It’s another “local boy does good” story and a fishing tale as well.
Alex Cox, of Old Town Seal Beach, an employee at the Main Street Cyclery shop, showed his prowess as a bass fisherman recently by winning a $25,000 bass fishing boat with his teammate in the FLW, the largest bass fishing series in the United States.
“FLW” stands for Forrest L. Wood, the legendary founder of Ranger Boats. FLW Outdoors named the tour after Wood in 1996 to honor the self-made pioneer of modern bass fishing and to lend credibility to the young tournament circuit. There are four “season tournaments” a year for each division. There are 40 college teams of two anglers in each of the tournaments.
“In our division, teams come from all over including other states such as Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Colorado,” Cox said. “We qualified at the first tournament of the year at Lake Shasta in Northern California by placing fifth. The top five teams from each seasonal tournament advance to the conference final.”
The conference final tournament was on Utah Lake, Provo UT. It included a three-day competition where each team is allowed to bring in five-fish each day. The 20 teams in the field are cut to the top five teams for the third day of the tournament, which are the teams who also advance to the National Championship.
“My team partner Justin Gangel took his bass boat out to Utah two weeks prior to the event to ‘pre-fish’ the lake. He searched the lake for spots that would hold fish each day, and was able to figure out a few places where we could go during the tournament.”
Each lake offers very different types of fishing. Water depth, clarity, temperature, structure, and forage are all huge factors into where bass will be and what they will be biting on. This lake averaged five-feet depth, three inches clarity, and extremely warm water.
“We’d never fished anything like this before, and we hoped the other teams felt the same way,” Cox said. “Over the three days of the tournament, we were able to catch 14 fish for 21lbs 5oz. Not only did we qualify for the National Championship in spring of 2013, but earned a 2013 Ranger Bass boat valued at $25,000.”
The FLW tournament series has a regular show on NBC Sports Network every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. They make a special college edition for each of the conference championships and one for the nationals.
“We had about 45 seconds of TV time last year from our seventh place finish at the regional championship, we should have more this time around,” Cox said. “We had a video camera on our boat for the second half of the tournament, and were able to make conversation and catch fish for the show.”
