Quartet Of Elders Excelling On BPT

By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor

Most of professional bass fishing’s spotlight has shined on competitors in the 35-and-under age group for the past several years.

Jacob Wheeler, who turns 32 this month, has been on a 3-plus-year run of dominance that might be unrivaled in the history of the sport. Jordan Lee, 31, has won a couple of Bassmaster Classics and a Bass Pro Tour Angler of the Year title along with some other stuff. Brandon Palaniuk, 34, recently nailed down his second Bassmaster AOY. Michael Neal, who’ll celebrate his 31st birthday tomorrow, has won back-to-back MLF Pro Circuit AOYs while also excelling on the BPT.

There are some older guys who are holding their own, however, particularly on the BPT side. Of the Top 8 competitors in that league’s points standings heading into next week’s regular-season finale at Mille Lacs Lake, half of them are over 50. None has done anything this year that’s garnered major headlines, but their performance has been consistently solid, if unspectacular.

That quartet consists of No. 3 Andy Morgan (50), No. 4 Alton Jones (59), No. 5 Randall Tharp (53) and No. 8 Kevin VanDam (54). The latter, of course, is the winningest angler the sport has ever seen. Morgan was a three-time FLW AOY and Jones and Tharp are both major championship winners (the Bassmaster Classic and FLW Cup, respectively).

None of the 50-somethings will win the AOY – they’re all more than 80 points behind Wheeler with just the one tournament remaining, so that’s a mathematical impossibility. Nonetheless, they’ve shown that they can still hang with the ever-improving crop of up-and-comers.

Morgan: No Slip-Ups

Morgan has just one Top-10 finish this season – a 7th at Lake of the Ozarks – but has made the Knockout Round in all six regular-season derbies and has ended up no worse than 29th.

“It’s been good; I haven’t had any real weak points,” he said. “The competitors in the league are so good and they don’t miss turning over any stones and it’s so hard to stay up near the top.

“I’m still doing old-school stuff and I’ve caught quite a few big fish this year. In this format (all legal fish count toward an angler’s daily total) you almost get penalized sometimes for going after big ones and they get ignored, but you can have some success with them.

He feels like had a shot to win at Ozarks, but his chances were hindered by a dramatic rise in the water level. Other than that, he hasn’t been on the fish to contend for a win, but has always found enough to make it through the initial cut.

“I haven’t put up Jacob Wheeler or Jordan Lee-type numbers, but I do feel like I’ve maximized what I’ve had to work with,” he said.

Jones: Big Aid From Ap

Jones has posted Top-10s in four of the six events, including the last two at Watts Bar and Cayuga.

“When I look back, this is definitely one of my best seasons,” he said. “I’ve had maybe a half-dozen in my career that were this good or better.

“At my age, it’s very gratifying and I’m very thankful for it. You always want to win tournaments, but even finishing in the Top 10 … the older I get and the more experience I get, the more I realize how hard it is. My health is good, I feel great and I’m fishing with a lot of confidence. I’m having fun and that, for me, is the bottom line.”

He said he’s gotten a lot of help from the Bass Force ap (the ap’s logo adorns his jersey and cap). He’s one of the nine top pros whose pattern and bait information is featured on the ap, but he rarely looks at his own data. He’s more interested in finding out how Wheeler, VanDam, Edwin Evers or Jason Christie would deal with a particular array of conditions.

“It’s given me ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of on my own,” he said. “I end up with a list of lures I want to try based on the scenario and the order I want to try them in. I might think of something the day before and forget about it, but now I can glance at my phone and say ‘hey, I need to try that.’

“It’s not a gimmick and it’s not something that’s just for the club fisherman. I’m on the Bass Pro Tour at 59 years of age and I’m fishing at levels that I haven’t seen in a few years.”

Photo: MLF/Garrick Dixon

Fishing techniques that he enjoys has paid off for Randall Tharp this year.

Tharp: Just Doing What He Likes

Like Morgan, Tharp has logged just one Top-10 finish this year, but has advanced to the Knockout Round in every event. He said he tries to have fun at every tournament and that means catch fish in ways that he most enjoy.

“I’ve had a flipping stick in my hand a lot of the time and I love fishing that way,” he said. “I’m a competitive person and I keep an open mind, but I’ve relied on some of the techniques that I’ve gotten pretty good at over the years.”

He said the BPT format requires competitors to continue practicing throughout an event.

“When every fish counts, you can’t get locked into one things in just a couple of areas,” he said. “You keep fishing like it’s a practice day, which is the opposite of what you do in five-fish limit tournaments.

“I’ve won (traditional) tournaments when I got no bites until 11 o’clock, but then they did bite. You can’t do that on the BPT.”

One other change from his younger years is that he rarely fishes for bass when he’s not participating in or preparing for a tournament.

“Early in my career, I bass-fished as many days as I possibly could,” he said. “Now when I go fun-fishing, I’m usually chasing something really big with a fly rod. I’ve lived on the coast of Florida for 12 years now and most of the fishing I do down there, I don’t think you can get any more opposite than bass fishing.”

Photo: MLF/Garrick Dixon

Kevin VanDam says that relying on his vast experience helps more often than it hurts.

VanDam: Experience Helps and Hurts

VanDam has ended up among the Top 20 four times this year with a season-best showing of 6th at Watts Bar. He acknowledges his consistency, but as always, he laments a lack of victories.

“It’s been good, but there’s been quite a few events where I’ve been right on the verge and haven’t been able to get over the top to make that next cut or have a shot to win,” he said.

His vast experience has served him well more often than not, but it hurt him at Cayuga, where he finished 45th last month. He won a Bassmaster Elites Series tournament there in 2016.

“I went in there thinking I had to focus on largemouth and I underestimated the population of smallmouth because of my past history,” he said. “I hadn’t been there since 2016 and the lake had changed immensely.

“Some guys who were seeing it for the first time got on the smallmouth and made it work. So experience can hurt you, but I’ll still take it every day. You’ve just got to be open-minded, which can be hard because we all have our own styles and fish our own strengths.”

At this point in his career, he has no trouble keeping an event or a season in its proper perspective.

“In every tournament there’s 80 guys and only one winner and you’re going to fail a lot more than you succeed. My main goal is to finish strong and get the best AOY finish that I can and hopefully qualify for Heavy Hitters.

“Mille Lacs is a play where I’ve fished a few times at this same time of year and my experience should help. I don’t think it’ll be like Cayuga where I got steered wrong.”