Team LC Tour Journal <2007 FLW Tour

Lucky Craft pros turn in solid performances
at FLW Tour finale in Detroit

Three team members secure berths in the Forrest Wood Cup

	Wal-Mart FLW Tour Results
	23th		Gabe Bolivar
	40th		Brent Ehrler
	53th		Anthony Gagliardi
	133th		Joe Thomas

Detroit River, MI. (July 15, 2007) – As the four members of the Lucky Craft team headed to the Detroit River for the sixth and final FLW Tour event of 2007, they had smallmouths on their minds – make that big smallmouths.

With the tournament launch site located on the Detroit River, pros could either run to Lake Erie or Lake St. Clair, both renowned for world class smallmouth fishing in the summer.

Knowing which lake to commit to really boiled down to where anglers stood in the FLW Tour points race – and a pro’s tolerance for sea sickness.

Lake Erie is known as the better lake for really big smallmouths; the kind that make up 23 to 25-pound limits. But the huge risks at Erie are the winds and waves. Fishing in 4 to 6 foot waves is commonplace on Erie, and if the wind happens to blow 20 mph or harder, navigating and fishing in 6 to 7 footers becomes a reality.

Erie has a nasty reputation of beating up anglers, their boats and their equipment to the point of making them late for weigh-in. Or worse yet, keeping them from being able to return at all.

St. Clair, on the other hand, is much smaller and shallower so the waves do not get as big. And while the fishing on St. Clair is superb, it does not have Lake Erie’s winning reputation.

With that in mind, anglers had to choose which lake they were going to fish.

Three Lucky Craft pros – Gabe Bolivar, Brent Ehrler and Anthony Gagliardi – picked St. Clair for the safer bet of maintaining their strong points positions and qualifying for the Forrest Wood Cup, scheduled to be held in Arkansas in August.

Their decision to fish St. Clair turned out to be good one as they all had solid finishes in Detroit and qualified for the Cup where they will have a chance to win a million dollars.

>>>Gabe Bolivar

Gabe Bolivar of Ramona, Calif., led the way for Team Lucky Craft in Detroit, finishing 23rd with a two-day catch of 34 pounds, 1 ounce and collecting a check for $13,000.

“My priorities coming here were to get a good check and make the Forrest Wood Cup Championship – St. Clair fit the bill for doing both,” Bolivar said. “I did spend a day on Erie during practice, but I just wasn’t feeling it over there. I figured I might not win on St. Clair, but it certainly had the potential to deliver a top-50 finish, which is all I wanted.”

Each day Bolivar made a run into St. Clair and fished depths of 16 to 18 feet of water, focusing on tall clumps of scattered grass.

“Areas with the taller stalks of grass were much better,” he said. “I was looking for clumps that topped out at about 4 or 5 feet below the surface. When it got calm, I could actually see the tops of the clumps under the water.”

Bolivar drop-shotted plastic goby imitations and “Erie Darters” on 10-pound test Maxima fluorocarbon with a 2/0 Owner drop-shot hook and a clip on weight.

“One of the most important lessons I learned is that those smallmouths like the bait worked slow,” he explained. “The first day when it was so windy, I was drifting pretty fast and I only caught 15 pounds. But on day two, it got calm, and I could work the grass stalks really slow with the dropshot and the bite was much better. I caught nearly 19 pounds.”

Bolivar’s finish allowed him to end the 2007 FLW Tour season in 5th place in the Angler of the Year race with 994 points.

“I’m pretty happy about that,” Bolivar said. “After winning the FLW Tour Rookie of the Year last season, my goal this year was to finish in the top 5 in points, and I accomplished that, so I’m pleased. Now I’m ready to get to Lake Ouachita to compete for the million.”

>>>Brent Erhler

Brent Erhler’s plan going into the Detroit River event was a carbon copy of Bolivar’s; get a good check and make the Forrest Wood Cup.

The Redlands, Calif., pro did just that by finishing 40th with 32 pounds, 7 ounces, collecting 160 points and $11,000.

