Brent Ehlrer Blog
Pre-fishing was tough. On the first day of practice we had crazy weather. It was overacast and raining, but still like 70 degrees and they were biting good. I didn’t get a whole lot of bites in the morning, but in the afternoon they started biting like crazy. I ran around and caught quite a few. I was throwing a Lucky Craft 2.5 DD and just running the bank. I ended up with about 12 pounds in a little over 45 minutes.

Then I switched to my signature series Phenix Casting jig. Beaver Lake fish like finesse jigs so I trimmed it up a little and used a YamamotoFlappin’ hog for a trailer. I casted that around and got quite a few bites. I started to think this was going to be a fun tournament. I had at least 15 bites that day and things were looking up.

The next day it was really windy and raining in the morning and then it cleared up. I kid you not, I didn’t have a single bite until about 1:00 and then I caught a short fish. I went until about 5:30 PM before I caught a keeper. Which changed my thinking to “this is going to be a bad one.”

On day three, I went out and fished all day and caught just 1 keeper. My practice was a real struggle. I threw the Slender Pointer 112, the Pointer 100 DD and the Pointer 78. I caught quite a few fish, but they were all small. It was not easy and left me feeling I only had a couple areas where I could catch fish.

On day one I ran to an area where I thought I could catch fish with the crankbait. That wasn’t working, so I switched to a fish head spin with a Yamamoto grub. I was able to catch two, a three-pound smallmouth and a pound and a half spotted bass. I had four good opportunities to catch fish and I was only able to put two in theboat. After day one I sat in 85th place with about four and a half pounds.

I fished a lot smarter on day two. On day one I didn’t fish smart, I wasn’t focused on how and where I was just going through the motions and not thinking about what I really needed to do to catch fish. I figured out on day 2 that I needed to fish a lot faster, which is not typical for this time of year there. I covered a lot more water and I bounced around a ton. I threw the same baits, a grub on a fish head spin.

Right off the bat, I caught a three-pound largemouth. Then I started getting bites and I’d miss them. I had a shakey head with a Yamamoto 4” Senko tied on. When I’d miss a fish or I’d see one come out of the deep trees and boil on the fish head, I was able to throw back on it with the shakey head and they’d bite it on the sink.

I weighed eleven and change on day two jumped up a little over forty places to get a check. I really put myself in a hole the first day, with the bites I had I should have been up at least another fifteen to twenty places from where I finished. You never know and I just didn’t give myself very many opportunities.