Spawners, shad spawn and swim jig key to win!
by Justin Onslow
FLW PRESS RELEASE
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| Shallow water spawners key to Cox win! (Photo: FLW) |
John Cox considers Lake
Chickamauga his favorite lake in the country. On Sunday, it cemented itself as
the lake that gave Cox his favorite and most memorable win.
With
21 pounds on Championship Sunday and 83-9 for the tournament, Cox won the FLW
Tour event on Chickamauga, presented by Evinrude, thanks in big part to a couple
trees the nine-year Tour pro forgot about until the waning moments of day four.
“I’m
telling you, it was an amazing day,” Cox says. “I can’t believe this. All day I
kept going and going. Right at the end… the last ten minutes was just unreal.
“It
was last-minute. I don’t know why, it just popped into [my] head, ‘Go to the
trees,’ and I went to them and it was unreal. It was the first cast to them.”
The
first cast he’s talking about is the cast that almost broke his heart. Cox
pulled up to the pair of trees he’d fished so many times before – but not once
during this tournament – with the clock ticking on the end of his day. He
hooked a big fish and lost it. It might have been a $100,000 fish.
Cox
then went to the next tree and landed a 4-pounder. And then right back to the
previous tree, where he’d just lost a big one, to land another 4-pounder, which
ultimately sealed the deal on his tournament-winning bag.
“I’m not going to lie, when I
caught those two fish real quick in the last 10 minutes, I got all worked up,”
he admits. “I’m running back and tears are coming out. I felt something. It
felt better than any other tournament any time I’ve won before. It was
overwhelming. I’m getting chills thinking about it. I’ve never felt like that
before.”
And
Cox has had some amazing wins. He already has more hardware than he knows what to do
with, including trophies from FLW Tour wins on Hartwell and the
Red River, as well as an FLW Cup win on Wheeler. But this one just felt
different.
“I
want it so bad,” he admits. “Champlain (the Tour’s final regular-season event),
I’ve been going there forever – since I was like 20. I really want to win there
too, but the AOY would be awesome.
“It’s
exciting. I really want to win the points. When you lose the points, it always
comes down to a dead fish or the top five or six not weighing a fish, not
having a limit a day. Whatever it is, it’s always so close. When you don’t win
the points and you tried so hard all year, it’s like losing 10 tournaments all
at one time. You feel sick. It’s the worst feeling ever.”
Cox
talks about how bad it feels to lose the AOY race, but he does it with a smile.
The DeBary, Fla., pro is always smiling. He’s always laughing. When things are
going well – and even when they aren’t – you’re not likely to see a downtrodden
John Cox.
So
even after Cox lost the lead to Matt Greenblatt on day two with his smallest
bag of the tournament, he wasn’t beating himself up. He came back the next day
and weighed in 19-15 to get right back in position to finish the job on Sunday.
Day
four didn’t quite start as Cox had planned, though. As Cox put it, he
“scrambled most of the tournament,” abandoning his sight-fishing pattern (or at
least forgoing it for a while) when the big females he had marked disappeared
and the weather turned ugly.
At that point, Cox turned to a
white 1/2-ounce Dirty Jigs swim jig with
a white Berkley PowerBait
MaxScent Meaty Chunk trailer. He used that bait to run
shallow water, blind-casting his way to a near-20-pound bag on day three.
But
on Sunday, that bite started to dry up. Fortunately, he was able to catch a big
bedding female he’d tried to catch all of the previous three days.
When
time was winding down and Cox needed a couple big fish, he turned back to his
sight-fishing go-to in the form of a 6-inch Berkley PowerBait
MaxScent The General stickbait in a baby bass color. He
didn’t use it in that capacity, though. He just used it to blind-cast to a
couple trees that would produce his winning 4-pounders.
Cox
is a sight-fishing extraordinaire, but he’s also just an all-around shallow-water
hammer. Part of that comes from experience, and his experience this week was
telling him to just go with his gut.
“I
was just kind of targeting wherever I felt a big one would be,” he explains. “I
mixed it up. I fished some sawgrass, some laydowns, some cypress trees,
straight banks. I just bounced around.”
That’s
the John Cox way, really: Fish what looks good and feels right. He does what he
does best and he does it better than anyone else.
Now,
the road ahead is clear for Cox. He’s one event away from an AOY title and the
FLW Tour trifecta: win a regular-season Tour event, win an FLW Cup and win AOY.
What
makes it all even better for Cox is that he’s going from his favorite lake to
his second-favorite, Champlain, at the end of June. And with all due respect to
Chickamauga, it’s hard to believe Champlain won’t claim the title of “favorite
lake” if he’s able to lock down Angler-of-the-Year honors on her waters.
It
all boils down to this: The 33-year-old Cox is already one of the best anglers
on the planet. His resume is superb. He’s a threat to win any event. And an AOY
title is back within his reach, and it’s his to lose.
This
time around, with all the momentum pushing him toward Champlain, Cox is as
hungry as he’s ever been. This time around, he’s out to prove something, and
he’ll do it with a smile on his face.
Top 10 pros
1. John Cox – DeBary, Fla. – 83-9
(20) – $102,700
2.
Buddy Gross – Chickamauga, Ga. – 81-14 (20) – $30,100
3.
Ron Nelson – Berrien Springs, Mich. – 80-5 (20) – $25,000
4.
Matt Greenblatt – Port St. Lucie, Fla. – 80-0 (20) – $20,000
5.
David Dudley – Lynchburg, Va. – 78-9 (20) – $19,000
6.
Ramie Colson Jr. – Cadiz, Ky. – 76-7 (20) – $18,000
7.
Alex Davis – Albertville, Ala. – 74-12 (20) – $17,000
8.
Jared McMillan – Belle Glade, Fla. – 74-12 (20) – $16,000
9.
David Williams – Maiden, N.C. – 69-9 (20) – $15,000
10.
Austin Felix – Eden Prairie, Minn. – 66-10 (20) – $14,000
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