[CentOS] fail2ban behavior

I created a filter and verified it with fail2ban-regex against
actual lines in my log and it works. During restarts of fail2ban,
only some previous ip's get banned immediately whereas some need a
reoccurrence despite the jail's config specification of maxretry and
findtime suggesting the entries mandate blocking.

I'd assume the behavior after a restart is noe way if it weren't for
the seemingly random immediate notification of blocks being different?

Anyone with experience using fail2ban know anything about this?

Thanks,
jlc