John Cox is cranking a flatsided squarebill in less than 5- feet of muddy water. Jeff Gustafson is sitting in more than 20- feet of clear water with a Damiki rig. And they’re both catching them.
“Look how dirty that water is,” Cox said as he loaded his second quality keeper into the livewell. “You can’t even see those fish in there.”
Cox is targeting largemouth around shallow isolated cover with a Berkely Frittside, something we’re not seeing a lot of this morning, being done in muddy water at least.
“I had never even thrown a crankbait 4 years ago,” Cox remarked in disbelief, since he’s now doing so in the biggest tournament of them all, with his own signature series Abu Garcia cranking rod. Though he had undoubtably made at least a few casts with a crankbait at some point before then, Cox’s statement was more made to illustrate that cranking is definitely not what this Floridian would consider his strength.
“I just throw it out and reel it in. I don’t think there’s much to it,” Cox remarked in his typical aw-shucks kind of way. But you could put a hotdog in this guy’s hands and he could catch a 5- pounder in 2- inches of water. It doesn’t really matter how much experience a guy like Cox has with a certain bait. He has an innate ability to catch bass, and even an unfamiliar piece of weaponry is an instantly impactful addition to his arsenal.
Swapping over to Jeff Gustafson, we see the Canadian finesse fisherman using a technique he has an immense amount of experience with. Gussy is fishing the same Z-Man Jerk Shad/Smeltinator Jighead combo that he used to win his first Elite Series event on this same fishery in 2021.
A rollercoaster of a morning for Gussy saw a lost 4- pound- plus smallmouth as well as a couple close shorts, and then a flurry of action across no more than 15 minutes that produced four fish for 14- pounds to take the lead.
Gussy planned to “burn this spot to the ground” on Day 1, and then expand his pattern further into Tellico where he found two schools of big smallmouth in practice. He started in the canal because of how popular this area is, hoping to catch as much as possible here on this well-known spot before moving to his hidey holes.
All that being said, Gussy has just boated his 5th keeper to finish out a 17-pound limit… early here on Day 1. Will he continue to catch big bass off this hole, knowing that culling at this point will be burning big bites he might get tomorrow? Or will he move off this spot and run the risk of others coming in and picking off fish he might catch tomorrow? Or perhaps he’ll just camp out here and not focus on fishing as much as protecting his area, with such a good limit early. These are the questions rolling through Gussy’s mind right now as he weighs his options, well ahead of schedule on Day 1.
