While many of his fellow pros are thinking it will take considerably less than 100 pounds to win this four-day event, Alton Jones doesn’t think the total will be off by much. He picked a winning weight of 96-1.
“If it was going to be sunny and calm for four days, I think you’d see a hundred (pounds),” Jones said Wednesday. “But it’s not going to be. As the weather goes from cloudy Thursday to sunny Friday, I think you’ll see different groups catch them each day. The guy who can adjust on the fly will be the one who moves to the top of the leaderboard.”
Jones finished 69th here in 2012, but he was coming off a victory the week before at Florida’s St. Johns River. He thinks there will be some St. Johns River-like scenarios at Okeechobee because of the scarcity of clear water.
“I think you’ll have some sights like the famous flats in Lake George,” Jones said. “You’re going to have half the field in 1,000 acres or less.”
He isn’t so concerned about the water clarity or lack thereof, saying, “I’ve been here a couple of times in my life where you could actually sight-fish and catch big ones. But usually it’s more like pitching to holes in the grass where you know there should be beds, so it’s not usually like a St. Johns River sight-fish fest.
“It’s the ones that are out in those deeper holes in the grass where you can’t see them that are the right ones, the bigger fish. That’s what I’m going to be targeting.”
Jones noted that there are lots of spawning and post-spawn bass in Okeechobee right now, adding, “It seemed like there was a big wave pulling up to spawn during practice.”