By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
Jacob Wheeler will attempt to clinch his third MLF Bass Pro Tour Angler of the Year (AOY) title in the past four seasons when the circuit's final event of 2024 kicks off in a couple of weeks at the St. Lawrence River. He'll enter the derby with a 19-point advantage over Alton Jones Jr., and because he holds tiebreaker advantages, he can wrap up the crown by advancing to the Knockout Round regardless of where Jones ends up.
He's missed an average of less than one KO Round per season since the BPT launched in 2019 and he's 6-for-6 in regular-season events this year, so his odds are pretty good. He also boasts a victory on the venue, having triumphed on the tour's 2021 visit to Massena, N.Y.
He's made the Championship Round (Top 10) four times this year and won the events at the Santee Cooper Lakes in February and Dale Hollow Lake in April. His worst regular-season finish was a 17th at Lake Eufaula.
His goal going in will be to capture his ninth career BPT win. Nonetheless, his list of fall-back options will likely be a little more extensive than usual.
"To me, every tournament is its own deal and (the AOY and its accompanying $100,000 prize) obviously does play a role," he said. "I did go and pre-fish for the St. Lawrence – I ran around a lot and looked and tried to refamiliarize myself with the place. I'll have some ideas about the zones I like to fish in and I'll have multiple game plans, but I'm not going to get locked into one thing.
"I always try to put myself in position to win and that doesn't change because of the Angler of the Year (race), but it'll be a little more in the back of my mind for a worst-case scenario, like if this, this and this happen, then I can go do this, this or this. I make my adjustments on the fly usually, but planning will be a little more on my mind."
He made his pre-practice trip in mid-June, so he didn't much concern himself with the specifics of what the fish were doing.
"The tournament was still a month and a half away, but one thing I could definitely tell was that things were ahead of their normal schedule, so I'm assuming they'll be further ahead in their summertime patterns when we get there," he said. "In years past the river has been high, but now it's normal to low, so that'll make it interesting. Places where people caught them on the river in the past might have no current, or at least a lot less.
"For a lot of guys who fished the Elite Series events back in the day, some things have definitely changed and some of the places where fish might set up could be different."
He said he ranks the St. Lawrence among his Top 5 favorite fisheries.
"It's so pretty and so diverse," he said. "You've got deep smallmouth and shallow smallmouth and the largemouth play in the every-fish-counts format. If it was a five-fish tournament, it would be strictly smallmouth.
"Most of the time when you go up north the largemouth aren't a factor, but in this one you've got the opportunity to have a little bit of everything and you've got like 98 miles of river from Massena to the cutoff, so there's a lot of river to fish. The last time we couldn't fish in Canada (due to COVID restrictions), so that changes things a little bit.
"It opens up a heck of a lot of water that should swallow up 80 boats just fine," he concluded. "You probably won't see too many other people."
