If Jacob Wheeler had not won REDCREST 2026 a week later, the practice vlog he just published would be hard to watch. Across roughly two days at Table Rock the four-time Bass Pro Tour Angler of the Year ran out of trolling-motor power, ran out of gas, hit a stump, prop-shotted a swimbait, hooked a fish on a bare hook cover with no lure attached, and admitted on camera he could probably make the top ten just hunkering down but did not feel he had enough to win.
The day-two opener was the kind of admission tournament fans rarely hear. "I got a lot of bites yesterday, but just a ton of fish," Wheeler said. "Didn't get like, oh, this zone's hot. It just gave me some film like there's bass everywhere, which is the worst thing when you cover a lot of water. I'm very spread out, which is not great to be honest with you."
A salt-and-eel-roll Texas-rigged on a quarter-ounce BMC tungsten head produced a constant grind of small fish. "Caught a ton of fish this morning already, but no scoreables," Wheeler said. "That's the thing — there's a lot of fish in this lake. But the guy who figures out how to catch the better than the average ones — the two-and-a-half, three pounders — is going to be the guy who typically does really well." Then a moment of unfiltered honesty: "I don't like these smallmouth at all. I like the idea of them. I don't like them personally."
The lights went out on the LiveScope before he even left the dock. The boat's electrical breaker had tripped overnight after Wheeler went to bed early, leaving the batteries on a quarter charge and the graphs dark. "No graphs," he said. "We're just going old school right here. Just running around. Literally no graphs in practice."
And then the fish on a hook cover happened. Trying to keep fish off so he could read a zone, Wheeler had a hook-point cover fitted to a swimbait — and pulled in a bass that had committed to bare rubber. "Caught that sucker with a hook guard," he laughed. The boat agreed: "You can't make this stuff up." Wheeler's own line was sharper: "That'd been a seven-pounder that got off with a regular hook on. That's how it is. Just that's always how it is."
He ran out of fuel on the way back. "Well, we're not trolling because we want to right now," Wheeler said. "So we ran out of gas, which I've never done. I don't think I've ever done that practice for a tournament. We just ran around a lot today." The agent was called in to grab his cameraman and the truck.
The vlog then cut to the Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Wheeler's Bass Pro Tour Angler of the Year acceptance speech, structured around a story about Andy Morgan in 2014. As a 23-year-old who had just won the BFL All-American, the Forrest Wood Cup and Bassfest, Wheeler thought he had "made it". Then he watched Andy Morgan refuse a dinner invite after day two of an FLW Tour event at Pickwick, drive straight to Kentucky Lake, and be back on the water at sunrise to ride lakes and take notes — what Wheeler now calls unseen reps.
"As a 23-year-old kid, I saw the bulldog in Andy Morgan," Wheeler said. "I remember that moment vividly because it fundamentally changed my perspective on the sport."
The lesson became a manifesto. "The irony is that once you make it as a professional bass angler, your real work has just begun. It's not time to let off the gas. It's time to step on it. In this sport, as with all great competition, complacency is killer."
For 2025, Wheeler used a day off at a Heavy Hitter on Smith Mountain Lake to drive three hours to the Potomac River and ride that water months ahead. "That move helped me seal the 2025 BPT Angler of the Year," he said. "My Andy Morgan moment had finally come full circle. I had found my beast mode."
His defence of the next generation was equally pointed. "Young anglers entering the pro fishing space today have more work ethic than any era before them. They know that you are only as good as your last tournament, not a championship you won six months ago. Dylan Knott just won the Bassmaster Classic. He didn't take a year off to rest on his laurels. Two days later, he was practicing for the Tackle Warehouse Invitational with his foot still on the gas."
The close had nothing to do with bass. "Do the work today to be better than you were yesterday. Better at your job, better as a spouse, better as a dad, better as a friend, and better as a person." Days later he won REDCREST.
