Our featured Anglers for June are Virginia's 6-Man Winners, Mark Cox and Roger Kent Stover

Mark Cox (Chapter Team Winner for Regions 2, 5, 7, & 9)

It must have been that phone call. The one that came the previous month, in April.

Mark Cox of Triangle Bassmasters (Region 4) was at the Virginia Mr. Bass tournament when he got the call on Friday night, the eve of the tournament. It was from his wife, Sabrina. Mark says it was a simple conversation.

“Guess what?”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”

Mark says, “since I heard that I’ve been winning some money.” He cashed a check by finishing 12th at Mr. Bass, and on May 5th and 6th, the 32-year-old angler won the first of the state’s two 2001 Chapter Team Tournament Championships. And the year is just going to keep getting better for him, because the baby is due in December.

Cox’s background is a tribute to family and family influence. He’s a perfect example of a man learning about fishing from his father. “Dad started fishing club tournaments first. About the time I graduated high school I started fishing with him, he bought a boat, we started fishing tournaments together, and a couple years later I bought a boat. I just really enjoyed it.“

Fourteen years later, the lifelong Pulaski County resident is still fishing tournaments, and he’s still close to family. He bought his grandmother’s house within sight of his childhood home, and he spends his working hours on his parents’ dairy farm.

Mark is making his second trip as a member of the Virginia state team. He qualified in 1995 through the state’s Fall Classic and finished second on the team at the Divisional on Lake George in New York.

Of the Six-Man tournament, Cox says, “I really didn’t have a very good practice at all. I was kind of worried down there Friday night. I didn’t know what I was going to do.“ He hadn’t spent much time in practice with a Carolina rig, instead spending his time trying other things because he has certain spots that he always goes to with the C-rig. Those spots were his fallback plan , and as he says, it “just so happened they had good fish on ‘em.”

Cox found a fish Friday on a bed up Nutbush Creek and went to it first on Saturday, but with the lake’s water falling throughout the weekend, that fish was gone. Cox did catch 2 keepers on a floating worm. He later started Carolina-rigging and got three in the Tobacco Patch area. Other points up the lake, some in Mill Creek and some near Island Creek, brought his total Saturday catch to 9 keepers.

What happened Sunday was the difference. Cox was in 26th place after day one. As for day two, he says, “Sunday morning was just a totally different morning, the wind had changed, it was dark and cloudy, and the wind was blowing right on those points at the mouth of Nutbush. Instead of going into Nutbush, I turned and went to those points first and threw a spinner-bait.”

That was a critical decision.

“We were catching white perch, I bet we caught a dozen of those, and I believe the big one was just over there eating” on those perch. She weight 7.82 pounds and she hit the spinnerbait less than 30 minutes into the tournament.

“I was pretty fired up after I caught the big one.”

About an hour later another pass through the same area produced a 3-pounder. He didn’t catch another fish until noon, when he returned to the Carolina rig and Mill Creek. Two fish there filled his limit and one more fish in the final hour of the tourney helped him cull to about 16 1/2 pounds for 4 fish.

Mark’s two, 4-fish limits totaled 26.76 pounds over the two-day tournament.

The other 3 fishermen who qualified for the state team are James C. Worley of Region 7’s Hampton Roads Anglers Anonymous (24.04 pounds), Jack Mann of Bassmasters of Bigisland (23.20, Region 5), and Ivan Morris of Virginia Bassmasters (22.98, Region 7).

Roger Kent Stover (Chapter Team Winner for Regions 1, 2, 3, 6 & 8)

Sometimes the best decision you make when fishing is to change your mind at the last moment. That’s what a man from Hurt, Virginia, did at the start of the second 2001 Virginia Chapter Team Tournament, and it put him in the winner’s circle.

Fifty-one-year-old Roger Kent Stover, married with a daughter who is a whiz at softball (one of only five people in Ferrum College history to be all-conference for four years), grew up in West Virginia. He started fishing the Elk River, catching smallmouth, largemouth, carp and muskie. Like this year’s other Six-Man winner, Mark Cox, Stover started fishing because of family. “I got it from my Grandpas,” he says. “Both of them liked to fish. My brothers, they all liked to fish. I just continued doing it.”

He found himself leaving West Virginia because there’s “nothing up there to do but go into coal mines and I seen what it done to Dad. I went back in (a mine) to where you couldn’t see the light, and the roof’s poppin’ and cracking and I said ‘that’s not for me.’” He worked road construction in West Virginia for a while before heading east to Virginia, where he’s been working for BGF for 28 years. The company weaves fiberglass.

Stover found fish in the Bluestone Creek area of Buggs Island as he practiced for the May 16-17 state tournament. He was paired with Casey McWilliams of Jordan Point Bassmasters, who had caught a 6-pounder up Little Nutbush Creek during practice. As Stover tells it, “We kinda decided to go where my fish were first, but then the next morning he said, ‘would you please go over where that point is,’” referring to the home of the 6-pounder. Stover said sure, he had no trouble with that, since it was only an 8 or 10 minute run from the launch site. In his words, “First cast I caught one about 4 1/2 pounds. We stayed right there. The fish were bustin’, and we had a ball.”

Stover caught his early fish on a Rat-L-Trap and limited by about 8:00 a.m. After testing a Carolina rig that produced nothing, he saw fish starting to hit shad on the surface. He told his partner, “If somebody gave me a nickel I’d put on a Spook.” His partner didn’t have any of the lures, so two casts later Stover said, “Well, I’m gonna have to give myself a nickel.” He tied on a Zara Spook, which he had modified by inserting rattles and, first cast, another 4 1/2 pounder. The Spook turned out to be a key lure for Stover when the fish were surfacing. One of the bass actually knocked the lure out of the water with his back eight times, as if he was trying to kill the intruder instead of eat it. After that fish, McWilliams told Stover, “they ain’t got nothin’ on you on T-V.”

As for Bluestone, “We never did go to my fish. We didn’t have to.” The two men worked three unpressured, little points throughout the tournament, and Stover says the closest any other boat came was a johnboat that got within about 100 yards. Stover says when he’d hook a fish he could hear one of the people in the johnboat holler “he’s got another one,” a nice thing to hear when someone is talking about you.

Adhering to a common tournament practice of uncommon courtesy, McWilliams stepped aside for his partner on day two. The Chesterfield resident, who was out of contention, backed off and told Stover “you go ahead and win this tournament.” He didn’t start fishing on day two until Stover had a limit.

Stover also caught fish on a homemade spinnerbait and a repainted plug. He says just about everything he caught fish on except the Rat-L-Trap had been doctored in some way. He and regular fishing partner Keith Roberts, also of Leesville Lake Bassmasters, paint lures so that they look like shad, using a little bit of gray and a little bit of a silverish-white color, because those shades appear in the baitfish.

Ask him about his fishing successes and Stover will mention tournament wins. But he cites as a bigger success making lures. He says, “that’s a whole lot more fun than a whole lot of people think.” He says rather than just going to a store to buy a lure, it’s a lot more rewarding to make your own.

This is Stover’s first time on a state team. He says, “it’s something I’ve been trying to do for a long time, and finally I’ve done it.”

Stover weighed in two, four-fish limits weighing 26.72 pounds. The other three fishermen qualifying for the state team are Terry M. King (22.84 pounds, Brookneal Bassmasters, Region 2), Jeff Salmon (20.98, Henrico Bassmasters, Region 3), and Steve Roberts (20.80, Lucky 13 Bassmasters, Region 2). Eight of the tournament’s top ten finishers were from Region 2.