“I spent the week in St. Clair because Lake Erie was just too risky,” he said. “There are too many variables over there that can work against you. I just wanted to have a solid tournament and get out of there with my points and money.”

Like Bolivar, Ehrler fished clumpy patches of weeds in 15 to 17 feet of water, concentrating on the taller clumps that came up to the surface.

He used a drop-shot rigged with various plastics including a Poor Boys Goby, a Spankum Baits Goby and Robo worm.

“That’s some of the weirdest fishing I’ve ever done,” Ehrler said. “I’d get out there, sit in my deck chair, cast out and then just drag my line out behind the boat as the wind blew me across the lake. Pretty soon, something would pull back, and it would be a big smallmouth.”

Ehrler ended the FLW Tour season in 9th place in the points race with 955 points.

Ehrler, who won $500,000 in last year’s FLW Tour Championship, is looking forward to fishing for $1 million this year.

“I’m really glad I qualified for the Cup again,” he said. “This season I was little worried about being the defending champion and not qualifying to fish it, but everything worked out, and now I’m headed to Arkansas in a couple of weeks.”

>>>Anthony Gagliardi

Although Anthony Gagliardi had already qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup Championship, he still decided to play it safe and go to St. Clair while in Detroit.

“Originally, I had planned to fish on Erie,” Gagliardi said. “I had one great day of practice out there when it was calm, but I went back out there the Tuesday before the tournament when it was windy, and honestly, I just couldn’t catch them out there like I needed to. The thing about Erie is, if you decide to run out there, you’ve got to be on fish and be able to catch them immediately. You can’t get out there and start floundering around trying to adjust. You have to go out there, catch them quickly and start heading back in. If it’s rough, there’s just not a whole lot of time to fish.”

When Gagliardi saw the forecast for tournament day one of winds up to 25 mph, he decided to go to St. Clair.

“I could catch 15 to 16 pounds pretty easy in St. Clair, and my confidence had kind of wavered on catching them on Erie in the wind. So I played it safe and went to St. Clair.”

Gagliardi caught exactly what he thought he could catch in St. Clair, about 15-1/2 pounds per day, collecting a two-day total worth 31 pounds, 3 ounces for a 53rd-place worth $10,000.

Gagliardi’s pattern was almost exactly like that of fellow teammates Bolivar and Ehrler, as he dragged a drop-shot goby in 16 to 18 feet of water around scattered grass clumps.

“On the windy days, I would go to a bigger goby, like a 4- or 5-inch model with a 3/8-ounce drop-shot weight, and those smallmouths seemed to like that,” he explained. “But when it slicked off the second day of the tournament, they did not touch that bigger goby for the first two hours of my fishing day. When I finally switched to a smaller 3-inch version, they started biting again.”

After winning the FLW Tour Angler of the Year race last year, Gagliardi finished up 32nd in points this year.

“Fishing St. Clair may have been a little bit of a conservative move since I already had the Championship made, but I don’t have any regrets about it,” he summed up. “I got a $10,000 check, I got some points and the best part is I didn’t tear up all my equipment on Erie.”

>>>Joe Thomas

Joe Thomas of Milford, Ohio fished Lake St. Clair as well, finishing 133rd with a two-day total of 24 pounds, 2 ounces.

“I practiced over on Erie for two days, but it was a little too sporadic for me to risk going over there in the wind,” he said. “I couldn’t get on anything solid – it was just one here and one there – so I opted for the south shore of St. Clair during the tournament where I could get out of the wind a little better and be guaranteed some fish.”

Thomas fished in water that was 9 to 14 feet deep, dragging a Berkley Gulp! sinking minnow on 8-pound test Vanish fluorocarbon.

“I was keying on little rough spots along the bottom,” he said. “I’d drift about 100 to 200 yards at a time. The first day I had no choice but to drift with the wind. On the second day, it was much calmer, and I could cast around a little more, but the drifting still worked better for catching bigger fish.”