And probably will continue to win a lot on his own terms. He just has the confidence to fish his way.

Don't get me wrong. I like John Cox. I root for him. Seems like a great guy. Darn sure like fishing shallow. It ain't 2023 any more, though. Whole new world. Unless there is a rule change, to be successful in fishing tournaments, I think you have to have the option of going out and scoping, like it or not.

It ain't no game. They pay you to catch fish. John won $2500 each at Fork and TB. Didn't cover entry fees, let alone expenses. Top 10 won 15K to 100K plus extras. Maybe he's wealthy and the money don't matter, but I guarantee winning matters.

I'm a decimal point lower in my fishing, but winning is usually 2 - 4K. 10th place won't buy gas. I'll scope if I need to. I'm not promoting being a full time scoper. If I could, I'd flip a jig in heavy shallow cover, all day every day. If I ain't throwing a jig, I'm not happy, but like I said before "Tournament fishing is work, and work ain't always fun."

PS: I would expect John has the same conversations with himself.

He sure struggled today.

His days are numbered unless he adapts to the scope. Besides the spawn and Florida tournaments, he better learn the live poke!

Cox has won like $2.5M in just prize money in his 11 year career. I bet he is doing ok financially.



Plus I have heard that his family is one of the largest producer of candy suckers in the world.

He’s prolly spent 2.2m to win that 2.5.

Heck, I used to be successful at the same time Denny Brauer and Tommy Biffle were.

I learned from them.

When I lived n Big Spring there was a guy named Jerry Avery that fished magnum Hellbenders almost exclusively. This was in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Avery always said if you were fishing the shallows there were more fish behind you than in front of you. He caught more big fish than most anybody in West Texas fishing deep water with those Hellbenders.

I bet he hasn't spent out of pocket half a million.

Yep, still plenty of people that have a hard time with that. Things change, some people thrive on change and make it work for them. Some don't.

And had forearms like Popeye?

that was my favorite deep diving crank bait for many years... a lot of folks in west Texas threw them in the 60s... I remember going on a fishing trip with one of my coaches to Hordes Creek and watched as a 7 lb bass came up from the deep to inhale his hellbender with yellow skirt he may have added (never saw one stock that came that way) right before he lifted it out of the water... i was sold on that bait from that very moment.

I used to throw the 6 and 10xd, those things got to be annoying to crank. I have found the Berkeley dredger runs deeper and is much easier to crank, plus it’s slightly smaller so you can cast it on light line and not break it off.

A few of the anti FFS posts have used the argument that the tackle companies are going to suffer as people won’t be throwing certain baits anymore- everyone will just being throwing a small minnow. I think most all tackle companies (smart ones) just see FFS as a great opportunity to sell more styles of baits, they are all coming out with specific FFS baits. Bank beaters are still going to buy all the classic stuff so I don’t see a big drop in tackle sales.