I have no idea if I get anything from strike king or not. Havent been contacted by them. I sure hope its not nothing, I fish more SK baits than anything else.
Ive watched every year of flw for the last five years, so i know who to keep an eye on. Guys like Andy Morgan or Brian Thrift who have been top 10 AOY for like 8 years in a row, you cant ever count them out. Whos the newer guys doing well, whats the current fishing conditions on the lake theyre at and what are certain anglers strengths. I weight top ten finishes and avg finish then based on whos strengths should fish, also keeping in mind whos leading AOY currently. The numbers can at times be misleading, guys whove been at it for years can be weighted very heavy but not be doing well in recent years. Once I narrow down my top ten once, ill go back and inspect the angler individual against that body of water and see his record on that lake recently (again this doesnt always work). You can see guys who are fishing a lot on the same lake that are locals and tell they will sometimes do very well. The numbers also are misleading in that they are not all relative to the tour, they count sub tours too.
Soo the short answer is yes, I did A LOT of looking into each event. I did so much I never focused much as much on the Bass events as I dont know the angler strengths as well. I also missed the first three BASS events and knew id never be in the mix this season. At one point this season in FLW after bombing the first tournament I was 3rd overall in the world and I thought I had a great chance to win it all.Then I had two back to back very bad tournaments where the research above was wrong and guys who are VERY good did bad. That dropped me to 44th and 10th in the TW standings. My cup picks brought me back out of the hole.
One other thing I do is try to balance my team since FLW works on a limited budget format. In the early years you could stack your deck with all the best anglers. Funny, I didnt do well then. I try to keep my overall team average pretty high without having a lot of guys that cost less due to their ranks. BUT those bottom guys sometimes do VERY well too, Brandon Cobb had a phenominal year and was undervalued for a long time, so was Zach Birge. So if you werent paying attention to the current season and keeping tabs, they flew under the radar.