Drew Cook

Like we mentioned, not a top 10, but the consistency is what pulled him over the finish line.

I think another angler that we would be remiss in not mentioning in the last two or three years would be Drew Cook.

Drew Cook went into the final tournament with a real shot at being in that final day Angler of the Year conversation.

Did not have his greatest tournament, but he has been sniffing around the top of that AOI points race for so many years.

He just seems to always be in the mix.

One of these years, Drew Cook is definitely, in my opinion, going to get an AOI title as well.

Yep, this was a really close one for him this year.

Like you said, one of the cool things as a spectator going into this last event was having Corey, Trey, and Drew within one point of each other going into it.

That early May period, there's always gonna be fish in the South still spawning there.

So I know Drew Cook, who calls Tallahassee and, and Quincy, Florida back in the day home, now he lives in Cairo, Georgia.

The fact the, of the matter is, is Drew Benton, Drew Cook licking their chops when you think about Lake Seminole.

But man, I think we're gonna see a fruitful lake.

You're gonna have grass everywhere.

Trey McKinney, Talk of the Year.

Between him and Corey Johnston, pretty much, Drew Cook was in the mix for a minute.

uh securing that angler of the year victory and i was super excited to see a new guy not new guy but a new winner uh hoist one of those blue trophies and that goes to evan kung for dominating with 109 plus pounds setting records of smallmouth up there in the st lawrence river they just keep growing i love a man um so elite series wrapped up uh bpt are they done seth

Yeah, they finished when Zach won AOI up on Erie.

Yeah, exactly.

Speaking of CodeWriters, Drew Cook, who is a classic and contemporary text adventure developer, podcaster, general man about town, he invites you to watch him code on what he's calling the Informed Trail Camera, which, I mean, it's really just a Twitch channel with a text adventure coder name, and it does what it says.

It streams his informed dev environment to your network device, but that's what marketing is for, given fun branding to... relatively workaday kind of tasks.

So I encourage you to check that out on twitch.tv slash informed trail camera.

But, no, it's been an exciting year, and kudos to Eric and the whole team that put together a great 2026 schedule, quite a diverse array of rivers and lakes with the 50-50 forward-facing and non-forward-facing.

And then we end up getting one of the tightest AOI races where – you know it wasn't the normal oh you can you can barely you can't really slip in one event with that format and the different fisheries we had we've had multiple of our leaders slip a few times throughout the year uh and and really it's made for a tight uh tightening of the belts in the last one with cory and trey being the names that everyone's talked about but man coming into this event i just felt a certain way about drew cook like it's it's three different feelings man it's I think Drew Cook wins it because Drew Cook's got three top tens in a row and he's the hottest angler of those three right now.

And then it's like, I feel like Corey should win it being within two points.

And it's a fishery that he's done so well at, but then it's like, I want Trey to win because Trey finished in second in both classics.

So there's three different feelings there, three different thoughts.

But man, if I put on my objective hat...

It's hard to look past Corey, but man, I just feel like Drew Cook's the only one no one's talking about.

And he's just right there with it.

I got the poll going in the, uh, the YouTube chat.

Who's gonna win Bassmaster ALI? Trey, Drew, or Corey? Right now it's 60% Corey, 35% Trey, and nobody is voting for our guy Drew, Drew Cook.

Nobody believes Drew Cook can beat Trey and Corey, even though he's in second place and he owns the tiebreaker.

So if Drew Cook wins the tournament, no matter what, even though he's in second, he's only one point back, he owns the tiebreaker over Trey, so he would win ALI.

He also wins the three-way tiebreaker and he wins the ha- head-to-head against Corey Johnson.

Uh, so it's not impossible.

I mean, I can see why Corey Johnson's getting a lot of love, but nobody-- I mean, Drew Dobbins' guy, he's on a heck of a season this year.

What's up, DT? [laughs] All right, well, I'll make sure I post it to social, Sam, so you're gonna be in the know.

Cause the guy in third, uh, Is the guy that everybody's pointing, well, that's going to, you know what I mean? Like that, they got to beat him, right? I mean, I don't think, is that an insult to say that? Like that's what the belief is.

But you know, Drew Cook and Trey McKinney are like in the zone right now, right? So who's going to get in Corey's way at his spots? Um, does he have some new spots that no one knows about?

Yeah, but dude, I mean, a lot has been made about that one spot.

I mean that, that was, first of all, here's the joke of that whole fable tale about Corey and rubber.

But I think that that screams.

If you go through, you got Trey McKinney leading right now, obviously a scoper.

Drew Cook, Corey Johnston, Bob Downey, Brandon

Cobb, Cole