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The year of Yelas
Career balance, swimbaits and last-minute heroics bring Jay Yelas his second FLW
Angler of the Year title
By Rob Newell - 31.Jul.2007
 Three
weeks ago at the Detroit River event on the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, the 2007 Land
O’Lakes Angler of the Year title came down to a fish-by-fish race between two
former AOY winners: Jay Yelas and Shin Fukae.
What’s interesting about these two particular pros, who were both vying for
their second Angler of the Year title, is that they represent two very different
approaches to full-time professional fishing.
There is Fukae, who commits nearly every fiber of his being and every waking
minute of his existence to catching bass. His tenacious dedication to each
tournament is on par with Lance Armstrong training for a Tour de France.
The Japanese pro leaves one tournament and heads straight to another, often
practicing for weeks for each event. Other than his wife, Miyuki, who travels
with him, he has no family or home to visit, though his mailing address is
technically in Texas. Fukae is focused only on the next tournament.
Then there is Yelas, a 20-year accomplished veteran of the bass wars. When Yelas
is not at a tournament, he is spending time with his family, spending time at
his church, coaching his daughter’s softball team, fulfilling a myriad of
sponsor obligations, salmon fishing and, as of late, moving his family across
the country from Texas to Oregon.
And while it would have seemed logical to bet on Fukae going into the
fish-by-fish duel at Detroit for Angler of the Year honors, it was Yelas who
ended up on top with a season-ending total of 1,074 points, edging Fukae by 20
points, or the equivalent of about 3 pounds of bass at any event this year.
“It’s kind of a relief to know that a guy like me can still win a title like
this out here,” said Yelas, just days after taking his second FLW Tour title.
“It’s so ultracompetitive out here now. The bar has been raised so high. Guys
like Shin treat each tournament like an Olympic event. Their discipline and
dedication to catching bass is immeasurable.”
And Shin Fukae is not the only one. The FLW Tour is full of young, talented
fishermen looking to make it as full-time pros. What these hard chargers lack in
experience, they make up for with desire and time on the water.
Last year’s Land O’Lakes Angler of the Year, Folgers pro Anthony Gagliardi, is a
perfect example of the young, hungry anglers who direct nearly 100 percent of
their resources and faculties to tournament performance.
The fact that these dedicated young guns are always snapping at the heels of the
veterans makes Yelas’ 2007 crown all the more impressive.
“Honestly, the only time I work at bass fishing is when I’m at a tournament,”
Yelas said. “When I go home in between tournaments, catching a bass is the
furthest thing from my mind.
“I know a lot of these guys out here will fish tournaments for weeks in a row,
and the first thing they do when the get home is go fishing or go out in their
garage and start tying jigs or painting crankbaits for the next event – I can
assure you that’s not me,” Yelas laughed. “I throw all my stuff into the garage,
close it up and don’t look at it again until I have to leave for another
tournament.”
Yelas is quick to point out that this is not about a love loss for fishing, but
rather just where he is in his career is right now.
 “Don’t
get me wrong: In my younger days, I was a bass bum too. I was completely
consumed by bass fishing, and that’s all I did for weeks on end. But once you
start a family, things change; there are new priorities, responsibilities,
commitments and obligations. You realize there’s more to life than catching bass
– I think it’s just a natural maturation process.”
Ironically, Yelas contends that striking a balance between fishing and other
aspects of his life was critical to his fishing comfort level this year.
“Balance is the key for longevity in this sport,” Yelas offered. “If I
maintained the pace I did when I was in my 20s, I’d be burned out by now.
Staying motivated in this sport can be a problem after so many years, and the
secret to motivation for me is balance.
“Going home for a week or two, completely forgetting about bass fishing, and
spending time with my family and experiencing other things in life refreshes me.
When I head out for my next event, I’m hungry to fish again. I can’t wait to get
to the lake and get out there – it definitely keeps me fired up.”
A perfect example of this happened recently between the Potomac River and
Detroit River events when Yelas moved his family from east Texas to Oregon.
