There has been considerable talk about how Lake Okeechobee isn’t as good for bass fishing as it was in 2012. But you need to keep that in perspective. The Big O in a bad year is still better than 90 percent of the bass fisheries in the country, and this is by no means a “bad year.” Slightly down? Yeah, maybe. As the wise man always says, “We’ll see.”
Ish Monroe’s 108-5 winning weight in 2012 was kick-started with a Day 1 bag of 34-5. Both numbers were headline-grabbers and well outside the norm. Chris Lane finished second with 95-9. But you only have to go down the leaderboard to third place to see a total more in-line with expectations this year, where Skeet Reese had 84-12.
So with that idea of perspective in mind, here’s a list of the top 12 at the end of Day 1 in 2012. We’ll see how it compares at the end of today’s weigh-in.