KELLEY WINS SPORTSMANSHIP AWARD
Arkansas pro Cody Kelley was the recipient of the annual
Forrest L. Wood Sportsmanship and Community Leadership
Award and received the trophy from the award’s namesake
himself on stage prior to Saturday’s Forrest Wood Cup weigh-in.
Kelley and his family have been involved with Special
Olympics Arkansas for a number of years, and more recently
he and his wife, Savannah, and mother, Judith Allen, teamed
up with the FLW Foundation to conduct a series of youth
fishing tournaments at various FLW events.
During the Forrest Wood Cup, the Kelley clan – with
the help of Tour anglers Tom Redington, Nicole Jacobs
and Logan Thomas, and 18 members of the Bullitt East
High School fishing team from Mount Washington, Ky. –
conducted a Kids Unified Fishing Derby at a park lake in
Huntsville. Forty-four children signed up to fish the 1 1/2-
hour event, which was won by 3-year-old Jamison
Chappell of Valley, Ala. Ryle Waggoner, 5, of Carthage,
Mo., was runner-up.
A LUCKY LURE
COMES THROUGH
FOR COX
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2016 I FLWFISHING.COM
it wasn’t lucky before he
fished it in the Forrest Wood
cup, but John cox certainly
considers the river2sea
Whopper plopper he used to
add a few keepers to his win-
ning stringer a lucky lure now.
For the most part, cox
fished with a Jackall iobee
Frog, yamamoto senko and
buzzbait, but added the
Whopper plopper that his
girlfriend, stephanie
hutchinson, “gave him” to
coax a few fish into hitting.
“she had it [the Whopper
plopper] in her tackle box
when we went fishing for pea-
cock bass in south Florida,
and they really went for it,”
recalls cox. “so i borrowed it
to take to Wheeler. turns out
largemouths like it too, but
most of the places i fished
were too nasty for a topwater
bait [with treble hooks].”
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