Brent Ehrler Wins Table Rock Lake FLW Tour

[TW_Staff]

Fresh off a victory at the FLW Series Western Division opener on Lake Shasta, Brent Ehrler arrived to a chilly Table Rock Lake and didn’t initially like what he saw. For starters, the water was substantially cooler and clearer than last year’s FLW Tour event. His concerns became very real as he failed to boat more than two keepers in any of the three practice days.

Table Rock’s morning water temperatures were in the high-30s. Despite longer daylight hours and a full-moon cycle, the fish remained pretty much parked in their winter haunts.

The field practiced under brutally cold conditions. Boat-decks were icy all morning, rod guides froze up, and it was just an all-around miserable experience.

Ehrler struggled just as much as the rest of the field, many of whom reported just one or two keeper bites across 3 days of practice.

He found what would become the winning area on the second night of practice. It happened as he was running back out of the White.

"I saw something on my Lowrance and thought 'Whoa! Let's check that out,'" he noted. "It was timber adjacent to a creek-channel bend. We pulled in there and caught a bunch of shorts, then 30 minutes later I caught a keeper on a grub. Two minutes later the co-angler practicing with me caught a keeper, then we left.

"Even though we only caught two keepers, it just had that feel – like there was a lot of fish there."

Ehrler drew boat No. 6, which meant he'd likely have the White River area to himself on day 1, so he decided to go.

Ehrler found the White River spot by accident. He saw a point on his graph and decided it was worth investigating. This area, located up the White River just above the Highway 39 Bridge, had classic prespawn written all over it.

"I started running a pattern with a Lucky Craft Pointer 100DD (jerkbait)," he noted. "I was running bluff ends – it was a secondary thing – and I ended up catching a 6 1/2-pounder."

“In the morning, those fish came up there to feed, and then they’d drop back down to the timber,” said the 2006 Forrest Wood Cup champion. “They’re staging in there, and in another two weeks, they will be up on the bank.”

“I’ve never found a spot like this before. It was just loaded, and it replenished each day. It wasn’t just big fish either. There were a ton of 12-inchers too. I even caught a walleye one day. I’ve never been so excited to go fishing each morning. I’ve never had a tournament like this.”

"I changed up a little, like before," he added. "The first day I caught most of them on a grub. The second day it was a grub and the jerkbait. The third day it was a Swimming Senko and a crankbait."

About the crank, he noted: "The second night, I was sitting there in my boat and thinking, 'Man, I have to figure something else out.' They were suspended in the tops of the trees, and I was doing tackle and looked down and there was a crankbait box. I thought, 'I betcha they'd bite that RC 2.5DD."

He rigged it up on a separate rod, laid it on the deck, and after he fished the Swimming Senko on day 3, he threw the crank and whacked a 5 1/2-pounder on his second cast with it.

On day 4, he started with the grub and caught four keepers, then changed again and threw a jig. He caught three on the jig and culled for the last time at approximately 11:00.



Winning Pattern:



About his primary area in the White, Ehrler said: "It was a creek-channel bend that just had a lot of underwater timber. It was basically a staging area. The fish were pulling in from the main lake and they stopped on the bend. Their next step would be to go all the way back to the shallow part of the creek. That's why the fish were there every day – it was a staging spot and it was one of those areas that replenished.

"I had my boat over 30 to 35 feet of water and would make long casts up onto the flat," he added. "The bait would land in 12 to 15 feet, so it broke from 12 to 15 out to 35. When it made that break – up where the bait was landing – there weren't any trees. All the trees were closer to where the boat was in deeper water. I'd get that grub up there, let it hit bottom, then swim it like a swimbait – the bait would stay in the 12- to 15-foot depth where the fish were sitting."




Winning Gear:



Grub gear: 7' heavy-action extra-fast Lucky Craft shakey-head rod, Abu Garcia Soron SX40 spinning reel, 12-pound Sunline PE braid, 8-pound Sunline FC Sniper fluorocarbon leader, 1/4-ounce ballhead jig, 5" Yamamoto Single-Tail grub (smoke) and 4" Yamamoto Single-Tail grub (natural shad).

He used the same gear to throw the natural-shad Yamamoto Swimming Senko.

Jerkbait gear: 6'11" medium-action Lucky Craft Power Pointer rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier casting reel, 10-pound FC Sniper, Lucky Craft Pointer 100DD (pearl wakasagi).

Crankbait gear: 7 1/2' medium-action Lucky Craft Deep Strike cranking rod, Abu Garcia Revo Winch casting reel, 10-pound FC sniper, Lucky Craft RC 2.5DD (ghost minnow).

The jig he threw on day 4 was a 1/2-ounce Pepper jig (Delta special) tipped with a 5" Yamamoto Double Tail grub (color 301).



The Field:



Ron Shuffield:

Shuffield was the only finalist who fished the James River and not the White. Fishing fans may remember the James was an extremely popular arm in 2009. More specifically, Shuffield was in Ants Creek, a branch of the James. Shuffield actually started his tournament on the main lake in extremely deep water. He eventually changed his entire strategy and ran to the river. There he worked a variety of jerkbaits on 10-pound fluorocarbon.

“The key wasn’t brand or color,” he explained. “The key was being around a fish that wanted to bite. I really thought they’d move shallower, but the fish clearly suspended. And you really had to slow down to get bites.”

Shuffield would twitch the jerkbait twice and then pause it for five or six seconds before repeating the process. This successfully emulated a struggling shad. He focused on channel-swing banks and transition banks where one type of rock changes to another. Many of these banks had cedar trees and brush. While the other finalists targeted exclusively largemouths, Shuffield brought in mixed bags of all three Table Rock species.


Mike Murm:

“Overall, I’m pretty proud of myself,” said the Hot Springs, Ark., native. “I found a real good pattern, and I executed every day. The last two days I think they started moving – probably up the creek. I could have depleted the area too.”

Wurm dragged a small Eakins’ jig with a Zoom Critter Craw on the bottom of the White River. At times he worked the jig so slow he was barely moving it. One of his keys this week was using 10-pound braid with a 10-pound fluorocarbon leader. It helped him pull fish out of the timber and improved his hook-set ratio.

“It was really important to barely move the jig. If you so much as lifted it, that means you were fishing it too fast. You’ve got to remember these fish are cold. And when they’re cold, they don’t want to move very much – just like us.”


Bryan Thrift:

“I fished a deep (14 to 25 feet) point with timber,” said Thrift. “But on this lake there’s so much timber. The best one that I found had a sharp drop and a rock vein that ran through it. The vein is almost like a strip of rock.

Thrift used a 3/8-ounce Damiki Mamba jig with a craw trailer on 15-pound fluorocarbon. Like Ehrler, he occasionally mixed in a crankbait – his preferred model a Damiki DC200. His lone keeper Saturday came on a jerkbait – his only jerkbait fish of the week.

Thrift’s primary area, located near Ehrler in the White River.



TW Staff