Suzuki Spotlight: Five Seasons In, Cody Meyer Isn’t Going Back
Cody Meyer switched to Suzuki in 2022. He’s in his fifth season on the brand now, and when we got him talking about it, he spent most of that time on reliability.
“If you’re looking at buying a motor, I mean, think about it as a car,” according to Meyer. “If you’re going to read car or truck reviews, you’re not going to go for one that’s constantly having problems. You want the most reliable, dependable car or truck out there. And that’s what you get with Suzuki.”
That’s a boring pitch. It’s also the one that matters at 4 a.m. at a ramp in a state you don’t live in.
He didn’t make the jump off a spec sheet. He made it off guys who had already run the hours, and most of them weren’t bass fishermen.
“I remember talking to, you know, friends, anglers, saltwater fishermen that had Suzukis, and they said, ‘Listen, Cody, I promise you, when you put a Suzuki on your boat, if you’re going out in the salt, you’re going bass fishing, you run that motor for a year, you’ll never go back,'” he said. “And it’s how I think, how I believe.”
Salt is the hardest place you can hang a motor. Corrosion, big water, long runs, and those are the guys handing out the promise. A season of Guntersville and Champlain and the California Delta isn’t the thing that breaks it after that.
Then there’s the part of this job nobody films. California to Florida to New York. You tow across the country, you burn your practice days, and if the motor doesn’t crank Thursday morning, the entry fee and the fuel and the hotel go with it. There’s no makeup date.
“This is my fifth year. I’ve never been more happy, more proud, and really more confident being a tournament angler, being on the road, being from California to Florida to New York, knowing I’m going to get to where I want to go, get back from where I’m coming from, and have no problems,” he said.
CONFIDENCE is a strange thing to sell on a spec sheet, but it shows up in decisions. Run 40 miles to the school you found in practice, or stay close to the ramp and grind out a limit. The motor shouldn’t be part of that math.
