Jacob Wheeler does not lose top-10 finishes easily, but the reigning Fishing Clash Angler of the Year and recently crowned REDCREST champion had to grind for this one. At the Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour's Stage 5 on Beaver Lake in Arkansas, Wheeler clawed his way into the knockout-round cut and ultimately finished eighth — his 43rd top-10 in the BPT.
It rarely looked comfortable. With the cut line hovering around 30 pounds, Wheeler's carefully built rotation of flooded grass and boat docks was thrown off early when other anglers moved into his water. "I got in an area, I had a rotation yesterday — worked really well — and it sort of got interrupted today," he explained. "That made it a little bit more difficult."
His answer was a chatterbait with a Z-Man Freeloader trailer and a Crush City "Janitor" worked high in the water column, picking off scoreable bass as the shad spawn flickered on and off. Except, this week, it barely flickered at all. Borrowing a phrase coined by fellow pro AJ Allen Jones, Wheeler dubbed the conditions the "sad spawn." "The shad are not spawning," he said. "It's the absolute worst conditions you could ask for for a shad spawn — first thing in the morning with bluebird skies, the coldest morning yet."
Despite the obstacles, Wheeler did what the sport's best routinely do: he maximised a mediocre hand. Mixing smallmouth caught on a 30-minute run down the lake with largemouth and spotted bass up the river, he scraped together the weight needed to survive each period. "I just maximised everything that I had and was able to make a top-10 off of what I did have," he said. "Not complaining by any means."
His pre-tournament maths underlined just how stacked the field was. "Sixty pounds is probably what it takes to win," Wheeler estimated. "Forty-five to sixty is what I'm thinking." That total proved beyond him over the championship round, where eventual winner Cole Floyd put on a clinic. "Cole Floyd never even turned his forward-facing sonar on — caught 44 pounds," Wheeler noted. "He's going to be tough." Wheeler made a point of congratulating Floyd on the win.
The Angler of the Year race added another layer. Sitting three points clear of rival Brandon Burge heading into the final day, Wheeler ultimately came up just short. "We'll be just one point out of the Angler of the Year race," he said afterwards. "Every single point matters. Every single turn matters. So you just have to keep battling hard."
What made the week genuinely difficult, though, had nothing to do with bass. Midway through the event, Wheeler revealed his wife was in hospital. "My wife, she's in the hospital right now," he told viewers. "They're trying to figure out — she has a couple of masses in her leg. She's in a lot of pain. So it's been weighing on my mind." Driving through the night after the final round to be with her ahead of a biopsy, he asked supporters to "keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we navigate that."
For all the frustration of the "sad spawn" and a rotation that never quite clicked, Wheeler kept perspective. "That's our 43rd top-10 in the BPT. That's insane," he said. "That was stressful, though." It was the kind of result that does not win headlines but quietly keeps a champion in the title hunt — and a reminder that even the best in the business are fishing through far more than just a tough bite.