CLEWISTON, Fla. — Fishing the prespawn often involves a decision between moving quickly, covering water with a reaction bait, or slowing down with soft plastics. This is the decision anglers will be facing during the St. Croix Bassmaster Open at Lake Okeechobee presented by SEVIIN.
Thinking back a decade, tournaments on the Big O were dominated by anglers flipping and punching heavy cover with braided line, big rods and a big flippin’ hook or jig. When Ish Monroe won the Bassmaster Elite Series event here in 2012 with over 108 pounds, he was doing just that.
But the past few years the trend switched, and tournaments were won with moving baits more than the slower presentations.
Monroe says the change is due mostly to the lack of grass and hard cover in the lake.
“They’ve literally nuked the lake with chemicals to kill the grass, there’s no hydrilla and almost no eelgrass,” says Monroe. “I had seen some of (Scott) Martin’s videos talking about how bad the spraying is on the lake, but I didn’t believe that Lake Okeechobee would have zero grass in it until I got here.”
Monroe says that decayed vegetation has now turned to muck and covers what was once a hard bottom.
“You can’t throw anything on the bottom, every time you punch or flip a bait you pick up muck,” says Monroe. “If you try to flip or throw a worm, it hits the bottom and disappears in the muck, the fish can’t see it. You have to throw something moving to keep it above the muck so the fish can see your bait.”
The lack of grass means a lack of water filtration, and that means areas with clean water are few and far between. Those few areas will be filled with competitors — and with a 225-boat field, small areas could become crowded quickly.
Okeechobee is notorious for a wind tide where strong winds will push water across the lake, in and out of areas. This means that an area that had clean water one day may not the next day if a strong wind pushed it all out.
With a front passing through this week, we could see a post-front wind blow the clean water out of some areas that held large populations of fish in practice.
Monroe suspects a moving bait will dominate competition this week and weights will be higher than average. He predicts the top 50 anglers will have 14 pounds per day with anglers who make the Top 10 cut requiring over 20 pounds per day.
The full 225-boat field will fish Thursday and Friday, with only the Top 10 advancing to fish on Saturday.
All coverage from the St. Croix Bassmaster Open at Lake Okeechobee presented by SEVIIN will be available on Bassmaster.com.
The final day of competition will be broadcast live on FS1 Saturday morning beginning at 8 a.m. ET, with streaming available on Bassmaster.com, as well as FS2 and the FOX Sports digital platforms.
