The Bassmaster Angler of the Year (AOY) is an important goal for Kentucky's Kevin Wirth. He's been in the hunt for it several times in recent years, but he always seems to have one bad tournament that keeps him out of serious contention.

Unlike some anglers, his crashes aren't associated with a particular lake or a certain set of conditions. Things just seem to wrong for him for a few days or a week each year and he ends up with a triple-figure finish. Those setbacks in the points race are just too much to overcome.



"Winning it (the AOY) would be a real feather in my cap," he said. "It's something I'd really like to accomplish, but I always have the one bad tournament that kills me."

Pattern Held in '05

Wirth will enter 2006 at No. 15 in the State Farm World Rankings. He was 14th in the 2005 Bassmaster points and would have at least cracked the Top 10 if not for a 104th at Guntersville. That was the only tournament in which he finished outside the Top 50.

He doesn't blame that one on bad luck. Poor decisions were the cause.

"I knew where some schooling fish were and there was one main pattern I could've run," he said. "Then on the first day, I don't know what I was thinking, but I elected not to do either and took off and tried to do other stuff that I hadn't been doing in practice. I got behind and I just couldn't catch up."

Previous years featured similar disasters. He was 145th at Guntersville in 2004 ("I got seven keeper bites the first day and I got one of them into the boat"), 114th at Seminole in 2003 ("I didn't think my pattern was solid, so I went and did other stuff) and 134th at Eufaula in 2002 ("I knew I had my Classic spot sewed up, so I gambled and tried to win Angler of the Year and it didn't work out").

Of all of them, it's day 1 at Guntersville last year that eats at him the most. He and his co-angler were both using Rat-L-Traps. The co-angler bagged a 17-pound limit while he managed just one keeper – albeit a 4-pounder.

"It was one of those weird deals," he said. "I lost some real good, quality fish and I could have had 17 to 20 pounds. My co-angler got five bites and he put every one of them into the boat.

"When I look back through the whole year, there were a few key fish that if I would've caught them, I might've won Angler of the Year. I thought it was a good year, but it could have been a lot better."

Something to Build On

On the positive side, he had two Top 20 finishes in 2005, including an 8th at Toho, and two others in the Top 30. He cashed a check everywhere except Norman and made the Bassmaster Classic for the sixth time, where he was 32nd.

"I kind of tailed off at the end of the season and I didn't have a good Classic," he said. "But I'll try to take the good things and build on them, and hopefully eliminate those bad decisions like that one day at Norman. If I can do that, then '06 will be an even better year."

He won't make any predictions about which tournaments he thinks he might fare well in, though. Such prognostications have proved inaccurate in the past.

"Every time I do that, those tournaments seem to end up being the ones where I do the worst and the others are where I wind up doing the best," he said. "Next year, if I can have a year just like I've had in the past, with an 11-tournament series, I could win Angler of the Year. If I can have 10 solid tournaments and one mediocre one, I'll have a chance."

He'd also like to bag his first win in 12 years. His lone tour-level victory thus far was at a Bassmaster Invitational at Santee-Cooper in 1994.

"Only time will tell there," he said. "I know I have the ability and the knowledge to win, so I'll just have to keep my nose to the grindstone and keep the right mental perspective until it happens."

Notable

> The 43-year-old Wirth has opted to fish only the Elite Series in 2006. "With that and the three majors and the Classic, that's 15 tournaments, and that's a long year. It doesn't look like we'll be home except for a handful of days from the end of January to the end of September. I don't care who you are, that wears on you. That's where the younger guys might have an advantage over some of us who've been doing it awhile. All that driving time takes a toll on your body."

> In an effort to improve his stamina, he's trying to quit smoking. "I haven't totally quit, but I'm on my way," he said. "I've had a couple of times where I've cut down real low, then things got me off track and I had a relapse. I figure if I can cut way down, then I can just go on and stop from there. I'm trying to do it without all of the depression and side effects."