Bass Fishing Oct 2017 | Page 60

TRAVIS FOX | 56 LBS , 11 OZ 2 By Curtis Niedermier 58 photo by matt pace T ravis Fox didn’t know anything about fishing for herring-eating bass prior to the Forrest Wood Cup, but he understands them a little better now after coming just one kicker shy of winning at Murray. In practice, Fox located a series of main-lake points on the lower end where bass were schooling on herring and banked his tournament on that area. “I had three different spots where I caught multiple fish and I could catch them fast,” says Fox, who planned to fish one spot per day once the tourna- ment began. “One spot was dynamite, and they were all good ones. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ll win off of here.’ But during the first hour of the first day of the tournament, I pulled up to fish the very best spot and never had a bite. Then I went to my day-two spot and never had a bite, and then my day- three spot and never caught anything.” Fox eventually improvised and ran to a back-up spot: a long, slow-tapering main-lake point that he figured as noth- ing more than mediocre, but where he quickly started filling the livewell. That spot wound up churning out three keepers per day, with the remainder of his catch coming “a fish here, a fish there” from similar main-lake spots. Though there was a cane pile situat- ed on the main point, Fox says he didn’t FLWFISHING.COM I OCTOBER 2017