NWKA Angler of the Year - History, Stats, and Facts

I believe NWKA's AOTY competition is truly unique in the array of competitive kayak fishing options in this region. It also has been such a fun and beneficial thing to compete in for me personally, and I love it. The community around it really makes it work and makes it fun and I'm proud of how well it's done over the years in spite of challenges.

As I occasionally crunch numbers for work, I thought it might be fun to start sharing some misc. notes, stats, and graphs about AOTY. Anything I post here is drawn from the publicly available data at the AOTY website unless otherwise mentioned.

Feel free to post your own insights, facts, or analyses!

Here are the AOTY Top Guns over the years.

Year - Winner - Score
2008 - Spot - 961.75
2009 - Spot - 1447.375
2010 - Zee - 1538.5
2011 - rawkfish - 1568.5
2012 - Fungunnin - 1849.375
2013 - yaktrap - 2049
2014 - Snopro - 1959.881
2015 - yaktrap - 2026.375
2016 - Merz - 1887
2017 - Snopro - 2066.375
2018 - Jimbob45 - 1969.625
2019 - Casey - 2038.75
2020 - jed - 2107.75
2021 - jed - 1920.625
2022 - jed - 1939.25
2023 - Nobaddays - 2047.25

Observations:

• jed is the only threepeat, with 3 consecutive wins.
• jed has the highest one year total at 2107pts, and is the only competitor to break the 2100 mark.
• Only yaktrap, Snopro, Casey, jed, and Nobaddays have broken the 2000 mark (this includes data not pictured here, when 2nd place was also 2000+ pts).
• Spot, yaktrap, and Snopro have all won twice.

Note:
The rules of the competition have evolved over the years, and there are more ways to get points now than there was historically, so don't draw too many conclusions regarding some of the older top scores. For example, yaktrap's score of 2049 in 2013 was earned when fewer options for points existed and was groundbreaking, and truly set the bar for everyone who came after him.

Thanks for sharing this. AOTY really is special. It really pushes people to learn new waters and ways to fish. It’s a great tool for learning and making friends

Updated above with 2023 results.

As mentioned in the first post, remember that the rules and points and eligible fish have evolved over time. I think the last major round of changes was for 2018, so we now have 5 years of data on the same rules. Of course the covid situation significantly impacted participation for several of those years.

Anyway, I thought this graph was interesting.

Watch out for me come year 2050.  That's when i will retire and plan on having time to compete haha.  Congrats to all the high scores!  It takes a lot of time and commitment to score 2000+

I love me some data!

Thanks Lauren!

12 years of my stats. Every year I say," this will be the year ".

12 years of my stats. Every year I say," this will be the year ".

2024 will definitely be the year.  Keep after it.