Mississippi’s Sportsman of the Month: Fishing Tales

Plenty of fishermen around Mississippi have at least one great fishing story, and this recent University of Mississippi graduate student Sam Cox has some of the best stories from a lifetime of fishing.

Sam Cox recently graduated from the Univesity of Mississippi this past May, and he’s taking graduate classes to earn an MBA there in the geological engineering field. On top of his surely difficult classes, he was a member of the Ole Miss Bass Championship since his freshman year.

He said, “My Dad put me into hunting and fishing since I was a kid. When it comes to fishing I do it all, catching all kinds of fish. I like to fish every spring and summer all over the country in the South.”

His favorite spot to fish is the Kentucky Lake on the Tennessee River. The manmade lake holds not only great catches but a great memory back when he was a freshman at Ole Miss. It was April 2012, and he was with his friend Tom Crouch for a fishing tournament in Paris, Tennessee.

“We fished on a duck hunting boat, a raggedy boat,” Cox said with a laugh. “It had this little motor that could go 20 mph at most.”

That motor was a huge disadvantage, but not to Sam. The tournament rules dictated that no boat can surpass the ones listed ahead of it. Sam and his friend were No. 15 among 75 boats.

“There were all these huge boats with fancy motors and equipment stuck behind us,” Cox said. “We had a lot of angry fishermen behind us.”

Sam also utilized his engineering to use a plastic tub purchased from Wal-Mart, a battery and some tubes to fashion a water aerator to keep the bass alive during the tournament. Despite the humble appearance, he and his friend came in fourth with the winning catches weighing in at 14.67 pounds.

Among Sam’s memorable catches, his personal best was 25 bass weighing a total of 42 pounds, most he ever caught, as the Ole Miss Bass Championship team competed at the Georgia Southern Tournament this past February.

Callie Daniels Bryant is the senior mangaging editor at Hottytoddy.com. She can be reached at callie.daniels@hottytoddy.com.