About the World Rankings

The BassFan World Rankings are the only statistical, multi-year, comprehensive rankings of the world's best professional bass anglers, and are the official World Rankings of the sport.

Why

The BassFan World Rankings were created in 2001 to answer a simple question — who is the best professional bass angler in the world ?— and to give fishing fans a way to track their favorite pros, as well as to show the non-fishing world that consistently catching fish isn't "just luck."

While the two leagues — ESPN-owned BASS and FLW Outdoors - have their own single-year point races (called Angler of the Year races, which are not rankings), and "power rankings" are starting to crop up in the sport, these are not World Rankings. World Rankings in all professional sports are complex, multi-year statistical endeavors simply because that's the only way to accurately and fairly show consistent performance over time.

Until BassFan did it, no one produced a statistical, multi-year ranking system for professional bass fishing using results from the top tours. These used to be the Bassmaster Tour and the FLW Tour, but as of January 2005 are the Bassmaster Elite Series, the Bassmaster Majors, the FLW Tour and the FLW Series. The BassFan World Rankings will also include results from other competitive (i.e., non-exhibition) tournaments that feature the world's top pros, like the Top Gun Championship.

How

Here's a brief overview of what's involved in calculating the BassFan World Rankings. (For confidentiality reasons, the proprietary methodology won't be discussed in detail.)

• The rankings are based on angler performance in top-level BASS and FLW Outdoors events. These events are the top ones in the sport and attract the top fishermen.
• Events are weighted based on strength of field (calculated using the BassFan World Rank of everyone in the field) and size of field, meaning that it's easier to do well in smaller-field events than larger-field ones.
• Bonus points are given for winning and for placing in the top 10% in all regular-season events. No bonuses are given for league Angler of the Year awards, points or standings because those data are already accounted for in the World Rankings methodology.
• Championships are treated differently than regular-season tournaments.
• The BassFan World Rankings methodology ensures that anglers who fish only one tour/series or league are not at a disadvantage vs. anglers who fish more than one. Rather, anglers who fish more events have more chances to do better - or worse - than anglers who fish fewer events. A simple example: six 5th-place finishes are better than three, and four 100th-place finishes are worse than two.
• The rankings use data from the current and immediately prior years only (a rolling 2 calendar years), and are updated after each major tournament.
• The rankings are not an indication of who is/was the best bass angler ever. That is not a World Rankings. It's a list.
• As with all World Rankings in all sports, the methodology used in the BassFan World Rankings calculation will change over time based on feedback from interested parties.
• Bassmaster Open, Bassmaster Northern/Southern Tour and FLW Stren (formerly EverStart) Series tournament data are not included in the BassFan World Rankings because these are "minor-league" or "triple-A" events.

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