My memories of Ken Cook

A missed phone call from former Bassmaster tournament champion, Jim “Wiggle Wart” Morton woke me up. The first thing I did when I got out of bed was load my BB gun. A herd of grey squirrels were monopolizing my bird feeder. Goldfinches, Cardinals and Nuthatches didn’t have a chance. It was time to thin the squirrel herd.

I think like that because Bass Fishing Hall of Fame Member, Ken Cook, taught me to.

Other than my own parents – nobody has influenced my life more than Ken Cook.

I moved to Oklahoma, have a Masters in Fisheries, make a living in the fishing industry, married the woman I married, live in a rustic home decorated with antlers, tell it like it is, think deep, have a fascination with nature’s ecology, aspire to someday fish for 30 days straight in retirement for Smallmouth with a woman who’d walk across broken glass for me, and try not to write incomplete sentences – because of Ken Cook.

The second phone call I got this morning was from Tanner Cook, telling me his dad –Ken Cook – had died of a heart attack just hours before I took aim at the first grey squirrel. 

I didn’t cry immediately – but I’ve burned through a roll of Bounty since. The third call of the morning was from Kevin VanDam. “As soon as I heard the news, I thought of you, and wanted to call and check on you.” Fact is, Ken had an influence on the most decorated angler of the past two decades too.

The calls and texts keep coming, and I keep filling up paper towels. Honestly – I really didn’t know that so many others knew HOW MUCH he meant to me. I realized people knew we were buddies. I didn’t realize they knew HOW CLOSE we truly were. It’s been amazingly humbling.

We wouldn’t have been so close if the 1991 Bassmaster Classic champion wouldn’t have returned a handwritten letter I sent as a high schooler to B.A.S.S. in 1988.

In that letter, I told B.A.S.S. that Ken was my hero – wanna be like him when I grow up. They forwarded my letter to him.

I was out in the parking lot pushing abandoned buggies back into the store, when my dad showed up with the letter. Dad knew it was worth delivering to me amid my shift at the Rochester grocery store – rather than wait a couple hours until I got home.

A typewriter generated – wisdom rich – letter from Ken Cook.

It was the first of several typewritten letters he sent. I still have every one of them on a shelf in my Tulsa office. The paragraphs were rich with advice on what science classes to take, a little talk about seasonal bass fishing patterns, and the fishing industry.

I begged my parents to take me to the 1990 Bassmaster Classic. They did. Of course they did – because that’s what the best parents in the history of the universe do. And it was there, on the banks of the James River, that I first shook Ken’s hand. I was as nervous as a Chug Bug floating over a shallow school of 4-pound Smallies.

The biggest thing I remember Ken telling me during our first meeting was, “If you wanna be a better bass fisherman – you’re gonna need to leave Pittsburgh and live somewhere where a lot of bass live.” Bold, damn near abrasive honesty, double dipped in can’t argue with that wisdom. That was the essence of Ken.

The following year, Dad wanted to go back to the Bassmaster Classic. It was in Baltimore. I sought out Ken on “autograph day.” He pulled a blue Sharpie from his pocket and said, “Look, don’t tell anybody, but I think I’m gonna win this thing, and I’ll show you where on a map, in the back of that magazine, if you want to try and watch from the shoreline.”

Why he trusted a 20-year-old college kid with that map and its blue X is still tough for me to understand. Three days later, I cried in the arena seats as Ken and Tammy took their victory lap as Classic champions.

Four years later I bought my first bass boat from my childhood hero – but he wouldn’t sell it to me until he sent it back to the Javelin Boats factory in Murfreesboro, Tenn., to have every ding, dent and scratch removed. He wanted his slightly used tournament rig to be perfect before he was willing to let me take possession of it.

In 1996, I asked him to be a groomsman in my wedding.  The morning of “I Do” – he called my cell to ask if I thought adding white strands to a jig skirt would help mimic the underbelly of a crawdad. I remember wondering why a world champion was seeking lure-building advice from a wannabe on my wedding day.

Years later, I realized it was a wise tactic to distract me from thinking about the nerve-racking ceremony that was just hours away.  He knew I was a worrier – and a thinker. Talk of bass prey was perfect for replacing all the anxious thoughts of what could go wrong.

And 17 years later, when it went wrong – I drove three hours and 20 minutes from an Osage County judge’s quarters, straight to Ken and Tammy’s. He had a beer waiting on me. He promised to have a pot of dark and bold ready early the next morning. We’d needed to get an early start if we wanted to photograph his elk and buffalo in soft light. I remember thinking, “The sun will rise again. And he’s here to make sure I rise again too.” I did. I thought that.

The photo at the top of this story is of Ken and I in his kitchen that weekend. He had retired from professional angling and was spending his days loving life with Tammy, his three boys, the grandbabies, managing his hunting ranch, fishing locally, fishing Door County for weeks each summer, and recently, even returned to his beloved Africa where he once arrowed a leopard.

He’s marking my map in this photo. Promising special opportunities in new waters. Showing me places where our mutual close friend and fisheries biologist, Gene Gilliland, and myself, could catch Door County, Wisconsin smallmouth. Ken’s guidance was on-target again. Gene and I caught ‘em – and I fell in love with Door County.

The sun will come up tomorrow. The grey squirrels will probably be back too. I’ll reload – and take my best shot in your honor, Ken.

I’m just not sure who’ll mark my map going forward, like you so graciously, loyally, and lovingly did the past 28 years.

On a visit to my home in 2009, I asked Ken to autograph a 21-inch by 24-inch photo I have of him unhooking a bass from a spinnerbait.

A modern day “mountain man” if I’ve ever met one – Ken referenced the 1972 movie “Jeremiah Johnson” with his Sharpie – and signed it, “Alan – We’ve Come Far Pilgrim! It was Definitely Worth the Trouble. – Ken Cook.”

We have, Ken. And I’d have never made it without YOU.