TAKEOFF
THE DEAL
2017 BASSMETRICS
SHELBY, NC 37 1 1275 91.1% 18.9
ANTHONY GAGLIARDI PROSPERITY, SC 39 3 1192 85.1% 30.7
ANDY MORGAN
JEFF SPRAGUE
DAVID DUDLEY
CODY MEYER
SHANE LEHEW
BRYAN SCHMITT
SHINICHI FUKAE
MARK ROSE
MICHAEL NEAL
BRANDON COBB
WESLEY STRADER
CLARK REEHM
JAMIE HORTON
ANALYZING THE STATS
THRIFT’S AVERAGE
TOURNAMENT FINISH
The average finish among all past
Anglers of the Year is 20.57th place.
Bryan Thrift beat it by nearly two places.
He established the benchmark in 2010,
when he won AOY with an average finish
of 7.6th place.
30
COMPARING THRIFT AND
MORGAN’S TOP 10 AND TOP
20 PERCENTAGES
Morgan and Thrift each had five
top-20 finishes, but Thrift had four top
10s to Morgan’s two, which more or less
made the difference in the AOY race.
DAYTON, TN
POINT, TX
LYNCHBURG, VA
AUBURN, CA
CATAWBA, NC
DEALE, MD
PALESTINE, TX
WEST MEMPHIS, AR
DAYTON, TN
GREENWOOD, SC
SPRING CITY, TN
HUNTINGTON, TX
CENTERVILLE, AL
CHECK PERCENTAGE
BRYAN TH RIFT
ins, top 10s, champi-
onship qualifications
and career earnings are
the typical stats that fishing fans
use to compare FLw tour pros
to one another. Generally, the
bigger the numbers, the better
the pro.
yet, as we’ve learned in base-
ball in recent years, evaluating
performance isn’t just about
counting the obvious stats, such
as home runs and rbi. the field
of sabermetrics, which uses at
times complex algorithms to
objectively evaluate player per-
formance based on a wide range
of factors, gives baseball general
managers and coaches better
information about who to sign to
the team and how to use them.
a similar concept could apply
to how we evaluate fishing per-
formance, whether for selecting
an FLw Fantasy Fishing team or
simply for fun. that in mind, we
calculated a list of non-traditional
fishing stats, along with some of
the usuals, for the top 15 pros in
the 2017 FLw tour angler of the
year standings to see what we
could learn based on a new
approach to pro fishing analysis.
W
By Curtis Niedermier
brEakinG Down anGLEr pErForMancE on thE FLw tour
45
36
41
34
28
36
45
45
25
27
45
38
49
Six anglers out of 165 finished in the
money about 86 percent of the time, or
in six out of seven tournaments. Of
those, Michael Wooley had the lowest
AOY finish – 33rd.
2
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
1231
1176
1161
1142
1142
1133
1131
1126
1126
1123
1108
1105
1096
87.9%
84%
82.9%
81.6%
81.6%
80.9%
80.8%
80.4%
80.4%
80.2%
79.1%
78.9%
78.3%
25.1
33
35.1
37.9
37.9
39.1
39.4
40.1
40.1
40.6
42.7
43.1
44.4
QUALIFYING ROUND
IMPROVEMENT
Not surprisingly, the pros at the top
of the standings were remarkably con-
sistent from day one to day two.
FLWFISHING.COM I AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2017