It’s rare that you get a perfectly consistent rookie at the national level, and this year’s Polaris Rookie of the Year race is proving that. While the top three pros in Angler of the Year points have been downright deadly, the ROY side is much more of a mixed bag. Still, it’s not without plenty of highlights, and the title race at the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals will be a good one this summer.
1. Reinkemeyer moves up
The Lake of the Ozarks stop was no slouch with Missouri’s big pole crop at the Invitationals, but Andy Newcomb was the only Show Me State angler to make the Top 10. Finish 17.th, Brock Reinkemeyer put in a super consistent performance to move up the leaderboard every day and take the lead for Rookie of the Year. With five places in the standings, Reinkemeyer is now in ninth place overall, and above the rookies with 668 points.
Truman Lake guide Reinkemeyer is fishing very well this year, starting with a 53rd-place submission in Okeechobee.
“My goal was just to make the Top 50 a couple of times, honestly,” Reinkemeyer said. “Okeechobee hurt my feelings a little bit, but I said, ‘Well, I can do this.’ Clarks Hill was good and I kept the momentum going. Those three days of practice are crucial, you have to go height for three days. Sun at dusk. If you don’t, they beat you, especially if you’ve never been there.”
Now with three Top 50s under his belt, Reinkemeyer has plenty of opportunities ahead of him.
“I feel great, I just need to play two more good tournaments and I’ll be there,” he said. “Before Lake of the Ozarks I was 14 years oldthand I said, ‘Damn, I’ve got a shot at this.'”
As for the stretch run, Reinkemeyer knows he has little experience. Other than an October trip to the upper Mississippi River, he has never seen the next two stops.
“I’m just winging it,” he said. “It’s all grass instead of rocks and wood, but I don’t care. I had fun in Okeechobee, I don’t mind throwing the old ChatterBait.”
2. Steady does it for Villines
Scotty Villines nearly made the Top 50 at Lake of the Ozarks and only dropped two spots in the overall standings, but moved up among the rookies, moving from third to second. The owner of Buffalo River Hardwoods, a custom flooring shop in Arkansas, Villines’ season is a case study in how moments can affect the point standings. To open in Okeechobee, he lost a 6-pounder. Then on Day 1 at Lake of the Ozarks, he lost a 2 ½ pounder that would have put him in the cut and fishing on Day 3.
After boxing a small limit to start Lake of the Ozarks, Villines ran into a big bass he had tagged.
“I ran up there and spent several hours checking. Long story short, I only saw one, the rest were gone,” he said. “So I knew there were quality fish up there, I thought I’d spend the rest of the day out there and get bitten. And it never happened, I never got a big bite.
“On the second day I stayed among them [Public Beach 2] and Carrot Bluff, and it worked,” he recalled. “There were more quality fish in those streams than I realized. I probably left a 17- or 18-pound bag in the beds up there, I would have loved to have done Day 3.”
While Villines has dropped to 13th in the overall standings, he is now just 21 points off the top of the rookies.
“I’m actually closer in points than when I was 11th”, said Villines. “This section has tightened up. We’re all close. But, I missed a good opportunity to drop another 20 or 30 points on the board. ROY is going to be very volatile these next two tournaments. I think Potomac is going to be the shaker, and La Crosse too, because it can be fickle. The Potomac will set up the showdown in the last one.”
Luckily for Villines, he likes it very much.
“I’m optimistic about the Potomac,” he said. “I’ve been there once, last year they had co-anglers on the FLW Tour, and I saw some water. I was able to see quite a bit of it, and every time I’m on the grass, I like that.”
3. Hard sled home sinks Harlin
Dropping nine spots in the standings after Lake of the Ozarks, Michael Harlin finished 96th.th but he averted disaster. With just four fish on Day 1, he bounced back with 14-10 on Day 2 to move up the leaderboard. After the event, Harlin is now 14 years oldth in the classification with 645 points.
“I’ve been kicking myself a lot,” Harlin said of his performance in the home pond. “I should have gone and caught a limit, and it’s not hard to do. That’s what I did on Day 2. I went and jumped a crazy rig, and I don’t know how many fish I caught in the first hour.
“The first day, he got too personal with some of the bed fish. I’ve never had that much trouble catching them before. Then, looking at the highlights, it looked like those guys were just catching really obvious ones. I was catching -some in 5 feet of water that could barely be seen and weren’t closed.”
To make matters worse, Harlin el Dia’s charge was dampened by a couple of missed key fish. So he also has it to repeat in his head.
“Looking back, I was just fishing to win,” Harlin thought. “I was fishing to win, and I shouldn’t have done that. I was in too good a spot to do that. And now we are here. It didn’t kill me too badly, but it did.”
Now, Harlin is still in the thick of the ROY race, but his path to making the BPT just got a lot tougher.
“If I could get a Top 10 or two, I think I could still qualify,” he said. “I just have to get them, honestly, it’s a little bit easier, less pressure, you just have to go get them. It’s just going to be ground, La Crosse is going to be interesting, because ¼ pound or ½ pound means a lot there.”
4. Cunningham is steadily increasing
Reigning American Phoenix Bass Fishing League champion Connor Cunningham finished 100th to begin his professional career in Okeechobee. Since then, it’s been nothing but solid finishes, with an eighth at Clarks Hill, then two Top 30s at Eufaula and Lake of the Ozarks.
“I think it’s been good so far,” Cunningham said of his rookie season. “I didn’t expect it to go so well, but man, this Okeechobee event is really haunting me. I always start any tournament circuit with a total bomb, I don’t want to kid myself, but somehow I’m slowly working my way back “.
For Cunningham, one theme of the season has been how an Ozark upbringing has served him nationally.
“I’m really learning how everything you learn in the Ozarks applies anywhere you go,” he said. “Clarks Hill was a revelation. I really researched it a lot – to get eighth place there fishing the way I like to fish dirty water was amazing. I was sure this would be mastered with LiveScope. It was a great moment of learning: Go fish your strengths and see how it goes. For example, Lake of the Ozarks, don’t try to sight fish against John Cox. He brought his strength to that tournament and look where it’s taken him.”
Movers and shakers
Notably, many of the top rookies now are those who have made big moves in the standings recently. While Jaden Parrish has remained fairly steady, a group of other recent risers have made big gains at Lake of the Ozarks.
In fifth and sixth among the rookies, Marshall Robinson and Drew Gill moved up 18 and 21 places respectively. In eighth place, Jordan Hirt rose 23 places and fell 11th Andrew Nordbye rose 38 places. This type of move is not uncommon among rookies, and it shows just how much fun this race could be.
Top 25 rookies after Lake of the Ozarks
9. Brock Reinkemeyer – 668 points
13. Scotty Villines – 647
14. Michael Harlin – 645
15. Connor Cunningham – 644
16. Marshall Robinson – 635
17. Drew Gill – 623
21. Jaden Parrish – 609
26. Jordan Hirt – 591
29. Spike Stoker – 583
34. Hunter Eubanks – 572
36. Andrew Nordbye – 566
39. Cody Spetz – 562
40. Kyle Schutta – 560
42. Derrick Hudson – 557
45. Cole Breeden – 555
49. Drew Boggs – 551
50. Eric Panzironi – 546
52. Hunter Mills – 544
53. Travis Harriman – 536
56. Jordan Collom – 530
58. Jack Daniel Williams – 527
59. Sean Anderson – 525
61. Brad Jelinek – 523
64. Andrew Behnke – 517
65. Blake Felix – 517
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