John Cox Wins Chickamauga BASS Open
"If I had to pick anywhere to fish a Classic, that would be the place," he said. "I've seen it in a lot of different stages and it feels like home there. "It fishes so big and everybody can spread out - it's almost like you can get lost. And you can do your own thing because there's so many pattern options." Cox went to Chickamauga hoping he could get away with doing little other than looking at fish in extremely shallow water and trying to entice them to bite. "I really enjoy sight-fishing and I was figuring this was probably the last tournament of the year where I'd be doing a lot of it, so I at least wanted to go and enjoy it and catch some big ones," he said. He waypointed a good number of fish during practice that were in excess of 4 pounds, but then the water level rose about 2 1/2 feet prior to day 1 of competition. That made his task more difficult in one respect (the fish were harder to visually locate), but easier in another (he had less competition for the bed-dwellers). "When the water came up and people couldn't see those fish anymore, a lot of them just gave up on sight-fishing."
Competition:
The fish Cox had marked in practice included three in the 8- to 9-pound class, but by the first competition day the water had gotten much too high to determine whether they were still there. He could find only five of the spawners he'd pinpointed. "Luckily, they were five good ones," he said. He started day 2 in 5th place, just over three pounds off the pace set by Hunter Shryock. He came back with a bag that was identical to the one Shryock had weighed the previous day and took over the lead for good. That stringer was anchored by a 9-pounder that ended up being the only fish he took to the scale that he wasn't looking at when it bit. He also believes it was one of only two females he weighed in - the others were all chunky nest-guarding males. He'd spied the bruiser near a piece of wood, but it had quickly swum out of sight, and he decided to go back and make a few blind casts to where it'd been just before departing the area. He picked up a spinning outfit with 8-pound line and pitched a Senko to the stick-up, and almost immediately his line started moving away. "The next thing I know, it's got my line out past the blood knot and into my backing," he said. "And then it jumped like a tarpon - it was the scariest fish-catch of my entire life." He eventually got it close to the boat, but the ordeal was far from over.
"If it'd been an FLW Tour event I could've netted that fish 10 times, but you can't use a net in B.A.S.S. events. When it was finally (exhausted) I tried to ease it over and grab it and it was like dragging a log through the water, there was so much resistance. "When I finally got it in I was having chest pains and I had to take three or four Advil. I felt sick." Later that day he found two good fish within a short distance of each other that he could start the final day on. He pulled in the next morning and went to the one that was slightly bigger, and Shryock immediately sat down on the other one. Cox caught his fairly quickly and left to search for more. He recalled a pocket he'd visited in practice that had been inundated with mud and he decided to go back and see if it had cleared up. It had, and he quickly found a bed that contained a 3 1/2-pound male and a female that was close to 5. He had no trouble catching the male, but its mate was another matter. She was skittish and kept swimming away, and wouldn't immediately return on several occasions. After he'd worked on the fish for 75 minutes with no success, he was ready to move on. But as he was pulling up his Power-Poles, he looked down one more time and saw a tell-tale sign. "Every fish I caught acted the same, and that's not normal - they're usually all different," he said. "Almost all of them took at least 30 to 45 minutes before I got them to bite, and right before they ate they'd do this little thing with their fins and their tale. I could almost call my shot. "When I looked that last time, I saw that fish do that, so I threw back in there and she inhaled it. It was awesome!"
There was still one more adventure awaiting, however. With an hour and a half remaining in the day, he found a 3 1/2-pounder and inadvertently hooked it in the back with his first toss. He made a split-second decision to reach for his scissors and at the rod rather than bring the foul-hooked fish to the boat and then be forced to release it. He picked up another rod and threw back to it, and it consumed his offering. He got his other hook and bait back before dropping it into the livewell. He ended up with more weight than he thought he had. His final margin over runner-up Michael Neal (who also finished 2nd to him at the Cup at Lake Wheeler last summer) was a little less than three pounds. "I had no idea I had 20 pounds," he said. "I thought I might've had 18, but when I put them all in the bag, I didn't know if I even had that. I wanted to throw up. "It was Michael's home lake and after what happened at Wheeler, I thought it might be payback time."
Winning Pattern:
Cox caught all of his fish on either a Senko or a 1/2-ounce jig. "The jig is what I use around heavy cover and I'll sometimes use it to get the fish upset or get them worked up," he said. "A lot of times I'll make search casts with either the jig or the spinning stuff because it kind of gives me a break in what I'm doing."
Winning Gear:
Jig gear: 6'6" extra-fast MHX EPS90 rod, Lew's Custom Pro Speed Spool casting reel (8.3:1 ratio), 50-pound unnamed braided line, 1/2-ounce Dirty Jig (black/blue), Bitter's Daddy Jitter trailer (black/blue).
Senko gear: 7'3" medium-heavy MHX MB873 rod, same reel and line, unnamed 5/0 round-bend hook, 6" Yamamoto Senko (watermelon seed).
Spinning gear (Senko): 7' medium-action MHX High-Mod SJ842 rod, Team Lew's Pro Speed Spin reel, unnamed 8-pound fluorocarbon line.
Main factor: "I learned so much about the lake that week I was there three years ago - it helped tremendously."
Performance edge: "My boat and motor and all my equipment are set up for what I like to do, which is fishing shallow. I've got rods of different lengths and everything's customized. The people at Crestliner asked me how they could build a boat that would help me more, so they made it wider and it floats shallower. It's all been done to help me excel and take things to another level."
Chickamauga Open Winning Pattern BassFan 4/26/17 (John Johnson)
