Brent Ehrler isn't too proud to admit that he "fished scared" on day 3 at the Chesapeake Bay Bassmaster Elite Series.
"In a tournament like that, what I really needed to do was fish stuff I didn't know anything about," he said. "On the first day I fished areas that I hadn't been to in practice, and I caught them. I really think the way to do it was just to go out and fish.
"I felt like on day 3 that I almost had too much experience and I kept telling myself I really needed to fish a couple areas and I kept rotating through stuff (that was unproductive). When I finally decided to scrap that I caught two decent ones and lost another one in 20 or 30 minutes. Granted, that was also the time the tide got right."
He ended up with his second 13th-place finish of the season – he also landed in that spot at Lake Havasu. He was 9 ounces short of advancing to day 4, so a fourth keeper of any sort would have pushed him through.
He caught fish by shallow-cranking and flipping and pitching. Docks were his primary target, but he also pulled a few off of rocks on laydowns and got one from beneath an overhanging tree limb.
"I wasn't really keying on one thing – I just fished whatever looked fishy. You just had to hope you were there at the right time and that somebody else hadn't already caught them before you got there."
The Big Bite Lookback, which focuses on the angler who's first out of the final cut at each tour-level event, is brought to you by the great folks at Big Bite Baits.
