Zack Birge spent Saturday bobbing around on a wind-hammered Lake Erie, feeling sick, and won the biggest title of his career doing it.
The Oklahoma pro clinched the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year title during the Knockout Round at Suzuki Marine Stage 7 in Sandusky, Ohio, the final Bass Pro Tour event of 2026. The award is worth $100,000. It is his first, and it comes at the expense of Jacob Wheeler, who had taken four of the previous five.
Birge went into the week with a 12-point lead and a simple assignment: finish 11th or better on Saturday and Wheeler could not catch him. Wheeler made the maths uncomfortable immediately, putting 57 pounds on SCORETRACKER in the opening period and finishing the day on top with 70 pounds, 11 ounces from 25 scorable bass. Birge, meanwhile, slid as far back as ninth around the midpoint of Period 3.
He caught five scorable bass for 13-9 in the final 80 minutes to climb to fourth and end it.
"I never thought I'd be in a position to say I had an opportunity for Angler of the Year against all these guys that are so good," Birge said shortly after lines out. "It's freakin' awesome, I know that. I've had so many good things happen this year, so many good events. [...] I'll probably never have a year like this again, but it sure does feel good to get one."
The season reads like a misprint. Fourth at Guntersville, 15th at Hartwell, a runaway win at Stage 3 on Lake Waco, eighth at O.H. Ivie and Brownwood, third at REDCREST, fourth at Beaver Lake, third at Grand Lake. Seven Top 10s in eight Bass Pro Tour events, plus two NPFL wins on the side. Speaking to MLF's Joel Shangle before Stage 7, Birge put it down to decision-making rather than anything mechanical.
"I wish I had some secret sauce, but this year probably just boils down to good decisions - doing what I think is right when I think it's right and not second-guessing," he said. "I used to have second thoughts and think about doing certain things during a tournament day, but then very seldom would I actually do the thing."
Rick Pierce, the longtime president of Bass Cat Boats, has known Birge since he was a kid and puts the season down to something narrower: he stopped trying to be everything.
"I think he's just starting to dial in on his style," Pierce said. "I think prior times, going into the years, he was trying to be a lot more versatile instead of trying to focus on his strengths."
Those strengths are shallow power fishing - a bladed jig or a swim jig, which accounted for what Birge estimates is 99 percent of his weight this year. Erie forced him off them anyway. His largemouth quit on Day 2, and he ran offshore and stacked nearly 40 pounds in the back half of the day, then committed to spinning rods and smallmouth for all of Saturday.
"It's scary catching big smallmouth on spinning rods and light line," he said. "You're always going to lose some; you're going to break some off. But it was the best opportunity I had to have a decent finish and do well, so I had to stick with it."
He only had those offshore areas because Bryan Thrift told him to go get them. Birge does not normally pre-practice; after Grand Lake, Thrift walked past and asked whether he was going to Erie. Birge said no.
"And he said, 'You better take your butt to Erie,'" Birge recalled. "And I thought about it for a second. I was like, 'You know what? He's right.'" He drove straight there and got four days in before the lake went off-limits.
The pressure was visible on the livestream. Birge threatened more than once to be sick on camera.
"It stressed me out all week," he said. "I didn't sleep the night before the tournament. I didn't sleep the second day. I didn't sleep last night. I'll bet you I sleep really good tonight."
"If I don't catch 100 pounds," Floyd said, "I'm going to be a little disappointed, honestly."
Birge is not done for the year either. His Waco win locked him into The Champions at Old Hickory Lake on October 29-31, which pays a record $1.25 million to the winner out of a $3.25 million purse. He also still has an outside shot at the best average finish in a Bass Pro Tour season - Wheeler's 2022 mark - if he finishes first or second on Sunday.
Beating Wheeler at all is the part he keeps returning to.
"Jacob's always a contender for Top 10s; he's always a contender to win an event, every single one we fish," Birge said. "AOY, he's always in the running for it. He's one of the absolute best. And I can't say that I've beat him many times, but I can at least say that I got him once."
Birge, 35, lives in Blanchard, Oklahoma, with his wife Kristina and their two children, and won a College BASS National Championship for Oklahoma State in 2012. As he told the Newcastle Pacer earlier this year: "Fishing is what kept me in college."
