We’ve officially reached the busiest Majors weekend of the year. Both the Elite Series and FLW Tour will be hosting tournaments – the one at Douglas Lake and the other at Beaver Lake.
For one of those lakes (Beaver), we have a massive amount of data. The other (Douglas), not so much. But we’ll do our best for both. Let’s start crunching the numbers.
We flipped a coin and Douglas won, so we’ll start there (and end there quickly, considering it’s had two Major or Minors events since the year 2000).
Only four anglers have fished both events, and only two have noteworthy averages. Those pros would be Gerald Swindle (893.412) and David Walker (800.392). They say one is a fluke and two is a pattern. I guess that will have to do, then.
Another guy to watch may be Ott Defoe. He’s a local who finished seventh in a BASS Open last year. I wish we could be more helpful, but that’s all we have.
Now, Beaver Lake is a completely different story. The FLW Tour has been going there nearly every year since the turn of the century, so it’s pretty clear who the guys to watch are. In fact, you probably already know the guys to watch, but we’ll still give you a rundown.
Jay Yelas, Shinichi Fukae, Ray Scheide and Brent Ehrler all have averages above the 800 mark in the ten events held there since 2000, with David Dudley, Clark Wendlandt and Andy Morgan right behind them.
You want someone who’s been hot lately? Look at “Gentleman” George Cochran. In the last five years he has a 912.598 average at Beaver Lake. And no, that’s not a typo. In fact, if you get rid of that March event from last year and just look at the May events since 2008, Cochran’s average goes up to 965.020.
Other hot pro (not mentioned earlier) are Glenn Browne, Mark Rose, Greg Bohannan, Bryan Thrift and Jason Christie.
And we’ll give you one sleeper, who really isn’t a sleeper when you think about it – Travis Fox. He’s a local, and he’s been fishing better (statistically) than any other pro over the last year other than Edwin Evers.
