Bob Cobb

Bob Cobb — While Ray Scott gets much-deserved credit as the father of modern bass fishing, the keenest observers of those early years of Scott’s B.A.S.S. organization agree that the movement probably would not have survived without the relentless efforts and creative genius of Bob Cobb.

Cobb, the outdoor editor of the Tulsa Tribune in 1967, when Scott was organizing his first professional bass tournament at Beaver Lake, Arkansas, not only covered the first media event, but he also used his newspaper column to help recruit enough anglers to make the tournament a success. Without that boost, Scott acknowledges, the All-American Bass Tournament would have been dead in the water.

After editing and publishing the first few issues of the membership magazine, Bassmaster, Scott knew he needed a professional to steer the publication. Bob Cobb was the obvious choice. Most periodicals of that day used outdoor writers as the experts in how-to stories and armchair adventures. Cobb turned that model on its head. Instead, he milked the minds of tournament anglers to create cutting-edge content about bass fishing.

“A bass tournament was like a laboratory,” Cobb often said. “There was a big funnel, and everybody who came in with fish poured some knowledge into the funnel, and out dripped how-to information that went straight onto the pages of Bassmaster.”

“Bob was not publishing pretty stories about how beautiful the sun was at daybreak,” said Harold Sharp, the first B.A.S.S. tournament director. “He was telling it like it is, and he knew when a story was real or not because he was a good bass angler himself.”

The formula worked, and immediately, membership in the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society grew past 9,000 and Ray Scott’s dream was becoming a reality.

Cobb was instrumental in the success of numerous other initiatives that helped gain momentum for B.A.S.S. He and Scott conceived the Bassmaster Classic, which would mushroom into the “Super Bowl of Bass Fishing” and the most important event in sportfishing.

He steadily won over outdoor journalists who were opposed to competitive fishing, in large part by inviting them to fish alongside the Classic contenders as “press anglers” and observers. When B.A.S.S. created the Bassmaster Seminar Circuit, which featured top pros like Roland Martin and John Powell sharing their fish-catching secrets, Cobb’s knack for creating advance publicity ensured packed houses in auditoriums in major cities across the country.

B.A.S.S. also made a name for itself by taking on industrial polluters that were discharging poorly treated wastewater into rivers and lakes. After the organization filed a round of lawsuits under the 1899 Federal Refuse Act, Cobb’s public relations campaign brought America’s water quality crisis to the attention of the non-fishing public and garnered coverage on national television news programs.

“He created enough press that finally the government formed the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to try to put a stop to this problem,” recalled Sharp. The crusade solidified B.A.S.S. as a conservation-oriented organization dedicated to improving aquatic resources across the country.

Through his dual roles as editor of Bassmaster and publicity director for B.A.S.S., Cobb made household names out of some of the leading anglers of the day. Bill Dance, Tom Mann, Bobby Murray, along with Martin, Powell and many others were able to line up sponsors and parlay their fishing abilities into lucrative careers, thanks in large part to the promotion Cobb gave them.

Between 1969 and 1984, Cobb edited more than 150 issues of Bassmaster — some swelling to more than 200 pages — as well as numerous how-to books and special magazine issues. His magazine so dominated the world of fishing journalism that Time Magazine labeled Bassmaster “the Bible of Bass Fishing.”

After 16 years at the helm of Bassmaster, Cobb launched a second career, this time in television. Again, he was a pioneer in his chosen field.

With a background of producing annual “movies” built around the Bassmaster Classics, Cobb took over as creator, producer, director, writer and sometime host of “The Bassmasters” TV show, which debuted in 1984 on TNN — The Nashville Network. It was the first television series built around competitive bass fishing, and it was an almost instant hit.

As the highest-rated program on TNN, “The Bassmasters” further drove attention to the sport of professional bass fishing, increased membership in B.A.S.S. and lured major national sponsors and advertisers in the automotive, petroleum and insurance industries to the sport.

Now living in Atlanta, Cobb continues to be active in the bass fishing community, appearing at major B.A.S.S. events and promoting his 412-page opus, The B.A.S.S. Story — Unplugged. The richly illustrated coffee-table book chronicles the birth of modern bass fishing and solidifies Cobb’s remarkable role in the movement.