Ranger Boats Pro Jacob Powroznik Earns First Tour-level Win
OutdoorHub 05.06.14
Ranger Pro Jacob Powroznik may be a rookie on the B.A.S.S. Elite Series, but after a decade of success on the FLW Tour there aren’t a lot of places the Virginia angler hasn’t been. He crossed two of them off on Sunday by winning the B.A.S.S. Elite Series event on Toledo Bend, notching up his first tour-level tournament win on a lake he had never fished before.
Running a Ranger Z20C Comanche®, Powroznik needed 19 pounds, 11 ounces on the final day to win his first major tournament by a final margin of 2 pounds, 6 ounces. His late-day, tournament-clinching heroics included a 7-pound, 13-ounce kicker and later a 5-pounder on his last cast of the event. With the win, Powroznik picked up $105,000 in first-place prize money, punched his ticket for the 2015 Bassmaster Classic, grabbed the lead in the B.A.S.S. Elite Series Rookie of the Year point standings and moved to fourth in the Angler of the Year race.
“You don’t get many opportunities to win one of these events. It’s so hard to do. To do it in my first year is a blessing,” said Powroznik, who was joined in the Top 3 by fellow Ranger Pro and B.A.S.S. Elite Series rookie, defending Forrest Wood Cup champion Randall Tharp. “You don’t often get chances to win. And to actually win, the only way I can describe it is it’s like winning the lottery – it’s that hard to do.”
Before he was an Elite Series “rookie” in contention for every major B.A.S.S. regular-season award, Powroznik made a name for himself on the FLW Tour where he has nine Top-10 finishes and finished in the Top-3 of the Angler of the Year race three times. Now with more than $1 million in career earnings to his credit, more than $900,000 of it came fishing FLW events the past decade where he has also amassed eight Forrest Wood Cup appearances.
“We’ve known for a long time how good an angler Jacob is and it was just a matter of time before he found himself atop the leader board on the final day,” said Ranger Boats Vice President of Marketing Bart Schad. “He’s capable of winning a lot more tournaments in his career and is already showing people that he’s a ‘rookie’ in name only.”
