RECALLING THE 2005 CUP
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t was hotter than usual in July 2005. George Cochran
remembers it well.
Then again, how could he forget?
“Gentleman George” found himself in a unique posi-
tion that summer – fishing for a world championship on
his home lake. Cochran didn’t grow up on Hamilton, but
he’d moved his family there some years earlier to be
close to great fishing in the three reservoirs – Hamilton,
Ouachita and DeGray – in the Hot Springs, Ark., area.
A father of three, Cochran saw life on Lake Hamilton
as an easy way to introduce his two sons, David and John,
to bass fishing. Preparing himself for the 2005 FLW Cup
was an unexpected side benefit.
“Since I lived there, the best time to take my kids out
was at night, and we’d fish around dock lights and stuff,
but we’d also fish about two hours in the morning in the
hot summertime before the traffic got bad,” he recalls.
“I’d have these boys with me, and we’d be throwing
worms and stuff.”
Cochran recalled those experiences when Cup practice
rolled around.
“I remembered the best bank for fishing topwaters
right at daylight. It’s a true story; in practice I tried fishing
deep because I thought it was going to be won on brush
piles. I did that for two days in practice and never caught
a keeper. The third day … I kicked their butt that third
day. I tied on a topwater bait and went down a bank
where me and the boys had caught a bunch of bass five
years before. I caught a bunch on that little bitty Baby
Chug Bug. I thought I could catch a limit in the mornings.”
One of Cochran’s early bass fishing mentors had intro-
duced him to the subtleties of topwater fishing, and the
pro relied on the lessons he’d learned to quickly dial in a
pattern targeting banks that were a little deeper (4 to 5
feet of water) alongside riprap and seawalls.
“I was using 10-pound line and a medium-light rod
where I could throw it a long way,” Cochran says of his
micro-topwater approach. “I’d work it real slow at first,
and if they didn’t hit it I’d go real fast with it, making it spit
like a minnow that was running away. They’d hit it in that
first 6 inches. They’d hit it like a buzzbait.”
Once the tournament was underway, the champ had
his best areas to himself, and his weights improved each
day. On day four, with weights zeroed, Cochran weighed
in 10 pounds, 3 ounces, easily beating runner-up Chad
Grigsby, who had 6-7.
“All through my tournament career I never had a tour-
nament I could win on topwater,” Cochran recalls. “In that
tournament, it was four days, and three of the days I
caught them on topwater. There was only one day that I
didn’t catch them good on topwater. I won that on a top-
water bait, and basically won it in the first two hours
every day.”
For the Arkansas pro, the 2005 FLW Cup was his third
bass fishing world championship. He’d previously won
the Bassmaster Classic in 1987 and 1996, before transi-
tioning to fish with FLW.
While the ’87 Classic provided a boost in sponsorship
and notoriety, and the ’96 win solidified him as a legend
in the sport, the 2005 Cup win stands out for other rea-
sons, and not just the $500,000 payday.
“I was at home. I had all my family there, all my friends
there,” Cochran says. “It was an extremely special tourna-
ment for me.”
fLWfISHING.coM I SUMMER 2019