By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor

Last year, Jacob Powroznik closed the FLW Tour Major season with back-to-back Top-10 finishes, but fell short in his bid for his first FLW Tour Angler of the Year (AOY) crown.

It didn't help that he was chasing one of the best closers in the game in friend and fellow Virginian David Dudley, who captured the AOY title by winning the Lake Champlain season finale (Powroznik was 2nd).

This year, Powroznik is back among the points leaders – he's 3rd after four events – as he continues to show he's among the most consistent anglers on tour.

"I can't complain about it. It's been a real good year," he said Friday during the early stages of his road trip to Grand Lake, site of this week's FLW Tour event. "There have been some ups and downs, but it's been a very good year. I've had some great finishes and have actually had a good time doing it. For some reason, I don't have No. 1 in my vocabulary yet."

There's a sense his time is coming, though. Since the start of the 2012 season, he's booked four Top-10s, including a pair of runner-up finishes, the most recent coming at Smith Lake in March. His last finish outside the Top 50 in a Tour Major came at Lake Hartwell in March 2011.

"Everything has to go absolutely perfect for that to happen," he said. "It's getting harder and harder to win tournaments, but someone has to win every one."

Good Company

With Dudley out of the AOY race this year (at least so far), Powroznik is keeping in mind some advice the three-time AOY has shared with him as he enters the stretch drive of the season.

"He and I get to talk a lot and he really has a lot of good judgment calls and ways to approach things mentally," Powroznik said. "He's told me, 'You need to fish every tournament like it's the first tournament of the year and don't worry about what happens at the end. Just let it all come out and you'll be more surprised than if you start thinking about catching this or that for Angler of the Year.' I think that's what hurts some guys. They start thinking about something they can't control. You just have to go out and do the best you can."

If he's to win AOY, it'll be against some pretty stout competition. Brent Ehrler, Andy Morgan and Bryan Thrift are 1st, 2nd and 4th, respectively, and he's aware that beating one of them, let alone all, is going to be a tall order.

"Absolutely," he said. "You think about Brent, he's one of the best in the world right now. Coming in 2nd at Okeechobee and then winning at Smith, that was pretty impressive. Andy Morgan, you can't take anything away from him and Bryan Thrift, where'd he come from? It doesn't matter where we go, he catches them everywhere.

"I don't think it really matters who is up there in the Top 4 or 5, they're all great anglers and you have to beat them every day of each tournament to stay up there, but it would definitely mean a whole lot to win the AOY. In my opinion, winning AOY is more prestigious than winning a tournament and would rank right up there with the Bassmaster Classic or Forrest Wood Cup. Anyone can win a tournament, but to win AOY means that you've had to have a great tournament every time out."

"If I wind up finishing 3rd, I'll know that I did everything I can. It just wasn't meant to be."

Change For Better

On and off water, it's been a season of change for Powroznik. After losing the FLW team sponsorship deal through Snapple, he had to seek out sponsorship on his own to help underwrite the 2013 season. He landed a deal with Priority Toyota, which operates two Toyota dealerships in Virginia, and recently was added to the growing Livingston Lures pro staff.

He feels like he's better off now because he has the freedom to seek out companies with similar beliefs and goals.

"With the FLW deals, you don't ever know where you stand," he said. "One year it's good, one year it's bad. With Livingston, they make you feel like you're with a family and they're not going to drop you tomorrow. I'm thrilled to be associated with Priority Toyota, too, because they're the kind of people you can build a relationship with and that's important. Being able to get out and get your own sponsors is the way to go now."

On the water, he's implemented a new way of thinking to which he accredits much of his recent success. He said he's been in frequent contact with Elite Series angler Randy Howell, a fellow Livingston pro staffer, and Howell has shared with him an edict that he tries to abide by.

"He always talks about the power of five and catching five fish every day at every tournament," he said. "If you can do that, you'll make the championship. He's had some tournaments where he hasn't caught five and it's cost him. That's why the first thing I do during practice is try to figure out a way I can guarantee myself a way to catch five."

He's also been steering away from getting locked in too much on what worked in practice and has been more apt to freely adjust to conditions as the tournament unfolds.

"The biggest thing I've learned from the last 2 years is I'm making a lot more decisions on the water during tournament hours," he said. "Last year at Champlain, a lot of guys were catching them on a frog down at Ticonderoga. I made a decision to go do what I did for a little while and then I decided to put the frog in my hand and let things happen from there.

"This year at Eufaula, I finished 41st, but on the second day, they weren't biting like they were on the first day so I told my co-angler, 'We're just going to go fishing,' and we wound up catching a bunch of keepers that day. Being able to change during a tournament has been a big key for me."

Notable

> A number of anglers took advantage of Grand Lake's proximity to Beaver Lake after the April Tour event at Beaver and got in a quick scouting trip on the vast northeast Oklahoma impoundment. Powroznik opted not to and he's glad he didn't now with the all rain that's dumped across the Plains. "A lot of people were thinking it's going to be a deep bite, but it's not like Kentucky Lake where there's 10 million ledges and fish on all of them," he said. "It has some points and some smaller ledges, but I'm glad I didn't go because of all these storms they've been having, I think the water's going to come up and it could be a shallow-water shootout, which is right in my wheelhouse."