My 10 Questions with Brent Ehrler

My 10 Questions with Brent Ehrler

 

TB: Brent you are on fire!  Two wins already this year, Lake Shasta for the National Guard Western Series and the FLW Tour on Table Rock.  I just looked and saw the distance between these two lakes is over 2,100 miles.  Tell me about the logistics of fishing both coasts.  Do you have two boats? Do you store the boat somewhere in between events? 

BE: Thanks, it’s been a great year so far.  It is a little more difficult fishing both sides of the country, but I just have one boat.  Sometimes I fly back and forth depending on where the tournaments are.  Right now my boat is in Knoxville , TN at the Air National Guard Base.  I actually flew out to Tennessee and after that event I will drive it back to Vegas for the Lake Mead event.  It just takes a lot more planning and sometimes I keep it at the airport in long term parking. 

TB: Wow, Air National Guard base, probably can’t find a more secure place to leave your boat. 

BE: Haha…yeah it should be pretty safe inside their gates!

 

TB: One word really describes your fishing, and that is consistency.  You are always up there, you are a fantasy fishing standard, whats your strategy in these events?

BE:  I really focus on trying to be consistent; my goal at each event is to be cash a check.  I’m not one of those guys who goes out and fishes for five bites.  A lot of times those guys only come in with two or three good fish.  I look at it like a numbers game.  I want to catch as many fish as possible, the bigger fish will come that way.  Once I have a limit it is much easier to go look for a kicker. 

 

TB: Now your consistency really shows as you’re a past Everstart (formerly Stren, now American Fishing Series) Angler of the Year, you won the AOY in the Western FLW Series (plus two 3^rd place finishes), and you have been really close to winning it in the Tour.  You missed by 1 pt in 2008.  How bad do you want to win FLW Tour Angler of the Year?

BE: I would love to win Angler of the Year on the Tour, I have had a chance the last two years and hope this is the year.  But if it doesn’t happen, I know there is always next year.  I just want to be consistent.  But after missing it by one point, I realized how close I was and thought it was a good possibility that I could pull it off.  It took that year to make me want it really bad, and I think it would be pretty cool to win it.

 

TB: I saw you were ranked #1 in the world by Bassfan.com earlier this year for about a week before Skeet took over, how much do you pay attention to that kind of stuff? 

BE: A little bit, mostly because everyone was calling me and talking about it.  I was more disappointed in the flak that people gave me about it.  A lot of the feedback was pretty negative and people were mad at Bassfan for putting me #1.  They all think FLW is an amateur circuit and that we’re not on the same level as the Elite Series.  I was disappointed at that part of it.

 

TB: I noticed on your website that one of your goals is to make it to the Bassmaster Classic, how are you going to make that happen?

BE: This year I will be fishing the Bassmaster Northern Opens. I think it would be really fun to make it to the classic.  I am looking forward to fishing those lakes, they are always fun to fish.  I love the Detroit River and Champlain, but I have never been to the Chesapeake and know nothing about it.

 

TB: When we were prefishing together a few years ago on the Columbia River in Washington, you and Gabe Bolivar really turned me on to the Lucky Craft LV-500.  What is your favorite color for this bait?

BE: It would be hard to just pick one.  For lakes like Clear Lake it would be Ghost Minnow, for the Delta it would be Spring Craw.  At the Columbia River it would be American Shad.  But overall Ghost Minnow and Spring Craw seem to work everywhere.

 

TB: What Lucky Craft bait have most of your winnings come from?

BE: Actually it's the LV-500.  Through and through it has played a role in a lot of tournaments.  It is a great bait that works all over the country. I also like a lot of the shallow stuff like the BDS 3, the RC 1.5 and the New SKT. 

 

TB: The Tour stop at Ft. Loudon is coming up, what is fishing going to be like?

BE: It should be good, the fish should be moving up.  I think it’s going to be a sight fishing deal and to do well you will need a mixed bag.  There are some huge smallmouth on this lake, the minimum size is 18 inches.  I remember a couple of years ago when we went there, the leader on Day 1 had like 20 pounds of smallmouth.  I only had four but they weighed 13lbs or so.  I had two four pound smallies I caught off of beds. 

 

TB: What advice do you have for co-anglers?

BE: The biggest advice I can give to co-anglers is to do your own thing.  The co-anglers who always catch them best or catch more weight than me are always the ones who are doing their own thing.  Don’t try to compete with the boater.  I see a lot of guys who will try to match me pitch for pitch on the same laydown and those are the ones who don’t do well.  Let’s face it, the guy in the front of the boat gets first chance at these fish and if a laydown has already been pitched two three or four times, it is a lot harder to catch a fish.  The aggressive fish will always go for the bait they see first.  I also see a lot of guys who will switch to a crankbait as soon as I catch one on a crankbait. 

 

The co-anglers who do well are the ones who fish differently, throwing a drop shot or shakyhead in deeper water, or dragging a worm.  They are really fishing for different fish and they always do better.