GEORGE COCHRAN’S HALF-MILLION-DOLLAR WEEKEND
The Big Gamble
 EDITOR'S
NOTE: George Cochran of Hot Springs, Arkansas, has just
finished a tremendous bass-fishing career with a $500,000
FLW (Forrest L. Wood) Championship win, the highest
payout for any bass-fishing tournament in history. Cochran,
a Strike King pro staffer for 30 years, has won two
Bassmasters Classics. Cochran admits, “Winning
championships on both the BASS and the FLW circuits
is a dream come true.” Only a few anglers in history
have been able to complete a double grand slam like
this.
QUESTION: George, why did you decide to fish shallow
when everyone else was fishing deep, and why did you
decide to save your best bank until the last day, not
knowing if you would qualify for the finals?
COCHRAN: I was fishing the four-day-long FLW championship,
and I knew by the final day, Saturday, that if I hadn’t
caught any fish by 9 a.m., I wasn’t going to catch
them. I knew I might not get to fish the last day of
the tournament, but if I did, Saturday would be the
hardest day to catch fish.
 The
tournament lasts for four days, and Lake Hamilton is
one of the most-public lakes you’ll ever see.
There are jet skiers, boaters and fishermen all having
a good time on the lake. You can also expect a large
gallery of spectators on the lake, especially when you’re
fishing a televised national championship. Too, throw
in the group of fishermen who fish this lake every Saturday,
and there’s a huge armada of people moving up
and down the lake. Most of the time, the only way you
can catch bass on Lake Hamilton is to move into the
backs of the creeks, where the water skiers, jet skiers
and boat riders don’t go. I’d saved my best
bank, on a main part of the lake where most of the traffic
was, to fish during the first two hours of the last
day of the tournament, knowing that if I didn’t
win it during those first hours before the boat traffic
began to hit the lake, I would be struggling to win.
 QUESTION:
George, you also decided to fish within two miles of
your home. Why?
COCHRAN: The tournament was held on Lake Hamilton near
where I live, so I got to fish the entire tournament
within a mile of my home. I chose where to fish the
lake based on 30 years of tournament bass fishing. I’ve
learned that any lake you fish, no matter where you
are in the country, will always have one section of
lake that consistently produces the most bass, especially
for the shallow-water fisherman. During this tournament,
the lower end of the lake wasn’t producing many
shallow-water fish, nor was the middle part of the lake.
But the upper end of the lake had some catchable shallow-water
bass. I found one, four-mile stretch of bank in the
upper-end section of the lake that was producing a lot
of shallow-water bass and knew this was the best section
of the lake to fish. I realized this section in the
upper end of the lake would give me the best opportunity
to get the shallow-water bass to bite, so I saved the
very-best area for the last day of the tournament -
make it or break it day.
 If
you’re going to beat the best bass fishermen in
the nation, you need an ace in your hand, which you
can’t play until the very last card is dealt.
Another thing I’ve learned is that most fishermen
fish the same areas day after day in hopes of catching
enough bass to win. However, if you’ll notice,
the weights of the bass being brought in to the scale
goes down each day. I try to go with an opposite approach,
and save my best bank, only a quarter-of-a-mile long,
so I’ll have a fresh new spot to fish and hopefully
catch bass where no one else has fished.
I knew I’d have to catch 9 to 10 pounds of bass
to win, and I thought this area had the best potential
to produce that winning weight in one to two hours of
fishing on the last day of the tournament.
TOMORROW: DAYS ONE AND DAY
TWO OF THE TOURNAMENT
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