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Dropping each angler’s worst finish because of a COVID stipulation has jumbled the Bassmaster Elite Series Angler of the Year standings (only as it relates to the Classic cut), some for better, some worse.
Jeff Gustafson and Chad Pipkens were among those whose chances of making the Classic improved, while Bill Lowen moved the other way. Each was coming off the Academy Sports + Outdoors Bassmaster Classic presented by Huk, and now it’s back to the business of trying to qualify for next year’s championship in the final two Elite events.
Gustafson is adamant he gets back for his third Classic.
“Dude, you have no idea, especially after you fish in it, you never want to miss that,” he said. “It’s so awesome, the rock star treatment all week and the chance to fish for that trophy. There’s just a lot of perks. I love all the events, the Classic Night dress-up dinner. I love all that stuff. Yeah, you don’t want to miss it.”
A majority of the Elites requested and voted in the ability to drop their worst tournament if someone were to miss one for a COVID-related illness. It happened when David Fritts fell ill for the first tournament.
B.A.S.S. recently sent out an updated Angler of the Year point standings with each angler’s worst event excluded. It doesn’t affect the AOY race or requalification to the Elites, only Classic berths. Those berths are awarded to the top 39 Elites and move down the standings with each double qualifier.
Brandon Palaniuk, who stands fifth in the AOY hunt, won an Open to double qualify. Hank Cherry, 14th in the points, earned another automatic berth when he repeated as Classic champ last month. (He will be going for an unprecedented three-peat next year at Lake Hartwell.)
“It helped me out a little bit,” said Pipkens, who moves from first man out of the Classic cut to 39th. “I think it was a great rule in case somebody got (COVID) who was in the mix. Hopefully it won’t make a big difference. If it shuffles, it’s going to shuffle one or two people in or out.”
While results of early season events count the same, the Guaranteed Rate Elite on Lake Champlain and the season-finale on the St. Lawrence River, where the winner receives an automatic Classic berth and could create another double qualifier, will loom large in deciding the berths.
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Pipkens said being bad ended up good for him. He benefited because the “old Sabine River got me again.” Dropping his worst of 95th there cost him a mere six points, while drops were far worse for others, like Justin Hamner and Lowen.
Hamner was last man in before the drop, but eliminating his 68th at Lake Fork subtracted 33 points, so he fell nine places to 50th. Before eliminating his worst, a 74th at Lake Fork, Lowen was 44th in the standings with 385 points, just three spots and four points from the cut. Now Lowen is 49th and needs to make up 23 points.
“It stinks that I dropped. I think if you drop your worst tournament you should move up, not down,” said Lowen, who was unlucky as his worst wasn’t nearly as bad as others near him in the standings. “You definitely don’t want to miss the Classic in the year I won my first event.”
Gustafson can relate. On the Tennessee River, Gussy became the second Canadian to win an Elite. But the next week, he slipped to 89th at Pickwick, his cut event that will only cost him 12 points. That actually moved him up three notches to 42nd.
“Winning one early made for a good year, took the pressure off,” Gustafson said, “but it would suck to win a tournament and not make the Classic.”
Gussy is going to northern fisheries where he’s more comfortable. Last year, he was 12th on the St. Lawrence River before taking 15th on Champlain.
“I’d be tickled to do that again,” he said. “I’m not happy with where I’m at, but I’m in a pretty decent spot, and I just need to do my job in these last two. They’re up my alley more than any of the other events this year.
“There’s a bit of pressure. We could be fishing on my home lake, and there’s no guarantees. Stuff can go wrong. It’s a short day, but I don’t have to top five them, just have two solid derbies.”
Pipkens said there’s always hope, or the chance of falling flat on your face. In 2018, he needed to finish 73rd or better on the St. Lawrence River and had his worse day ever, taking 94th. Conversely, he recalled his 2015 season when he climbed from 93rd in points in the final three events, which included two top five finishes.
“There’ll be some movement. There’ll be some swapping around,” Pipkens said of this late stretch. “If you’re 60 points up, you can drop that pretty quick. Somebody back 50 or 60 can get a Top 10 and be right back on the bubble.
“Lowen, he could win the next two, but he’s probably not as excited about the next two as I am.”
Pipkens had top 30 finishes last year on St. Lawrence and Champlain, and said “if I could gamble, this is where I’d want it to be.”
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Lowen made the cut last year at St. Lawrence after a miserable event at Champlain, but he thinks he has remedied that. After a phenomenal practice where he was catching 20 pounds a day, Lowen could only muster around 12 pounds on competition days and finished 84th.
“I made that run to Ticonderoga so many times thinking I was going to catch them, and it has burned me so many times,” he said. “This year I put some waypoints across there at Mallets Bay, and I will not go below here. I told the lady at the gas station (as he was gassing up to leave), remember this face, because you ain’t going to ever see it again.”
With his drop event, Lowen has 358 points. Chris Zaldain and Koby Kreiger also have 358 points but hold tiebreakers as each have caught more weight on full field days. The typical formula is to take the cutline point total (381), divide by six events (63.5) and add that twice for an estimated goal of 508 points to make the Classic.
To reach that, Lowen would have to earn around 150 points in the final two events, or average around 25th place. It all starts Thursday, and while Lowen isn’t one to crunch numbers, he knows his mission.
“I got to catch ‘em. That’s the bottom line,” Lowen said. “I kinda just put it all out of my head, and I’m just going fishing. I just try not to worry about it and go do what I gotta do and hope it works out.
“I’m just that guy; it is what it is. I just got to go catch ‘em.”