LEESBURG, Fla. — John Cox was struggling to get a bite from a decent-size bass Friday. He put a quick limit in the boat on Day 1 of Lowrance Bassmaster Elite at the Harris Chain, but hadn’t been able to cull up significantly by 2 p.m.
Suddenly, everything changed. And you’ll never convince Cox that his late mentor, Joe Kremer, didn’t have something to do with it.
“It was unreal,” he said. “I pulled in and I was like, well, Joe always catches a couple right here. I got chills. For some reason I remember him making a flip to this certain area. I flipped in and caught that big one. It was crazy. I put it in the livewell and made another pitch and got another big one. It was incredible.”
Cox caught two 6-pounders and a 5-pounder in that one spot. With a 22-pound, 5-ounce limit, the 38-year-old angler from DeBary, Fla., is in second place after Day 1.
Kremer took an interest in educating a couple of youngsters, Cox and his buddy Keith Carson, when they were about 16 years old.
“When I was still in high school, me and Keith were his co-anglers in BFLs,” Cox said. “Joe really took us out there and showed us, hey, this is how you sight-fish and this is how you flip – all the stuff that we didn’t know much about.”
As Cox had said before, “Joe Kremer turned a kid into a fisherman.”
Kremer died of cancer at age 50 in 2017. It would be easy to be overly dramatic about Cox’s “spiritual gifts” Friday. Just don’t try to convince Cox that Joe Kremer didn’t make his presence felt.
“It was weird because I wasn’t getting bit, and I was like, ‘C’mon, Joe, I know you’re watching.’ I got chills because it was instant – I instantly caught one. It was all within 10 minutes. When I caught the third big one, I was like, wow. It was so unreal. It was like I felt him there. It was crazy.”
When Cox first qualified for the Bassmaster Elite Series, he told Bassmaster writer Mark Hicks in 2020, “Joe really helped me to do my own thing and not worry about whatever everybody else does. The main thing he taught me is that you have to do something you alone have figured out.”
Cox is fishing the Harris Chain of Lakes at an unusual time for him, as most pro level events in his history here have been in February or March, when the majority of the bass have moved to spawning beds. Most, not all, of the bass are post-spawn here now.
“I was thrown off,” he said. “It’s hard to adjust to that.”
Cox knows when the bluegill start gathering on their closely bunched spawning beds, the bass won’t be far behind. He may have picked up on early signs of that Friday.
“I think these fish are slowly starting to group up and swim the grass lines, looking for that,” Cox said.
Cox will be looking for that too, thanks to some help from a spirit in the sky.
