The new Elite season comes with renewed hopes for the anglers. For fans, there’s tremendous wonder of what’s going to go down, of who will figure out which fishery and walk away with hardware.
In that vein, the Daily Limit asked the Bassmaster TV crew to do some prognosticating. What follows are some of their predictions for the 2021 Bassmaster Elite Series.
“We will hit a double of sorts this year: A win by a former Angler of the Year and a win by a former Rookie of the Year,” show host Tommy Sanders said. “And we will have an international winner for the third year in a row.”
Those are each small contingents, with eight previous AOY and ROY winners in the field and seven not born on U.S. soil. Last year, Canadian Chris Johnston won at the St. Lawrence River and rode a trophy over the border for the first time. That came less than a year after Carl Jocumsen won at Tenkiller to add Australia as the third country to boast an Elite winner, after the U.S. and Japan.
The season starts Feb. 11 with the AFTCO Bassmaster Elite at St. Johns River then hits the Tennessee River at the end of the month. A flipflop with the Classic puts Lake Pickwick as the sole March tournament. April sends the Elites to Texas for the Sabine River and Lake Fork before back to Alabama for Neely Henry and Guntersville for May events. After the Classic, it’s July fishing up north on Lake Champlain and the finale at the St. Lawrence River.
Tournament emcee Dave Mercer can’t wait to get things rolling, and he predicts big things at weigh-ins. Last year, social distancing due to COVID-19 hampered the festive atmosphere at Elite venues. Mercer said he thinks fans will be hungry, so goes his call for “the return of the incredible, record-breaking Bassmaster crowds that we all love and miss so much. The Bassmaster fans built this sport, and we all can’t wait to hear you all again soon.”
Clark Wendlandt felt the roar at Fork when he clinched the 2020 AOY by a narrow margin. It followed Scott Canterbury’s close win the year before. They and the field, now up to 101 from 88, will see new stout competition that includes former FLW stalwarts Scott Martin and Justin Atkins, as well as returning Elites Greg Hackney and Jason Christie.
Analyst Mark Zona sees some great duels and familiar faces hoisting the prestigious blue trophies.
“I think it will be a year dominated by shallow water — except for the northern events,” Zona said. “I’m looking at Clark, Canterbury, Hackney and Christie to dominate … again.”
Hackney, requalifying through the Opens after a stint at MLF, returns with six B.A.S.S. victories and $2.4 million in earnings, second among active anglers to Rick Clunn. Hackney is also among the 25 AOY winners in 51 years of Bassmaster competition, and he could be there at the end of 2021.
“We’ve had good AOY races the last two years,” former AOY and Classic champ turned analyst Davy Hite said. “With an incredibly talented group of Open anglers who qualified this year, this season could be one of our most interesting AOY races in a long time, back and forth and multiple leaders. I think one or two of those new anglers will be right in the mix with the Canterburys, Wendlandts. I think Clark will follow up his AOY — he’ll be in the hunt.”
Ronnie Moore predicted Canterbury could have a great season as it sets up well for him.
“I think Canterbury could have four Top 10s,” Moore said. “With Neely Henry on the Coosa River, with some Tennessee rivers and lakes and those New York lakes he’s a lot more familiar with, I think Canterbury can make another run. Four Top 10s will give him a shot.”
Hite sees some big things for the season, specifically two venues where 100 pounds will be eclipsed. There’s always the possibility at places like the St. Johns and Lake Guntersville, but those aren’t the two he’s picking.
“The first one that jumps out at you is Fork, obviously, but Pickwick being moved to March, my bold prediction is that it takes over 100 pounds there also,” Hite said. “It’s just a great fishery. It being a prespawn event, if we have decent weather — the weather can be very iffy in March anywhere in the South — we’ll top 100 pounds there.”
Hite won the last Elite there in April of 2011, about two weeks after this year’s visit, with 84-9. While three anglers earned Century Belts the past two years at Fork — Brandon Cobb, Garrett Paquette and Patrick Walters — the feat at Pickwick could be a first.
