BASSTrakk shows Drew Cook in fourth place with 10 pounds, 8 ounces. It’s still very early in the game, but the outlook looks good for him to continue his momentum in the season thus far.
“I can breathe, kind of relax now,” he said on the LIVE mix.
Cook, 25, is competing in his first season on the Elite Series. In 2012, he won the Florida B.A.S.S. Nation high school championship, and then fished on the Florida State University fishing team through graduation in 2017. The next year he qualified through the Bass Pro Shops.com Bassmaster Opens, the feeder league of the Elite Series.
Cook is also on fire, having qualified for two Championship Sundays at the Bassmaster Texas Fest on Lake Fork, and at Lake Hartwell in South Carolina. The good showings currently have him leading the Bassmaster Rookie of the Year Race.
“My year so far has gone about as good as it can get for my rookie year,” said Cook. “I’ve made really good decisions, fished really well.”
He continued, “I’ve only had one day of the entire season that I actually regret what I did. The only other disappointment was not making a bad decision, but in a day that I didn’t capitalize on what I already had going on.”
Cook can’t complain about his track record so far, but he knows that competing at the top tier of the sport takes consistency to win the title.
“To win the point title you must make the right decisions for the entire season,” he said.
What remains are two more points qualifying events—this week at Cayuga Lake—and in late September at Fort Gibson Lake in eastern Oklahoma. The season finale that will determine the Classic qualifiers and the point champions is in early October on Lake St. Clair in Detroit.