By BassFan Staff
When Ken Cook spoke, everybody listened, especially if the subject happened to be about the behavior of largemouth bass under different conditions.
“It was like listening to a professor,” said longtime pro angler Randy Blaukat.
Cook, the 1991 Bassmaster Classic champion and longtime bass fishing ambassador, died early Friday of an apparent heart attack. He was 68.
Hailed as a strong family man with a never-ending passion for the outdoors, Cook’s legend status in the bass fishing world is undeniable.
He won the first B.A.S.S. tournament he entered – the 1980 B.A.S.S. Federation championship – and went on to compete in 14 Classics, capturing the ’91 event at the Chesapeake Bay. He also competed in three Forrest Wood Cups during the five-year span (1997-2001) that he fished FLW.
He won six B.A.S.S. events before retiring from tournament fishing in 2009. He was inducted into the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame in 2011.
News of Cook’s unexpected passing rocked the bass fishing industry Friday.
"He was one of the good guys and I just hate it for (wife) Tammy and the family," said Jay Yelas, who competed alongside Cook for many years and roomed with him on several occasions. "He was a great ambassador for the sport and a fine individual.
"It's surprising because he was always in great physical shape and ate well, and he was always in bed by 9 o'clock and up the next morning to go fishing. You'd think he'd be one of those robots who just goes on forever, but you never know when it's your time to be called. That's why you have to enjoy every day and tell the people closest to you that you love them, because you never know which day is going to be your last."
This past Monday, Cook posted a photo of himself operating a log splitter to his Instagram and Facebook pages. On Sunday, he’d posted a photo of a coyote he’d shot on his ranch with the caption, “Put a little blood in the snow scraps.”
“I cried this morning just like a lot of fisherman probably did when they heard the news,” said Jimmy Houston, a longtime friend of Cook’s. “It’s more personal for me because he was from Oklahoma and I knew him before Ken Cook was Ken Cook and Jimmy Houston was Jimmy Houston.”
Close friend and recently retired Elite competitor Kevin Short said Cook experienced chest pains on Thursday while he and Tammy were spending the night at the home of son Hunter and his family in Oklahoma City. Hunter is an emergency-room physician at an OKC hospital.
Winning the 1991 Bassmaster Classic was the highlight of Cook's career.
The heart attack occurred at about 5 a.m. Friday. Short and wife Kerry were scheduled to meet the Cooks in Dallas later that day to attend the Safari Club International show.
"The year before last when the tornado blasted my house, he and Tammy were the first ones there except for my brother, who lives close by," Short said. "They stayed for 3 days and literally picked my crap up out of the dirt and they were there until the last piece was picked up. I can never repay that for as long as I live.
"Those are the kind of friends you want to have, and that's the kind of person he was."
Could Think Like a Fish
An Oklahoma native with a vibrant passion for the outdoors, Cook earned a college degree in zoology from Oklahoma State before going to work for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation as a fisheries biologist for 13 years.
He was a man ahead of his time in bass fishing, armed with the knowledge and understanding of bass behavior from his fisheries biology background that few others possessed.
“He was down to earth and nature-oriented, but he was also extremely smart,” said Blaukat. “He was one of the first guys to apply the biology side of things to bass fishing. He had access to info about bass behavior that was way ahead of what everybody else had at the time."
In March 1983, he won the first Super B.A.S.S. tournament at the St. Johns River and became the first pro angler to eclipse the $100,000 earnings mark in a single year. Soon after, he left his full-time job to pursue a career as a tournament angler.
He placed among the Top 10 in the Bassmaster Angler of the Year points six times, finishing a career-best 2nd to Roland Martin in 1984.
In 1995, Cook and his wife Tammy built a home at Tarbone Ranch in Meers, Okla., and have devoted their time to managing the land for deer, elk and bison hunting ever since.
Lasting Impact
Blaukat’s introduction to Cook came at the 1980 B.A.S.S. Federation championship at Grand Lake. Blaukat was 14 at the time and still in high school, but his parents kept a trailer on Grand and during the tournament, Blaukat used the family’s 14-foot aluminum boat to watch the action.
He was immediately drawn to Cook, who won the tournament fishing an area Blaukat was familiar with.
“I can see it like it was yesterday,” Blaukat said. “He was one of the first guys in the '80s to stand up while he fished and I’ll never forget him throwing a clear Bomber crankbait going down the bank. It’ll always be etched in my mind – watching Ken Cook throw a crankbait down rocky banks at Grand Lake.”
At the weigh-in, Blaukat introduced himself to Cook and he credits the experience with helping launch his own tournament career.
“That was the first big tournament I’d seen and he was the first real pro I’d met,” Blaukat said.
Cook’s deep passion for the outdoors was evident from spending time around him, Blaukat said.
“Every time I think about Ken Cook, I think of the Robert Redford movie Jeremiah Johnson,” Blaukat said. “That was Ken. He was a guy living in modern times, but he had the vibe and energy of a frontiersman. That’s what stands out above all else – his love and connection to nature and animals and wildlife. He epitomized the wild. That’s what I liked about him more than anything.”
’A True Outdoorsman’
Gary Klein said he and Cook hit it off while fishing the B.A.S.S. circuit in the 1980s, prior to Klein’s move from California to Texas.
