But then, an even 17-pound sack put Cody Kelley in the top 10.

And, typically, the first day produces the heaviest weights.

Here are the top 10 pros and their weights:

1        BRADLEY HALLMAN  25 – 0 (5)                        

2        BRANDON MCMILLAN         22 – 8 (5)                        

3        ALEX DAVIS       21 – 0 (5)                        

4        JOSHUA WEAVER        20 – 12 (5)            

5        RYAN CHANDLER       20 – 6 (5)                        

6        SHINICHI FUKAE         20 – 3 (5)                        

7        DARREL ROBERTSON 18 – 11 (5)                      

8        JIM TUTT   18 – 7 (5)              

9        JOHN DEVERE    18 – 6 (5)              

10      CODY KELLEY   17 – 0 (5)              

There were plenty of bass to go around. Even the co-anglers caught them pretty well. The average co-angler bag had 3 fish that weighed 7 pounds, 9 ounces. The figure was 4 fish at 10 pounds, 4 ounces for the guys in the front of the boat. There were 97 limits in the co-angler field of 169 competitors.

Co-angler Matt Surman caught the biggest single bass in either division with his 7 pound, 15 ounce specimen.

Tommy Dickerson had the big bass on the pro side with a 7-2.

Vincent Yonemitsu leads the co-angler division with 18 pounds, 11 ounces, followed closely by Michael Purvis who has 18-even.

With so many small-to-medium-size fish to be found, success belonged to those who could catch a couple of big girls.

That has always been the case in Florida except for those rare times when it takes limits of 7-pounders to top the field. The lake is healthy and fishing fine, but the water is up, the weather is less than perfect and we don’t appear to be in for such an extremely high weight tournament.

Still, 25 pounds of Okeechobee bass say that Hallman is the man today. According to our friends at FLW Outdoors, “Hallman experienced steady, impressive action all day and says he sorted through 20 or 30 fish en route to piecing together his limit. The 2015 Grand Lake Costa FLW Series champion seems confident about his chances of having another big day tomorrow, despite a forecast 180-degree wind shift and 20-degree difference in the projected high temperature.”

McMillan, always a threat to win on his home lake, got off to the right kind of start as well. He has 4 days to build on hid opening effort of 22-8.

AnglersChannel.com will share more as we learn the details throughout this evening and the next 3 days. Stick around!