EVERS’ GREATEST ACT
EVERS UNSTOPPABLE
Viewed strictly by the numbers,
Evers’ 2019 campaign on the Bass
Pro Tour was indeed one of the most
impressive seasons in bass fishing
history. He won a regular-season
event, claimed the league’s points
(AOY) title and finished the year with
a runaway win in REDCREST, the
league’s championship event (bank-
ing $493,000 along the way).
He started the season with four
consecutive top 10s, going second,
first, fourth and seventh in events on
the Kissimmee Chain, Lake Conroe,
the lakes around Raleigh, N.C., and
Lake Chickamauga, respectively –
an average finish of fourth place.
That was perhaps the greatest first
half of a season in modern bass-
fishing history.
Better, at least at the start, than
in Denny Brauer’s “season for the
ages” in 1998 in which he won four
46
events but started with a 115th-place
finish in the FLW season opener.
Better than Kevin VanDam’s other-
worldly 2005 season, in which he fin-
ished the year with seven top 10s but
finished 98th and 74th in the first
two events.
“When somebody gets rolling like
that, it’s just a case of having a super,
super high confidence level – you
just know that you’re going to catch
them at your next spot,” Evers says.
“I don’t know that you’re aware of top
10s, but when you’re fishing good,
even if you make a mistake, you
know you’re going to overcome it. It’s
pretty hard to say ‘I planned it that
way,’ because things usually don’t go
as planned. Most of the time you’re
50/50 at best. The 2019 season was
just a year that my 50/50 happened
to be all the right decisions.”
“What we witnessed with the first
half of Edwin’s 2019 season was truly
a once-in-a-lifetime moment in
sports,” says MLF analyst Marty
Stone, who fished against Evers for
several years on the Bassmaster
Elite Series. “Here was a guy who
was absolutely at the top of his
game mentally and physically, with
the maturity to understand and
make the right decisions. That first
half of the season, Edwin was almost
flawless.”
EXCELLENCE IN ADVERSITY
“If I don’t answer right when you
call, I’ll call you right back. I’ll proba-
bly be up on a ladder, working on the
house,” Evers tells a writer.
“Working on the house” is some-
thing he and his family – wife
Tuesday, daughter Kylee and son
Kade – have done a lot of since May
1, 2019, when a tornado ripped
through northeast Oklahoma, taking
the roof of Evers’ house with it. Edwin
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