“It could likely be 100-plus pounds to win with a mixed bag of largemouth and smallmouth,” he said. “When I won there, I weighed in largemouth, smallmouth and those meanmouth, the mixture of the smallmouth and spotted bass. It’s got a lot to offer as far as weight, and it’d be really cool to see a 100-plus pound winning weight, and it be a mixed bag.”
Guntersville is among the eight fisheries that have produced 100-pound weights, which has been accomplished 43 times by 31 anglers in the past 20 years. Hite said Big G and St. Johns hold 100-pound potential, yet he’s not confident it will happen this time around as a lot has to fall into place.
“It’s possible. I wouldn’t call it a longshot, but it’s never a guarantee. It’s just something that’s hard to accomplish,” he said. “One average day, 15 pounds, you put yourself out of contention for that. A bolder predication may be three, but I’m saying we’ll have two over 100 pounds.”
Eight of the top 10 heaviest total weights came at the Falcon Lake Elite in 2008, and the Daily Limit is predicting the winning weight at Fork to fall somewhere short of the 132-8 record but make it into the Top 10, meaning more than 117-6. If conditions are stable, expect a handful of anglers to earn belts at Fork.
Clunn came close to the Century Club at St. Johns in 2019, but last year weather inhibited fishing, with Paul Mueller needing only 47-6 over three days to win. The long-range forecast for Palatka appears stable for the season opener. Zona said he believes Hackney, who was second in 2016, will be among the players there and all season long.
“I think Hackney has a drive like I haven’t seen before — he’s going to be a force,” Zona said.
While this scribe currently has The Hack Attack on his Fantasy Fishing team, there’s a feeling that Cory Johnston will win at St. Johns on his way to becoming the first Canadian AOY winner.
Ronnie Moore has other ideas for the 23rd B.A.S.S. event held on the Florida river: “I think Gerald Swindle gets his Elite win. I see him winning at St. Johns.”
Swindle, with AOY titles in 2004 and 2016, has qualified for 18 Classics but has only won an Open in his storied career, and that was in Florida. Breaking his Elite schneid would no doubt elicit some choice lines from the poetic self-proclaimed redneck, and probably a few tears.
Moore was also of the mind that Clunn, who twice set the record as oldest Elite winner at St. Johns, will have his best AOY finish in a decade and will be on the bubble to increase his Classic record to 33 appearances, the last of which was 11 years ago. Moore said he’s more confident Jay Yelas, who’s fallen just shy of qualifying for the Classic since returning to B.A.S.S. in 2019, will get his 17th qualification to the world championship.
Moore also added that rookie KJ Queen, the youngest in the field at 24, will have a Top 10 in his first event. As for Rookie of the Year, Moore went with Josh Stracner as “he’s one of the most rock solid anglers coming in, and the schedule is an Alabama angler’s dream.”
The question posed by Moore if there be any double winners is difficult. Brandon Cobb and Jamie Hartman won two each in 2019 and Brandon Palaniuk doubled up last year. Sooch says no. There will be nine different champions in 2021 with five first-timers, one less than last year. Buddy Gross, Chris Johnston, Bill Weidler, Frank Talley, Lee Livesay and Patrick Walters scored their first titles in 2020. One of them will win again in 2021.
Picking winners gets tricky with 101 pros, but Moore is confident in his Fantasy Fishing prognostications, which breaks the brackets down by AOY points. He said to mark it down that he’ll be in the 99.1 percentile of players this year. As in tune with the field as anyone, Moore asks the public to go up against him by playing Rapala Fantasy Fishing and joining his group, BeatRonnieMoore.
Speaking of 99, the Sooch is of the thinking that’s the number of anglers who will finish the season as two will have to take medical hardships. (Now the lyrics from Toto’s “99” are stuck in my head. Got you too?)
So there’s our predictions, some bolder than others. I’ll make one final prognostication, and it’s crazier than all of the above: Over the 2021 Elite season, there will be one angler, and one angler alone, who will have his BASSTrakk weight match to the ounce what he actually weighs in.
The year is fixing to launch, and we hope to see you there.