By Pete Robbins
February 22, 2012
California bass pro Brent Ehrler is no stranger to either championship-level competition or the Red River.
Since he fishes the FLW Tour and not the Bassmaster Elite Series, he won’t compete in this month’s Bassmaster Classic on the Red, but Ehrler is intimately familiar with the pressures attendant to fishing for all the marbles in what amounts to a winner-take-all showdown. He’s fished six consecutive FLW Tour Championships, finishing in the top seven on three occasions, including a victory on Alabama’s Lake Logan Martin in 2006. Prior to that he won the 2004 EverStart Championship on Kentucky’s stingy Lake Cumberland.
The sites of Ehrler’s two championship victories don’t resemble Louisiana’s big muddy lock-and-dam river in appearance. Indeed, of his four other wins on FLW Outdoors circuits – at Table Rock, Ouachita, Shasta and Havasu – none came from river systems that resemble the Red. But if you think he doesn’t have the chops to compete in Shreveport, you’re dead wrong. When the FLW Tour visited the river last May, he fought his way through two cuts and four days of competition en route to a 6th place finish. That finish was his second best in a season that saw him finish second overall in the Angler of the Year race, the fourth straight year that he’s been in the top five overall and the fifth straight top ten, testaments to his versatility.
Despite his consistency in qualifying for end-of-year championships, Ehrler agrees with the adage that “championships are the hardest to qualify for and the easiest to win” simply because of the reduced field size. With that established, however, he came out of the gate swinging, notching two championships early in his career. It could be argued that one is a fluke, but the second is confirmation of his skill as a top-flight tournament strategist. Still, he doesn’t take those victories for granted. “You look at guys who’ve been in the industry for years and years and they’ve never won one,” he said. “It eludes some really good fishermen their whole careers.”
Most of the Classic field will have some experience on the Red. Some, like the East Texas qualifiers and river rats like Greg Hackney, have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours there. Ehrler said that past tournament exploits on the Red may not be dispositive.
“Experience will definitely play a role,” he said. “But any one of these guys can get in the right area. Last time, it was a guy from California, Skeet Reese. Someone from outside the area has just a good chance as a local if he puts his head down and grinds it out. Someone with a lot of history sometimes starts over thinking it and trying to do too many things.”
Indeed, he said that this is a tournament where simplicity and perfect execution may win out over a complex game plan.
“I’ve been told that there are no tricks there and I agree with that,” he explained. “I think the key presentations will be a handful of reaction baits and a handful of pitching and flipping baits. If I had to guess, I’d say flipping will win it.”
“It’s not a place where you can run all over the river fishing a pattern,” he continued. “Once you choose an area or two, you’re fully committed. Some places you have to idle 45 minutes across a flat, four-wheel-driving it over all sorts of snags and stumps.”
While the Red has historically fished small at the Tour level, he’s a firm believer that the potential to win comes out of more than just a few spots. In fact, he believes it can be won off of something other than the community holes. “You can have an area all to yourself,” he said. “There are plenty of fish even on spots that you wouldn’t think look good.”
Those spots could be in any of the three pools of the river open to the tournament field. Ehrler said he’s heard some knowledgeable anglers say that it can only be won in one pool and others who’ve said it can only be won in another, but he believes “there are fish to win it up and down.” Accordingly, he would spend the first day of official practice in one of the two upper pools, the second in the other, and the third in the one that produced best during practice.
His key areas would likely have “clear” water, but clear is a relative term on the Red. The name of the river reflects its occasionally muddy waters. “They can be caught in the dirty water, but it’s easier to get on a pattern in the clearer water. It doesn’t have to be clear, though. It’s typically what I’d call a good clear stain.”
Just as important as the water color is its depth. Ehrler said that during his practice and tournament experience in Shreveport, he never found meaningful populations of fish “in the big wide flat backwaters.” Instead, he’d look for spawning areas close to deeper water. Deep is relative, though – in many cases that’s five feet.
“If the whole pond you’re in is five feet deep and the water drops three or four feet, then a good portion of it is completely gone,” he explained. “So I’d look for the side of the oxbow with deeper water close to the bank. The water fluctuates there so much. When we were there last year it dropped a foot and a half or two feet over five days. The first day of the tournament I was catching fish on shoreline cover. The next day, I’d pitch my Flapping Hawg up next to that same cover and it would it immediately come to a step. I could see that it was on the bottom. Those fish like to be in areas where if all of the water drops out they can still stay there.”
