The Starting Spot: Know the Shad to Know the Bass, Ehrler’s Big Finish, and a Life Chasing Smallmouth Bass

The Starting Spot Daily Bass Fishing Headlines are the perfect way to start your day with some of the top bass fishing articles on the internet. It’s the quick, informative, how, where, and who you need to know. So, rub the sleep from your eyes, pour that first cup of the day, and head to your Starting Spot.

Today on The Starting Spot: Know the Shad to Know the Bass, Ehrler’s Big Finish, and a Life Chasing Smallmouth Bass | Photo by Kurt Mazurek

In this edition of The Starting Spot:


-Any article that starts by referencing a Rick Clunn story has me hooked. If you want to understand the bass, you must first understand the shad. Solid advice!


-Brent Ehrler shares his thoughts about his team victory with Justin Lucas to end the 2025 tournament season. I really enjoyed his thoughts about getting back to fishing with your buddies like almost all of us did early on in our fishing journeys. 


-This story, looking back on the writer’s memories of learning to catch smallmouth bass in central Illinois, really hits home with me. Some of my first smallmouth encounters happened while waist deep in the small rivers of central Illinois. I can relate!

---

Matching the Hatch: Mastering the Bass-Shad Relationship

by Brent Frazee

From a story on Wired2Fish.com: Early in Rick Clunn’s career, he learned an important lesson about bass and their role as a predator. While attending a survival school, he met an Apache Native American teaching animal tracking who taught him something that stayed with him.


When he heard Clunn talking about bass fishing, he interjected, “You’re doing it backward. If I want to understand the owl, I do not study the owl. I study the mouse. You study the bass but not the food that controls where it will be.”

Clunn thought about the advice for a second, then embarked on a journey to learn as much about the bass’ forage as he possibly could. He eventually became an expert in the bass-prey relationship, a factor that contributed greatly to Clunn becoming one of the all-time greats in professional bass fishing…MORE.

---

No better way to end the year

by Brent Ehrler

From an article on MajorLeagueFishing.com: It’s been a little more than a week since we wrapped up the Bass Pro Shops Summit Cup Presented by Zenni in Louisiana, and I’m still smiling from that win with Justin Lucas. These Fishing Clash Team Series events are a lot of fun, and the current format is great. I’ve been fishing these types of events since the very beginning of Major League Fishing – then the old Cup format (I actually won the very first one on Lake Amistad in 2012), and now the Team Series.

We started the three-angler team thing a few years ago, and I was part of the pilot episode for that before it even started. Now that’s evolved, and we’ve settled on the two-man team format in a single boat, and I think we’ve nailed it as far as a fun format goes…MORE.

---

Reflections: A Lifetime of Smallmouth Bass Prospecting

by Daniel Isermann

From a story on In-Fisherman.com: When my kids and I cross any bridge within a 20-mile radius of the family farm in Central Illinois, I typically provide some commentary on the fishing, intel that’s now decades old. I’m not sure they’re listening, even during those brief interludes when their ear buds are out. If it was deep enough to keep a crawdad happy, I probably fished it, slogging upstream in an old pair of tennis shoes, prospecting for smallmouth bass that were rarely over a foot long. Prospecting was an apt description, sifting through miles of creek water looking for a trace of color, a certain hue of brown shading toward bronze. If I wasn’t on a baseball field somewhere or walking beans, you could probably find me knee deep in running water, wielding an Ugly Stik with an arsenal of Mepps, Rebel Crawfish, and Mister Twisters jammed into a pocket-sized Plano…MORE.

Thanks for starting your day with Fishing On SI. Lines in!