By Ken Duke
Special to BassFan
(Second of two parts. To read part 1, click here.)
In the first part of this story, we revealed the true bottom line about who catches daily lunkers in the Bassmaster Elite Series. The lesson was pretty straightforward: If you want to catch a daily big bass in the Elite Series (or any tournament circuit with a similar format), you need to (1) catch a lot of bass; and (2) qualify for as many competition days as possible.
Simple.
The next step is a little more complicated, but also more revealing. I wanted to find out which anglers truly have the best chance of catching a daily lunker.
To get there, I used a basic formula. I took the number of daily big bass an angler has caught in Elite competition and divided it by the number of competition days he's fished. The result is the percentage of the time he's caught the daily big bass.
And since (historically) there are usually around 100 anglers in the field on the first 2 days, around 50 on day 3 and only 12 on day 4, an average angler should catch about 1 percent of the big bass on days 1 and 2, about 2 percent on day 3 and a little more than 8 percent on day 4. Overall, that works out to about 1.5 percent.
The numbers are a little rough, but only a little. What they tell us is interesting.
The Real 'Big-Bass Specialists'
In the end, I figure the real, honest-to-goodness big-bass fishermen are the guys who have twice the chance of the average angler to catch a daily lunker. After all, if you're twice the average at something, you're really good at it. Over time, it establishes that something is at work other than mere chance.
In the interest of fairness, I decided to include only those anglers who have fished the better part of 3 Elite seasons – 20 or more tournaments.
Here now are the Elites' real, honest-to-goodness, no hype, all by-the-numbers "big bass specialists":
1. Brandon Palaniuk -- 4.19 (40 events)
2. Todd Faircloth -- 2.98 (89)
3. Jason Christie -- 2.90 (24)
4. Kelly Jordon -- 2.59 (86)
5. Jonathon VanDam -- 2.48 (40)
6. Dean Rojas -- 2.39 (89)
7. Chris Zaldain -- 2.22 (32)
8. Edwin Evers -- 2.21 (89)
9. Greg Hackney -- 2.17 (89)
10. Hank Cherry -- 2.09 (24)
11. Aaron Martens -- 2.05 (89)
12. Brent Chapman -- 2.00 (89)
To explain those numbers, Brandon Palaniuk, in the top spot, is 4.19 times more likely than the average Elite angler to catch a daily big bass. (And he was the leader in this category even before catching daily big bass on the first 2 days of the Lake St. Clair event!) Brent Chapman is twice as likely at 2.00.
If the name of your favorite lunker hunter isn't there, it's because he's not as good as these guys when it comes to catching big fish. Plain and simple.
Sorry to break the bad news.
The only thing that troubles me about the list is the five anglers with the fewest Elite events on their résumés (Palaniuk, Christie, JVD, Zaldain and Cherry). Maybe their sample size is big enough … maybe it's not. Time will tell. (For now, though, Palaniuk's record – especially on smallmouth waters – is impressive.)
Jonathon VanDam catches a considerable number of lunkers even though his overall catch rate is lower than average.
The rest of the anglers on the list, though, are certainly the best big-bass anglers in the Elite field. They've been fishing the Series since its inception. Faircloth, Jordon and Rojas are exceptional and remarkably consistent at catching the biggest bass to be had on a wide variety of waters.
But Palaniuk and JVD also deserve to be singled out here for a very different reason. We noted that catching a lot of bass is an important part of the lunker recipe. Well, that's not how these two earned their stripes as big-bass anglers. Both bring fewer bass to the scales than the average Elite pro (4.40 and 4.35, respectively, while the average is 4.50). They're not catching a lot of bass, relatively speaking, but somehow they're catching at least some of the "right" ones.
Random Acts of Lunkerness
Ultimately, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that catching a tournament big bass is more random than winning a tournament. After all, you catch the tournament lunker on a single cast, whereas it takes 4 full days to win a tournament. For proof that lunker honors are far more random, take a look at the number of event winners in Elite history – 48. The number of anglers who have taken a tournament big bass is 33 percent higher at 64.
Does it mean catching a tournament big bass is a third more random (i.e., based upon luck) than winning a tournament? I think it does.
Nevertheless, there are some anglers who are a lot better at it than others. Now we know who they are – without the hype or the rhyming nicknames – and we have the numbers to back it up.
End part 2 (of 2)
(Ken Duke, the managing editor for Fishing Tackle Retailer, is a former senior editor of B.A.S.S. publications.)
