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Norman,
OK – By the standards of all but a few Elite Series pros, Edwin Evers has had a stellar season. In nine events he’s fished on Sunday four times, including three in a row at Amistad, Clarks Hill and Lake Murray. In fact, but for a near miss (13th) at Wheeler, he would have had a streak of five such finishes during the middle portion of this year’s tour season.
But for Edwin Evers, the satisfaction of those finishes, which contributed to his current 7th place position in the Angler of the Year standings, is dulled by several lesser results – including 61st and 65th place finishes at the Harris Chain and Falcon, and in particular an atypical 82nd at Old Hickory.
On the whole, he said he has been happy with his performance, but as he watches friends like KVD and Todd Faircloth duke it out for the AOY title, he can’t help but wonder what could have been. Mathematically, he’s still alive in the race, but a huge number of stars would have to align for him to pull out the title.
Were the season to end today, he’d have his best AOY finish since the dawn of the Elite Series – his prior best was an 8th in 2006 – but no one wants the season to end now less than Evers. The next stop on the tour is Lake Erie, where he “video gamed” his way to a $100,000 victory last season.
Some Struggles
The slugfest at Falcon was difficult for Evers to stomach because he felt like he was around the winning fish.
“The wind really killed me there,” he said. “I found the mother lode of fish, but I couldn’t hold. As small as those foundations were, I had a hard time really holding and pinpointing them. My co-anglers caught a lot of big fish and it’s just one of those deals.”
But at least at Falcon he was around the right quantity and caliber of bass. His season’s worst 82nd at the most recent event, Old Hickory, is a particularly tough pill to swallow because he feels like he missed the boat completely.
“I look at that tournament and I look at how stubborn I was,” he said. “I thought going into that tournament I had to fish offshore ledges. Going into it I had that mindset. I never fished shallow in practice. I spent one day in practice in that lake below, Cheatham Lake and I didn’t catch hardly anything and I never saw another boat down there all day so it really kept me down there for the whole day and kept me pretty excited that I wasn’t seeing anybody else even though I wasn’t catching much. It’s 70 miles long so I just kept on searching. “
One of his particular strengths is versatility. He can fish for largemouths “Oklahoma style” in shallow muddy water and he can target clear water smallmouths in the depths with equal comfort, so it galls him that he didn’t try to expand when his offshore bite never got off the ground.
“I told myself that I wasn’t going to be that stubborn, that I was going to be open-minded and I still fished offshore even the second day thinking I could catch those big fish out there. A few people were – Skeet had 16 pounds the first day. I saw him a bunch, I don’t know that he caught them out there, but he didn’t catch them the next two days. It’s just one of those tournaments that I’d love to have over. I’d love to go do it and be a little more open minded instead of swinging to win that thing just go to catch 10 or 11 pounds a day and compete and I would have done a lot better than I did.”
He also noted that he had not previously fished Old Hickory and as a result he misjudged the size of the lake: “I didn’t know a thing about Old Hickory. I had never been there. Some of the guys who excelled in that event at least had a little knowledge of it. I had no idea the lake was that long. When I saw that the lake was 22,000 acres, I thought this thing is small – the reality of it is that it’s 97 miles long. There’s a lot of water there.
“I spent all of my practice fishing ledges right by the dam. I just didn’t cover any water. It was a real mental lapse. You can be doing this as long as I have and I still learn something every day.”
New York Again
With Old Hickory in his past and mostly out of his mind, Evers will join the rest of his Elite Series competitors on a two tournament jaunt to New York to close out the season. If history is any indication, he should close out the year with a bang – in five Elite Series visits to the Empire State, he’s only missed the money once (a 54th place near-miss at Champlain in 2006).
In addition to his victory at Erie last year, he has 18th and 27th place finishes at Oneida and 54th and 22nd place finishes at Champlain.
With a Classic spot all but assured, that gives Evers a chance to swing for the fences at Erie. What does he think about that opportunity?
“Nobody’s ever won back to back events in consecutive years on the same water and there’s pretty good reason for that,” he said. “Everybody sees you, it’s televised on ESPN. In addition to the locals pounding it all year, you have all of your competitors fishing it. It’s going to be something really hard to do. It’s something I’d love to do.”
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It’s not a given that he’ll return to where he won last year: “I may put Dunkirk completely out of my mind and go find another group of fish. That’s not the only place that’s got them. I think the fish on that lake are very, very nomadic. I think they could be in Dunkirk this year and be on the Canadian side next year. I’m not married to that area.”
While the area may never produce like it did in 2007 again, it will always hold a special place in E-Squared’s tournament memories and informs him of the big lake’s potential. |
“I just wish they could have showed an eight hour TV show of what took place that final day. About 9 or 10 o’clock a light switch went off and those fish were everywhere. The last spot I got on, it was 35 feet deep and I couldn’t get my bait deeper than 10 feet because one would eat it. They were from 10 feet to 35 feet solid. They had the depth finder completely blacked out, all smallmouth, all four pounds. I got there with about 15 minutes to go until I had to leave.
“It’s an incredible place. How can you not be excited about going back? Let the wind blow and make it tougher on us and I’ll go out there and ride the waves in my Nitro.”
AOY Predictions
Asked to make a prediction about how the AOY race will play out, knowing that he has at best an outside shot at the title, Evers made the easy choice but also hedged his bet:
“Kevin Van Dam is fishing with a vengeance right now,” he said. “I think anybody who bets against him is silly. Todd Faircloth is a true dear friend. I used to travel with him when we were all single and if Todd can knock him off I’d be the first one to shake his hand and congratulate him. I couldn’t think of a harder working or more deserving person that Todd to win it.
“There’s a bunch of animals out there and you have to bring your ‘A’ game every day.”
While there are approximately one hundred Elite Series pros and countless thousands of Monday Morning Quarterbacks who would love to have had the season that Evers has experienced, he can’t help but wonder what might have been but for a few missed opportunities. He’ll be at the Classic, an event he hasn’t missed since 2001, but he’s on the verge of something more and the closer he gets, the more each missed opportunity weighs on his mind.
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