“I was leading the FLW Tour points after the Potomac, and here I was, moving
across the country,” he chuckled. “At first I thought it might be a major
distraction, but then I realized that’s exactly what I needed. Instead of
sitting around obsessing over how I was going to fish at Detroit for days on
end, we had a big moving adventure. I even took some time to go watch my alma
mater, Oregon State, win the World Series of college baseball. And it all
completely took my mind off fishing. I didn’t event think about catching a bass
until I got into my truck to go to Detroit. And when I got there, I was raring
to get on the water and figure them out – it was like I had not fished in
years.”
Yelas also noted that part of that critical balance this year was the pace of
FLW Outdoors events.
“For a couple of years there, I traveled two tours – BASS and FLW – fishing
about 18 to 20 events per year, and that just about fried me,” he said. “Between
the FLW Tour and the FLW Series, there are about 10 to 12 professional events
per year to fish, and that pace fits me perfectly, leaving me time to do other
things.”
From 2002 to 2003, Yelas had a run of success that forever solidified him as a
legend in professional tournament fishing. He won the Bassmaster Classic in
2002, captured his first FLW
Tour Angler of the Year title in 2002 and then turned around to win the BASS
Angler of the Year title in 2003.
“That was a great run, but things have been a little quiet since then,” Yelas
admitted. “I’ve made top-10 cuts and championships, but there have been no wins,
and I feel I’ve kind of slipped away from that upper tier of competitors in the
last few years. So winning this title puts me back up there.”
Swimbaits + Gulp! = AOY
As for the fishing end of Yelas’ winning season, he can sum it up in three
words: swimbaits and Gulp!
“That was the one-two punch for me all year,” Yelas said. “The swimbaits played
a bigger role at Loudon, Norman and Beaver, but drop-shotting Berkley Gulp at
Travis and Detroit helped seal the deal.”
Yelas used several swimbaits throughout the year, but one in particular – a
6-inch paddle-tail model that must be Texas-rigged on a weighted hook – was most
definitely the driver in his bag.
Interestingly, Yelas has expressly requested that the company’s name who makes
the swimbait not be mentioned in print.
“It’s just one of those things I’m trying to keep quiet for just a while
longer,” he said. “Plus, I really don’t have an obligation to the company to
promote its product. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on their lures, and I still
pay full retail for them. If it was a company that sponsored me, it would be
different. I’d certainly be more vocal about it.”
In another odd twist, Yelas actually discovered the swimbait while fishing a PAA
event on Lake Fork this spring.
“Every Angler of the Year has that one defining moment where his season takes a
drastic change for the better,” Yelas said. “Ironically for me, that moment came
in a tournament where I was not even acquiring FLW Tour points.
“I was fishing with BASS pro Jimmy Mason in that PAA tournament, and he had just
come from the Clear Lake BASS event where they caught all those giant bass on
swimbaits. He pulled out this one swimbait and began clobbering big bass on it.
Those four hours of watching Jimmy catch those big bass on that swimbait changed
my whole season.”
Yelas immediately ordered some of the swimbaits, and at the very next FLW Tour
event on Lake Norman, he personally experienced what a swimbait can produce.
After using it on and off during the event to make the top 10, Yelas was in
ninth place going into the last day. With nothing to lose, he glued the swimbait
into his hands and never put it down. He got just five bites that final day, but
the limit weighed 16 pounds, 6 ounces, rocketing him into second place.
“From that point on, that swimbait became an extension of myself,” Yelas
confirmed. “And here’s the part I really don’t know how to explain: For some
reason, I just inherently knew where and when to throw that swimbait. It just
felt right in my hands every time I picked it up.
After his runner-up at Norman, he used the swimbait for four days in a row at
the Wal-Mart Open on Beaver Lake to finish second on it again.
“I purposely began looking for water that was suited for it. In practice,
instead of pulling up to good-looking water and thinking, Well, what should I
throw here? I drove around with that swimbait strapped to the deck saying, ‘I’m
not going to stop and fish until I find water that’s right for the swimbait.’
