John Cox wasn’t planning to fish the Sam Rayburn Reservoir FLW Tour Open. The Floridian missed the money cut at Wheeler Lake last month and wasn’t going to commit another $4,000 to entry fees and make the drive to Texas. Despite leaving Wheeler in 4th place in the Open points, he was willing to let a potential berth in next year’s Forrest Wood Cup slip away.
That’s when Cox’s friend, Billy Taylor, intervened and floated his pal a loan for the entry fees.
“He was pretty confident I was going to do well I guess,” Cox said.
Cox didn’t let his friend down, nailing down an 11th-place finish with 37-05 and clinching a berth in next year’s Cup by closing the year 2nd in Open points.
“That was the one main thing I wanted,” he said of next year’s Cup at the Red River. “I really feel like I have a shot at a Top-5 finish. That’d be a amazing. It’s like Lake Monroe by my house. You can catch them in 2 feet. No one really knows where they’re going to be.”
At Rayburn, he tried to dial in an offshore cranking pattern, but the fish had fled the areas he was in so he focused his efforts on nearby grass mats and pads.
“The first day I decided to start deep and the fish weren’t there,” he said. “I went to the next patch of grass closest to it. I hadn’t gotten a bite there in practice, but I had a feeling that maybe they’d swam that way.”
His senses were correct and he put together consecutive 14-pound days to open the tournament and make the weekend in 9th.
“I was flipping the outside edge of the grass,” he said. “Where it was matted out, it was 5 feet and the scattered clumps were about 8 feet deep. They seemed to be in the thicker parts of the grass.”
While he caught a 5-pounder on a frog on day 1, he missed a couple opportunities to have a much better day.
“I got my one lucky bite, but lost a big one there in the morning and another big frog fish later,” he said. “There were some giants in there.
“I think a lot of people were missing them. The grass is so deep there. You’d drop down in it and you’re letting your bait fall and you’re thinking it’ll go down 8 feet and then all of a sudden it keeps going. By the time you click it over and set the hook and the line cuts through the grass, it’s already 10 feet out in the front of the boat and you’ve missed them. I heard that happened to a lot of people.
“I just didn’t have bites,” he continued. “The opportunities I had were on the first 2 days to have been up there a little bit farther. The third day was just tough on me because I wanted to stay in the area where I had the bigger bites because of the wind. I knew if I could get two of those bites in the boat, I’d be right there where I needed to be. I just never got them. It wasn’t meant to be.”
The Big Bite Lookback, which focuses on the angler who's first out of the final cut at each tour-level event, is brought to you by the great folks at Big Bite Baits.
