Brent Ehrler
Fishing Tidal Water

Photo: FLW Outdoors/Jeff Schroeder Brent Ehrler says he usually gets his best results in the 1-hour period before and after a tide change.

He said it was a "sweet-bitter" experience going from leading on day 3 to getting beat in the final round, but the loss was buoyed by the fact that he weighed two of his personal-best limits during the tournament. He lugged in 31-4 on day one and 31-10 on day three.

One key to his 2nd-place finish was knowing where to fish on what tides. Here he shares some of that knowledge with BassFan readers.

There's One Best Tide

"You can be in the best spot – the winning hole – but be there at the wrong time, and never get a bite," Ehrler said. "Whether you're at the Potomac River or the California Delta, the difference (on tidal water) is to know where to be when."

He begins his breakdown of tidal water by checking a tide chart to determine the basic layout of the highs and lows. He then uses that information to pick out areas of the fishery that he thinks will be most productive in various flows.

"You try to find an area you think is good and fish it at all stages of the tide – high, low, and both incoming-to-outgoing and outgoing-to-incoming changes," he noted. "You want to be in the best place at the best tide. Try to narrow it down to a couple of prime areas. The fish will tell you when they want to bite.

"There will be a flurry at some point during the day," he added. "You might go for hours without a bite, and then get five in 45 minutes. That's the key time. Be aware of what tide it is when that happens, and then return to the best spots on that tide.

Running the Tides

Ehrler considers the "transition periods" of each tide change to be most productive. When he says transition periods, he's referring to when the tide is changing from high to low or low to high.

"The 2-hour window right before and after the tide switches is usually best," he said. "A tide stage usually lasts from 5 to 8 hours. The current is going one way most of that time, and then at the switch it stirs everything up. (The bass and the prey) have been sitting in their hiding places for 5 to 8 hours, and then they have to move. Everything moves and the bass start feeding better."

"They'll still feed in between changes, but it's one here and one there. On the change you'll get the multiple bites."

You can also maximize tidal potential by leap frogging the flow. The tide will impact areas closest to the main tidal body - usually a bay, gulf or ocean - first. By running further away from the tidal body, you can actually intercept the incoming flow multiple times in a day. You can do the same on an outgoing by running out towards the tidal body.

But that's a technique that requires intimate knowledge of the fishery and where the tide will peak when.

"I've done it a little bit, but I usually don't have enough areas to do that all day," he said. "Typically I have a couple areas that I'll go to on the right tide, and I'll just cover water nearby in between tides."

Photo: Berkley When Ehrler's flipping tidal tules he likes to throw a jig with a 3-inch Berkley PowerBait Chigger Craw for the trailer.

Ehrler applies a simple rule for fishing vegetation on tidal waters. On high tides, he likes to concentrate on the inside grass line, on the low, he moves to the outside.

"The low tide makes it easier to find fish," he noted. "When it's high, some stay in the deep grass where you can't see the pockets and holes you need to fish, since there's two or three feet of water on top of it. Then at low tide, the fish that stayed deep on the high tide are still there, and others pull out of shallows and go there too, so more fish are there.

"And then you can see the key spots and get your bait in front of those fish," he added. "You know right where to cast. The fish are more accessible and you can fish more efficiently too.

"It seems that every tidal body of water I go to has tide the fish bite best on," he added. "At the Delta it seems I usually do best on the low tide rather than high tide, but last year it was better on the high. This year it's back to low. Maybe it's a different kind of fish, too. I think some just stay where they are throughout the tides, and others move back and forth."

The fisheries change every year, and whereas normally he throws a lipless crankbait in grass to cover water at the Delta on the off tides, this year he had to do other things.

"There was a general lack of grass this year at the Delta, so it wasn't really a factor, and I fished a lot of rock," he said. "I put the boat in 3 feet of water and just covered water casting parallel to rocks.

"You can flip the tules, too," he added. "I like to throw a black and blue jig with a sapphire blue 3-inch Berkley PowerBait Chigger Craw as a trailer. The action and scent helps to get them to bite it better.

"When it got to low tide the first day (of the Western Stren Series event) I went to a couple key areas and flipped. I had about 20 pounds, and around noon the wind started blowing. So I started throwing a crankbait in the wind and culled up to 31 pounds.

"The next day I flipped again, but the crankbait did better for me later, so I just threw it the rest of the tournament."

Notable

> The last day at the Delta, Ehrler didn't get his preferred tide until late in the day, and with the 3 p.m. weigh-in he had to scramble the whole day.

> He's fishing the FLW Tour and FLW Western Series this year. His first and only tour level win was the 2006 FLW Tour Championship on Alabama's Lake Logan Martin.