And I did that for the rest of the year.”
What still puzzles Yelas is whether the swimbait’s effectiveness was real or
perceived.
“Did the fish really like a swimbait that much more than other baits?” he
questioned. “Or is it all in my head? Did the confidence I exude when I fished
with that bait make the difference? That’s one of those mysterious things about
fishing I don’t know if we’ll ever understand.”
Yelas points out that by Beaver Lake, a lot of his competitors had the exact
swimbait he was using, but no one seemed to score on it like he did the rest of
the season.
Although he did not use it at the Potomac – opting for a jig instead – he did
pick it back up at the Detroit River.
“I caught some nice ones on it at Detroit,” he said. “And I didn’t hear about
anyone else catching fish on it there. So that leads me to believe that it’s not
so much the actual lure, but rather the amount of confidence I have in it that
gave me the edge this year. It’s been a long time since I’ve had that much
confidence in a single lure.”
Yelas’ swimbait kind of blows a hole in the “Theory of Versatility,” which
states that an angler needs to be versatile to win a season-long points title.
But as Yelas points out, each time he has won an AOY title, he has been
dedicated to one bait for an entire season.
 “When
I won the BASS Angler of the Year in 2003, that was a spinnerbait year for me,”
he said. “And then when I won the FLW Tour Angler of the Year in 2002, that was
spinning-rod year – I fished light line and finesse plastics that entire season.
Then this year it has been the swimbait that dominated my year.”
In Yelas’ reflection of the season, he sees his fishing as being a small
business.
“Just like in any business, you have to keep up with the new trends and
techniques to make your business more efficient,” he related. “If a guy runs a
big hotel over there in downtown Detroit, and he does not have the capability to
reserve his rooms online or does not have a credit card machine to guarantee
reservations, he’s going to lose business.
“I see fishing the same way. If there is a better, more efficient way of doing
business – such as using a swimbait instead of a spinnerbait or using Berkley’s
new scent technology with Gulp on a drop-shot instead of regular tube on a
leadhead – I’m going to use it to get an edge on my competition.”
Fishing still a passion
Though Yelas spends less time on the water these days and does not organize and
prepare tackle with the same obsessiveness as he did in years past, he still has
a love for the game of tournament bass fishing.
“I love the strategy of tournament angling; to me it’s an art form,” Yelas
expressed. “It’s like a big chess match. I really love patterning fish,
assessing fishing pressure and managing water accordingly with various lures.
After all these years, that’s the part that still gets me excited.”
Over the last few years, Yelas has acquired a taste for being in a rather
precarious position during tournament hours.
“I’ve now gotten to the point where I welcome those times when it’s noon and I
don’t have but maybe one or two fish in the box,” he revealed. “I know that
soundd really strange, but for years I used to get so stressed out about not
catching a limit in the first hour of the day, and mentally I was toast. Now
I’ve grown so calloused to not catching fish in the first two or three hours of
the day that emotionally it does not bother me. And the more I back myself in a
corner during the day, the more my focus and intensity grow.”
Several times this season, Yelas pulled out some of his best heroics in the
closing hours of an event.
“After day one in Detroit, Shin got ahead of me in the points,” Yelas recounted.
“And the next day I only had three fish in my livewell at noon. I only had two
hours to fish, and during that time I boated the three biggest fish I caught
during the tournament, culled up to 18 pounds and took the lead back. To me that
is really satisfying to have my back up against the wall like that and still
pull it out. That’s been one of the fun parts of this season.”
So how was the 2007 FLW Tour Angler of the Year preparing for the Forrest Wood
Cup two weeks before the event?
“I should probably get a few lures ready for Ouachita,” he responded. “But you
know what? Spending my time doing other things that I enjoy before fishing major
tournaments has worked for me all season, and I’m not about to change it now.
I’ll think about Ouachita when I get there.”
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