Another weekend. Another four Regional events— ABA Weekend Series on Lake Murray and Lake Palestine, and FLW BFLs on Lake Martin and Lake Okeechobee. Yet, it was the tournaments from a year ago that fell off that made the biggest changes in this week’s rankings.
Bradley Jones (No. 9) and Don Demott (No. 10) both moved into the top 10 thanks to mediocre 2012 tournaments dropping off in the last week. For Jones, he only moved up three spots. For Demott, he rose — get this — 38 spots! As we continue to say, one tournament can make the difference.
Meanwhile, Jim Folks did fish this past weekend, but he may wish he hadn’t. Okeechobee wasn’t too kind to the Florida angler, and he slipped from 13th to 27th.
The rest of the teens and most of the 20s remain unchanged in the rankings. But Folks starts a trend where the next few spots are a jumble compared to a week ago. Let’s see if I can straighten it out.
Corey Bradley had a tournament drop off, and he made a calculator leap from 152nd — yes, 152nd! — to 28th. Alex Davis slipped from 28th to 37th. Casey Martin went from 29th to 40th. Then, after a few unchanged anglers, Brad Fowler fell from 35th to 64th. Karey Dickerson skyrocketed from 122nd to 36th. And Brandon Medlock went from 37th to 68th.
Phew! That about covers everything in the top 50.
College – School
Raise your hand if you thought Bethel University had the best fishing program in all of college fishing. Yeah, we didn’t think there would be many hands raised, but after their worst tournament in the past year dropped off Monday, that’s exactly what they are.
Bethel leapfrogged three teams to take over the No. 1 spot with a 761.451 average. That means that all their teams beat more than 76 percent of the field in any given event. Pretty amazing stuff.
While Bethel climbed, LSU-Shreveport slipped from fifth to ninth after the FLW College event at Toledo Bend. However, Louisiana-Monroe nearly caught its in-state rival going from 17th to 12th. And in the state over, Stephen F. Austin was right behind them in going from 19th to 14th.