anglers in the AOY standings will earn invitations to rejoin the tour in 2024. After those anglers, and the seven invitees from the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals, make their decisions, the remaining spots will be filled based on anglers’ average career AOY finish.

Unfortunately, two Group B anglers who started this week on the requalification bubble fell just short of the Knockout Round. Cliff Crochet finished 23^rd, just 4 ounces back of 20^th. He’ll now have to wait it out until final AOY standings and career averages are determined. Kelly Jordon tied 20^th-place Brent Champan’s two-day total of 27-5 but lost out on the final spot in the Knockout Round based on the big-fish tiebreaker. Jordon finds himself out of the top 67 as well. He entered this week narrowly trailing Roy Hawk in career average. Hawk qualified for the Knockout Round out of Group A.

Mixed bags lead the way

Given the fact that anglers have found Saginaw Bay’s largemouth to be far more plentiful than its smallmouth but the smallmouth to be bigger on average, there’s been quite a bit of chatter about anglers pursuing both species in the same day. So far, however, actually executing that strategy has proven difficult. 

Until Friday, that is. Both of the two largest limits of the day — Faircloth’s 18-4 and a 19-1 bag from Randall Tharp — contained multiple smallmouth and largemouth. That may prove to be the blueprint for winning the event.

Tharp started his day fishing for largemouth, as he had Wednesday. By the end of the first period, he had boated a solid limit of 15-6, anchored by a 4-10 kicker. With his status in the Knockout Round secure, he then went smallmouth fishing. He managed to find a few of the elusive brown fish, including a 4-14 — the biggest smallmouth caught so far this week. 

The end result was a limit weighing 19-1. That’s the second-biggest bag of the week, behind only Greg Vinson’s 22-6 all-smallmouth sack from the opening day of the event. It boosted Tharp into third place in Group B.

Faircloth, on the other hand, caught both species in the same general area. He, too, landed both a smallmouth and a largemouth weighing over 4 pounds on Friday.