June 8, 2011
By Alan Clemons
Brent Ehrler just wrapped up a 30th-place finish in the FLW Tour Open on the Potomac River after a week of practice on Kentucky Lake for a tournament in a few weeks.
The California whiz is part of the road warrior crew traipsing around the country right now on the professional circuits like gypsies. But prior to the Potomac event and his time on Kentucky Lake, Ehrler was down in Louisiana last month battling in the FLW Tour event on the Red River.
With fluctuating water levels and the FLW Tour’s top sticks duking it out, Ehrler finished a respectable sixth with a four-day total of 19 bass weighing 35 pounds. It was his eighth Top 10 appearance in the last 14 FLW tournaments counting the Tour, Open, Series and Forrest Wood Cup
last August.
“I did two things – flipping a Flappin’ Hog and cranking a Lucky Craft RC 1.5 – during the tournament and just varied between the two,” Ehrler said of the week on the Red River. I had two areas that I mixed up each day. One was a backwater oxbow-type lake with good wood and I was flipping and cranking, and the other area was a second backwater with good grass. I wasn’t stuck on one single thing.”
Ehrler’s targets included wood cover, willows on the bank or just off that were flooded and “viney bushes” along the bank with water. He flipped a 4.5-inch Flappin’ Hog in black/blue with a Picasso tungsten 5/16ths sinker and Owner 4/0 straight-shank hook. In the grass, Ehrler punched with a 3/4-ounce tungsten weight and the 3.5-inch Flappin’ Hog in the same color.
Water levels dropped overnight after the first tournament day, leaving his vines, willows and wood exposed. But instead of freaking out, Ehrler began cruising the bank looking for where the bass had migrated to – a point, underwater cover, something that would hold them after such a quick departure of the water.
He found some roamers with the RC 1.5 crankbait and then located a log a bit deeper off the bank.
“I guess every bass within 200 yards swam right to that one log,” he said. “I caught four of the five that I weighed in (on Day 2) off that one log. But I only caught one there on the third day, which was strange. Then on the last day I caught seven, lost two giant fish off of it and flipped up only one out of the grass. The wind had changed directions and packed in the grass.”
Ehrler’s years of experience helped him stay focused. The bass, he said, “could only do two things: go left or right, and the ones that went left stopped on that log. I’ve never seen anything like it. Every day I wasn’t catching a lot of fish, but it was kind of a fun feeling knowing that the next morning I was going to catch a fish on that spot. I knew it was the best place for them to go.”
The wind also muddied up his grass area on the final day, along with making it difficult to punch through the compacted grass. Even with large weights there’s just times when it’s almost futile to keep trying something, especially with a second option at hand.
“Sometimes you do it right and sometimes you do it wrong,” he said. “The last day, I knew that grass wasn’t right and kept telling myself it wasn’t, but I kept fishing it and stayed too long in there. It didn’t pan out and I should have gotten out of there earlier. Fortunately, because I’d found that ‘magic tree’ earlier in the week, things turned out well.”
