2020 FLW Tackle Warehouse Championship Sturgeon Bay Group B: John Cox Continues to Crush!

New format? New fishery? No practice? No problem.

FLW PRESS RELEASE

Fresh off the Elites, Cox continues smallmouth smash.
(Photo: FLW)

After a full-out runaway on Monday by Kurt Mitchell in the first Qualifying Round of the Tackle Warehouse TITLE presented by Toyota, Florida pro John Cox rolled into Sturgeon Bay around 10:30 p.m. Monday night following a 9-hour drive from a tournament on Lake St. Clair in Michigan. The Florida pro showed up at takeoff at 6:10 a.m. on Tuesday, picked up his STAT unit and official, and backed his boat into the water at Sawyer Park for his first-ever look at Sturgeon Bay.

“I guess we’ll just go practice and see how this goes,” Cox joked as he headed toward the ramp.

The plan went pretty darn well (after a few hiccups). The Berkley pro connected with 18 smallmouths for 66 pounds, 5 ounces to hold off Spencer Shuffield (61-2) and Joey Cifuentes (60-6) for the lead in Group B.

After plinking around docks and seawalls for nearly two hours without a scorable fish (and losing a couple of fish that he identified as 5-pounders), Cox connected with a 4-9 to get on the positive side of SCORETRACKER® late in the first period. The Berkley pro chipped away for the rest of the day with a drop-shot armed with Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Flat Worm and a MaxScent Flatnose Minnow, connecting with several quality smallmouth: he caught two 4-10s to work his way into the top five, and took the lead briefly two times in the second period with a pair of 4-11s.

Cox claimed the lead for good an hour into the final period with back-to-back 5-pounders – a 5-2 and a 5-1 that bit in a 4-minute span just as Cox was contemplating a move to another spot.

2019 FLW Cup Lake Hamilton Day 2: Bryan Thrift Leads with 27-10 lbs!

Canadians Luzak 17th & Johnston 46th

By Curtis Niedermier 

FLW PRESS RELEASE

Thrift readies for his first FLW Cup Championship.
(Photo: FLW)

For the second day in a row, Shelby, N.C., pro Bryan Thrift will go to bed with the lead in the 2019 FLW Cup at Lake Hamilton. Today, Thrift weighed in 12 pounds, 7 ounces for a two-day total of 27-10. He leads Florida pro Kyle Walters by 1 1/2 pounds.

For the most part, the pros who made the top 10 this week seem very confident that the final day could be the best of the week – a slugfest by Hamilton standards. Sunshine makes the bite go at Lake Hamilton this time of year, and there’s sunshine in the forecast. 

Thrift is the exception. He isn’t sure what to expect.

For the last two days, Thrift has run all over Hamilton, fishing deep, fishing shallow and having to scrape and claw for every bite. He thinks the fishing pressure has taken its toll, but what makes him most uncomfortable is that he’s not dialed in well enough to know that he can pull up on specific spots and get bit in expected ways.

“I don’t know where I can go catch one,” Thrift says. “I know where to throw, but I don’t know where I can catch one. And I don’t like that.

“Nothing seems to outshine anything else,” he adds. “I’ve caught some on reaction baits. I’ve caught some dragging worms. I’ve caught some on topwater. It’s just kind of a hodgepodge of anything.”

Thrift only had six keeper bites today. The morning bite was really slow for everyone, especially for the leader. He only had two fish by 1 o’clock. 

That’s when the former Angler of the Year made a key adjustment. 

“I just kind of put my head down and just made myself slow down and milk an area out and finally caught a limit,” he says.