Mike Iaconelli didn’t have the same fast-and-furious start we saw on Day 1, but he’s amassed a solid bag to take the unofficial Day 2 lead on BassTrakk. Ike’s estimated 5 pounds, 14 ounces has him tied with Tyler Rivet, who has 18 pounds in the well today. These anglers are both capable of winning, as one proved last week and the other has proven for decades now. But, Joey Cifuentes III may be the real threat lurking in 3rd.
There’s an eerie similarity between Rivet’s first couple days last week and the start of Cifuentes’s tournament here on Seminole. Early last week, it seemed like a novelty to many onlookers as Rivet targeted bass with a jerkbait in the Kissimmee River. Surely, someone would far outpace him with a big wave of bass moving shallow on Okeechobee. However, Rivet held steady and eventually held off the competition. But he was just kind of lurking throughout much of that event.
Cifuentes has that same vibe here on Day 2. The similarities are not confined to just the fact that these two anglers have used forward-facing sonar to target their fish. It’s deeper than that. The most intriguing parallel is, like Rivet last week, Cifuentes is on a learn as you go pattern. FFS is so new, that even the anglers that have become proficient with it these last couple of years are still having to kind of make things up as they go. No one has ever done what Rivet did last week on Okeechobee. He just kind of had to figure it out.
The same is the case for Cifuentes on Seminole this week. Sure, big bass have been caught in the standing timber here on Seminole since the lake was opened to the public in 1957. But fishing in the woods has always been something the locals had a huge advantage at, and even then it wasn’t a perfect science with even the best anglers on the lake only having a couple dozen honey holes amongst the massive underwater forests throughout the lake.
Now, an angler like Cifuentes can wonder off in the woods and figure something out. He’s off to a great start, and learning more and more with each fish catch. If Cifuentes can keep these fish hooked up, he’ll have a shot at winning this one on Sunday.
