Believe it or not, just before the final fish was weighed in on day two, it looked as if team member Brent Ehrler might come from behind to win the 2008 FLW AOY.

Coming into the event, Ehrler was ninth in the overall standings, some 109 points off the lead. Ehrler finished 16th at Detroit and with other anglers above him falling off the pace, for a moment it looked like the Redlands, Calif., pro was going to pull off the unthinkable.

Instead, FLW’s leading money man, David Dudley nipped Ehrler by a single point to win the 2008 FLW AOY title in a season-ending shocker.

“Oh man!” Ehrler gasped after the final results had been tallied and he realized how close he had come to winning. “Who would have guessed this could happen? Now every little mistake I made all season long is going to come back and haunt me over the next several days.”

All Ehrler needed was to finish a place or two higher in any of the events this season to win the title. A single ounce anywhere along the line would have done it.

Ehrler is not usually a cry-over-spilled-milk kind of guy, but in such an extreme situation like this, it’s easy to see why he might be beating himself up just a bit.

As for the Detroit tournament, Ehrler posted weights of 18 pounds, 1 ounce and 17 pounds, 13 ounces for a two-day total of 35 pounds, 14 ounces, earning him $12,500.

During the event, Ehrler relied on the Pointer 100 DD, a Picasso tube and drop-shot rig to catch his fish.

“I’ve recently become a big fan of the Pointer 100 DD,” he added. “For deep-running jerkbaits, I normally use a Staysee 90, but that Pointer 100 Deep Diver gets even deeper – down to about 10 feet – and it was perfect for getting level with the tops of that grass where the bigger smallmouth were positioned. I used the Pearl Ayu color for the whole tournament.”

With his second place showing in the standings, Ehrler has now double-qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup. He originally earned a berth through the FLW Series East-West Fish-off.

“Missing the Angler of the Year will sting for a while, but I’ll get over it in a few days,” he added. “I’m looking forward to going to the ICAST show in Las Vegas for Lucky Craft this week and then I’ll start thinking about the FLW Tour Championship in Columbia.”

That’s because Bolivar entered the Detroit River event outside the coveted championship field and left with a Forrest Wood Cup ticket securely in his pocket.

Bolivar was 54th in the standings before Detroit, and he sacked up 14 pounds, 10 ounces on day one and 19 pounds, 14 ounces on day two to finish 27th in the tournament, pulling his yearly standing up to 32nd.

“Man, what a relief!” Bolivar said. “I was on the bubble coming in, and I caught them when it mattered most. I can’t even tell you how good that feels. I’ve struggled all year long and ridden that bubble position most of the season. Things finally went my way in Detroit, and I made the Cup.”

What excited Bolivar the most about his whole week was the exact fish that he claims qualified him for the Cup.

“I fished St. Clair all week, mostly fishing tubes,” he recounted. “It was cloudy most of the day on day two, but for about 5 minutes the sun came out. During that small window of sun, I picked up a Lucky Craft Pointer 100 DD in Pearl Ayu, cast it out there and on the second cast caught a monster smallmouth weighing almost 5 pounds. That fish gave me nearly 20 pounds for the day and without a doubt put me over the top for making the Cup. All I can say is thank you Lucky Craft for that fish and a Cup berth.”

“Making championships is a big deal to me,” he continued. “It proves consistency in fishing and gives me the chance to win a million bucks. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about going to Columbia.”

Famed lure designer Gary Yamamoto of Mineola, Texas checked in a solid catch of 14 pounds, 14 ounces on day one of the Detroit event but backslid considerably on day two with four bass weighing 8 pounds, 1 ounce for a two-day total of 22 pounds, 15 ounces, leaving him in 148th for the tournament.

“The first day I stayed right there in the Detroit River and caught both largemouth and smallmouth and had a pretty good day of fishing,” Yamamoto said. “Detroit is known for its world-class smallmouth fishing, but it’s a tremendous largemouth fishery, too, and not many people fish for the largemouth. Two of the ones I weighed in the first day were over three pounds.”

Yamamoto fished shallow vegetation in the river with his namesake Swim Senko rigged with a special hook he designed just for the bait.

“The hook is not on the market, yet, but it’s coming,” he offered. “It’s basically a weighted hook that matches the Swim Senko perfectly – I’m pretty excited about introducing it here soon.”

On day two, Yamamoto opted to go to St. Clair for the first part of the day while it was calm.

“I caught four pretty quick and my co-angler got her limit,” he said. “Then I decided to come back to the river and fish the shallow vegetation again, but nothing was happening. The wind never blew like it was suppose, things got too calm and they just would not bite.”

Former FLW Tour Angler of the Year Anthony Gagliardi had a less than stellar performance at Detroit, and he was less than happy about it. And understandably so.

Like Ehrler, given all of the last-minute fallout in the AOY year race, Gagliardi, too, had an opportunity to grab the AOY ring. In fact, Gagliardi was ranked seventh, 28 points higher than Ehrler, going into the event.

Had Gagliardi finished 22nd or higher, he would have been the 2008 AOY – something a competitor like Gagliardi does not want to think about.

Instead, Gagliardi caught a limit weighing 13 pounds, 3 ounces on day one and four bass weighing 9 pounds, 10 ounces on day two to finish 149th.

“I had a great practice on St. Clair, and I felt really good about it going into the event,” Gagliardi said. “And I still don’t really know what happened. It was like the fish on my best spots disappeared. I had to scramble that first day just to get a limit and my co-angler zeroed – that’s unheard of on St. Clair. Something changed big time, and I still don’t know what it was – that’s what’s so frustrating.”

Gagliardi’s solid practice round happened with moving baits: a Lucky Craft Pointer 100 DD and a crankbait. And in retrospect he feels he should have practiced more with slower baits like drop-shots and tubes.

“They were biting that Pointer 100 DD and a crankbait so good in practice, I just did not see the need in fishing slow, so I never really tried that much in practice, and I think that might have been my mistake” he added. “I needed to find places where they would bite that slow stuff and I didn’t.”

But on the bright side, Gagliardi still easily qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup in his backyard on Lake Murray, and it’s an opportunity he looks to capitalize on.

“I’ve got a couple of weeks to pre-practice before the cut-off so I’ll probably be spending a lot of time on Lake Murray,” he added.

Thomas had a great day one, but went downhill on day two with one big smallmouth.

“I chose to fish St. Clair because I felt like it was the most stable lake of the two fisheries,” Thomas commented. “I had a great practice over there; I caught almost 20 pounds per day for two of the practice days.”

“I found the fish in that 16-foot zone around scattered grass, and I was catching them really well on a Pointer 100 DD in ghost minnow,” he continued. “But it had to be calm and sunny to get that bite going. We had those conditions on day one. It was flat and the sun was out all day, and I ended up having a pretty good day. But on day two, it got real cloudy and the big rollers came in, and it ended that jerkbait bite. I caught that one good 5-pound smallie, and I figured I was going to be okay, but it fizzled out after that.”