A little over 40 days.
That’s how long Chris Johnston was outside the top seven in the Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year race this season. The downtime lasted from the end of the Lake Fork tournament, where he finished 38th and fell to 16th in AOY, until the Harris Chain, when he finished 24th and moved back up to seventh.
In the next event, he finished fifth at the St. Johns River, where his brother Cory won, and over the last six tournaments never fell out of the top five in AOY. Cory won again at the St. Lawrence River, but Chris took home the biggest prize that week – he clinched AOY with a day to go.
It was a war of attrition. Trey McKinney, who’d led AOY after the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth events of the year, ultimately finished second in AOY. Classic champ Justin Hamner, who led after the seventh and eight tournaments, fell to fifth, with Cory Johnston and Jacob Foutz falling a bit short of McKinney.
Close doesn’t count – Johnston’s margin of 24 points seems large in retrospect, but it required a few dominoes to fall to get the job done. Compared to other seasons, it was about average for post-split margins. The smallest came in 2020, when Clark Wendlandt edged David Mullins by three points. The largest was in 2021, when Seth Feider won by 61 points, beating none other than runner-up Chris Johnston.
Brotherly excellence – By virtue of Chris’s title and Cory’s third-place AOY finish, the Johnston brothers almost put together a perfect hand – the only thing that could’ve been better would be if they’d tied for first or come in first and second. It should come as no surprise – in six years on the Elites, their worst AOY finishes were 33rd and 26th, respectively. Their best prior combined result came in 2021, when they finished second and fifth. During their rookie season of 2019, they were 13th and third. Neither has missed a Classic cut. By comparison, in the three years they both fished the Elites, brothers Micah and Marc Frazier never combined to average better than 40th in a single season. They had only one individual finish (Marc’s 24th in 2022) better than the Johnstons’ worst individual finish. Brothers Chris and Bobby Lane fished more Elite seasons together (11) than the Johnstons (so far), but only cracked the top 20 in the same year once – in 2012, when they were 14th and 12th, respectively – something the Johnstons have done in four out of six years. Of course, that 2012 season was the same year that Chris won his Red River Classic title, one of the few B.A.S.S. accomplishments the Johnstons have yet to claim.
Avoid the season killers – A big part of winning AOY is not just top finishes, but also avoiding bombs. Chris Johnston’s worst finish on the year was 57th at Wheeler in the season’s sixth tournament. Only two members of the final top 10 had “better” bombs than Johnston: fourth-place finisher Jacob Foutz, who was 41st at Lake Murray; and sixth-place finisher Cody Huff, was 45th at Champlain. Four anglers of the top 10 had a finish of 87th place or worse.
Sunday showcases – Of the possible 90 top 10 finishes over nine events, the top 10 anglers in the AOY race earned 30 of them. Even for the math-challenged among us, that’s an average of three per man. Foutz, Huff and Wesley Gore were the only members of that group with two apiece. Foutz and Huff made up for it by never missing a cut to Day 3. Gore made up for it by finishing in the top 33 in eight of nine tournaments.
The international contingent – Seven of the eight international anglers made the Classic cut, with Carl Jocumsen sneaking in after the end of the Elite Series season thanks to some movement in the Opens. Kenta Kimura was the lone member of their octet to miss the cut; he finished in 56th in the AOY race. The four Canadian anglers averaged a 15th-place finish. The three Japanese anglers averaged 42nd.
Past AOYs – No past Angler of the Year winner finished in the top 40 in the AOY race. Greg Hackney was the best of the bunch, ending up 41st and qualifying for his 19th Bassmaster Classic.
Past Classic winners – Of the seven past Bassmaster Classic winners in the field, Justin Hamner (fifth), Jordan Lee (ninth) and Jeff Gustafson (39th) were the only ones who qualified for the 2025 Classic through the Elites.
Speaking of Hamner – In addition to winning the Classic, Hamner had a legit chance to put his further stamp on history by claiming the AOY crown in the same year. After finishing 14th at Toledo Bend, he came in third at Lake Fork and rose to fourth in the AOY standings. He never subsequently left the top 10, and was leading after the seventh and eighth events before ultimately falling to fifth place. The last pro to win both titles in the same year was Kevin VanDam, who won the AOY every year between 2008 and 2011 while also winning the 2010 and 2011 Classics. Hamner’s is the best AOY result by a same-year Classic champ since Jordan Lee came in fourth in AOY in 2017.
Near miss – Bob Downey skipped the Harris Chain event to be present for the birth of his son, and the result was a 103rd-place finish. He ended up in 51st in AOY, just 33 points behind the late-but-not-too-late to the Classic Jocumsen. Downey averaged a 45th-place finish in the other eight events. If he’d accomplished anything close that at the Harris Chain he’d be fishing Ray Roberts.
No first-year jitters – Three rookies finished in the top 10 in the AOY race – Trey McKinney (second), John Garrett (eighth), and Wesley Gore (10th). That’s the first time that’s happened since the dawn of the Elite Series in 2006. In fact, there have only been two twice before: One of those times was last year, when Joey Cifuentes was fifth and Kyoya Fujita was seventh; and the other was 2015, when Brent Ehrler was seventh and Jordan Lee was ninth. Under current rules, however, Ehrler, who’d already won a Forrest Wood Cup at that point, would not have been considered a “rookie.” Of the 19 Elite Series seasons to date, 11 times the final AOY standings have had zero rookies in the top 10.
McKinney’s race to lose – After finishing 12th at Toledo Bend, Trey McKinney won at Lake Fork and grabbed the top spot in both the AOY race and the Dakota Lithium Bassmaster Rookie of the Year race, tied with fellow rookie Ben Milliken in points, but with nearly 10 pounds more weight. After that McKinney only relinquished the ROY lead once, after Champlain, when JT Thompkins moved ahead of him by a single point. Thompkins was disqualified at the St. Lawrence River and ultimately fell to 15th in AOY and sixth in ROY. McKinney might have won by even more had he not made a mental mistake at Smith Lake that cost him his Day 2 weight and dropped him to 93rd place for the event.
Tough love – Robert Gee must still be wondering what sort of freight train hit him, because despite a fourth-place, third-place and two runner-up finishes, he still ended up behind four of his fellow first years in the AOY/ROY race.
Top to bottom – Perhaps even more impressive than the rookies’ top 10 finishers is the fact that all nine anglers who’d qualified through the 2023 Bassmaster Opens EQs finished in the top 28 in the 2024 Elite Series AOY standings.
Vegas lost money on this – Brandon Palaniuk had never missed a Classic for which he’d been eligible, fishing all of them from 2011 through 2019, and then all from 2021 to 2024. He entered the last two events of the season – Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, each of which had produced wins for him – in 24th place. He finished 89th and 95th, respectively, falling first to 37th and then ultimately to 48th in the AOY race. Don’t expect to see it happen again.