“Like all of us, we travel and cross paths with each other and those who intrigue you, you strike up a friendship with,” Klein said. “I instantly liked Ken because he had a passion for the outdoors and a passion for fishing. We were all trying to pursue that dream of being full-time fishermen and that’s what drew us together.”
Klein and Cook were later part of the legendary Skeeter team in the 1990s that also included Rick Clunn, Larry Nixon and Tommy Martin. Cook was also part of the original group of pro anglers that helped promote Berkley and Trilene products.
Having worked as a fisheries biologist, Cook had a lot more knowledge of bass than most of his contemporaries.
“I’ve heard and read some stuff about how he wanted to remembered,” Klein said. “In my opinion, he’d want to be remembered as a true outdoorsman. He had such a passion for the outdoors.
“I spent a lot of time hunting with Ken across the country and at his farm and he was the type of person, if I were ever to have to go into the woods, I’d want him with me. I spent a lot of time tracking and camping with him and he was very passionate about what he did. He had respect for others and treated people well.”
Klein remembered how Cook preferred a smaller, 16-foot boat back in the era when 150-horsepower motors were the maximum allowed.
“In his opinion, he could run big water just as well as the guys in the bigger boats,” Klein said. “Ken liked to go fast and his smaller boat was always faster than our bigger boats.”
Cook was a great spinnerbait angler, Klein said, and he recalled that Cook’s spinnerbait collection featured nothing but baits with white, chartreuse or blue skirts.
“Those are the only colors he’d throw,” Klein said. “He’d vary the blades, but he was a guy who kept it pretty simple.”
'Every Day is a Gift"
Houston’s time around Cook dates back to the heyday of the Bass Fishing Institute. Houston recalled being tabbed, along with Cook, to be among the first instructors for the classroom series about bass fishing that was run at small colleges and universities through adult education programs.
“We did them at night on college campuses and then it grew from there,” Houston said. “Those were some of the early days of pro fishermen sharing and teaching others how to become better fishermen.”
Houston said he’d been planning to reach out to Cook to invite him to participate in an upcoming 1-hour live broadcast on his new digital website channel. Houston said the topic was going to be preparing for a new tournament season.
“I had thought about that yesterday and talked with Pat Turner, who runs my production company, about having Ken come over to do that live broadcast,” Houston said. “It just shows that every day is a gift from God and every day is special and we need to live it to the fullest. When something like this happens, it makes you realize it even more.”
Sadness All Around
Following are recollections from some other anglers Cook competed against.
Mark Menendez
"The thing I'll remember most about him was his passion to succeed. I got to know him my first year on tour, and just before that he'd won the Chesapeake Classic. He was so driven for success, and success could be anything from something economic to a perfect fishing day when he got six bites and caught all of them. That's what he was truly in tune with.
"Once he knew you as a competitor of integrity, your friendship and your day-to-day dealings with him completely changed. I remember the first time I did a Bassmaster University with him and he found out I had the same (college) degree he did, we built a friendship that lasted this whole time period. He checked up on me several times after I lost my wife, Donna, and that was very important to me."
Larry Nixon
"I'm going to miss Ken. I love his wife and those boys of his are so smart. Even after he retired, I kept up with him on Facebook and that kind of stuff. To lose him that early in life is a real shock to me.
"He was a great champion and a total gentleman on the water, and that's saying a lot about a fisherman you were around for so many years."
Alton Jones
"He was always one of my fishing heroes. I'll never forget the first time I fished against him in 1990, my rookie year on the B.A.S.S. tour. In my mind he was larger than life, but he went out of his way to befriend me and he was a good role model for how you should treat people.
"He always had a smile on his face and he was always willing to give advice or just sit and visit. That meant a lot, and it still does mean a lot. "
Roland Martin
"I can't say we were really close friends, be we were professional friends. He was a good competitor and I don't think you'd ever hear a cross word about him from anybody in the sport.
"He was also a great hunter, and I probably called him at least 10 times to find out what I should expect from a certain lake or a place where I was going hunting. We never had any issues at all – ever."
Davy Hite
"The best way to describe him is to say he was an absolute professional at what he did. He'd been a fisheries biologist and he knew a lot about bass, the water and the environment in general. I did a lot of seminars with him and I always enjoyed listening in on his talks because he was just a real sharp guy.
"The way he carried himself, the way he dressed and the way he acted were always professional."
Rick Pierce
"I knew him back when he was still a biologist for the state of Oklahoma, working with tournaments out there and fishing locally. Then we got paired together one time in New York, and another time somewhere else.
"He was a stick back then – he was one of the real high-quality pro anglers. And the way he conducted himself made him one of the guys everybody respected."
Shaw Grigsby
"I got a text saying he'd died at 5 in the morning and it was just like, 'Oh my gosh!' It's just so sad. He was a good guy and a great fisherman.
"What he brought to the sport – his passion – was something special, and he's going to be thoroughly missed."
Paul Elias
"It's just a real bad deal. Ken was one of the all-time greats and I never heard anybody have a bad word to say about him. We was just a stand-up guy and a big asset to professional fishing."
Notable
> In addition to Tammy and Hunter, Cook is survived by sons Tanner and Jason and several grandchildren.
