Erie Extreme puts the fun in fishing on television

Posted on: March 14, 2018 | Bob Frye | Comments

Dave Lefebre has a whole new class of groupies.

The Harborcreek resident and Erie native has long had a following among bass fishermen. He’s a pro angler, after all, traveling the country to compete on the Bassmaster circuit now after years on the FLW tour.

He’s excelled everywhere, ringing up more than $2 million in career earnings.

That’ll get you some fans.

Erie Extreme is a show about fun as much as fishing.

Dave Lefebre of Harborcreek is known for his bass fishing. But his Erie Extreme TV show is about a whole lot more.
Photo from Facebook

But then there’s this.

Lefebre, together with his brother Nate and two other partners, stars in and produces Erie Extreme, a “fishing” show that airs weekly in Erie, Pittsburgh and Buffalo.

It’s not your typical fare, though, with how-to tips and lots of hooks set and fish caught surrounded by subtle and not product pitches.

“If you tune in and think you’re going to be watching Jimmy Houston Outdoors, or a typical fishing show, you’ll probably be disappointed,” Lefebre said.

Think of it like this. “Duck Dynasty” is a “hunting” show that focuses on just about everything but hunting, right? That’s the approach Erie Extreme takes to fishing.

“I figured we would get most of the fishermen around here to watch, no matter what we did. So we’ve sort of focused more on entertaining other people,” Lefebre said. “I always said our goal was to get the wife of the guy who tunes in to like the show.”

That’s where the groupies come in.

“We’ve got a lot of old lady followers,” Lefebre said with a laugh.

Fun is the reason. The show is reality TV with a fishing theme.

On many shows – he’s appeared on several – anglers fishing for two or three days, wearing the same clothes each time, to get lots of seamless footage. Conversations are planned in advance.

None of that goes on with Erie Extreme.

“It’s kind of unscripted,” said Kirk Rudzinski, owner of East End Angler, a bait and tackle shop in Erie and one of the show’s sponsors. “They’re always shooting from the hip. And I think that really appeals to a lot of people.”

Erie Extreme takes viewers to lots of places.

Dave Lefebre fishes for a whole host of species, often in unusual ways, on Erie Extreme.
Photo from Facebook

Indeed, Lefebre films when he’s home between tournaments. So there isn’t a lot of time for shooting take after take.
He and his crew pick a day to film and go out then, regardless of weather, flat tires, poor conditions for fishing or anything else.

In that way, Lefebre said, they’re replicating what the average angler who has only weekends or off days to fish encounters.

“Everything we do is one day. A lot of times it’s half a day,” Lefebre said.

Episodes of the show – filming for season three is underway now – focus on two things.

One is regional opportunities. Erie, and the area from Buffalo to Cleveland to Pittsburgh, offers a ton of fishing, Lefebre said. And he’s sampled surprisingly little of them.

“Since I’ve been so driven to fish bass tournaments since I was a little kid, I never went fun fishing for these other species,” Lefebre said. “There’s just so many things I haven’t done.

Just this past fall – despite living in the middle of steelhead alley – he caught his first steelhead on a fly rod. Before that, he caught a Lake Erie walleye by trolling from a charter boat. That was a first, too. He even caught a fish from a kayak. He’d never done that either.

All of those experiences were captured on the show.

The Erie Extreme logo.

Erie Extreme

The other focus of the show is viewer-supplied challenges.

Viewers reach out through Facebook to test Lefebre. In six of each season’s 13 episodes, he tries to tackle them.

“They have kind of a Mission Impossible type feel,” Lefebre said.

The challenges can be tough, too. One called for him to catch a fish while suspended from a crane 100 feet in the air. Another tasked him with catching five crappies from five different lakes in six hours. A third involved trolling from the back of the U.S. Brig Niagara, a 198-foot replica of a square-rigged, two-masted ship from the War of 1812.

“I mean, it’s just crazy stuff. And we fail a lot. We beat some of them, but we fail probably 70 percent of the time,” Lefebre said.

“But it’s fun. And that’s what the show is all about.”

Indeed, that’s what makes it so popular, said John Harley of Fishing Online, tackle shop in New Brighton and another show sponsor.

Harley didn’t even know Erie Extreme existed before the two got together. And he certainly wasn’t looking to get on camera himself; he hates that.

“But when he presented the show to me, I went back through the episodes, all of the Youtube videos, and it was intriguing that it’s a different kind of fishing show. It’s not primarily based on fishing itself. The show’s more about just going out and having fun,” Harley said.

It’s fun that will likely be going on the road, too.

Lefebre has no desire to film episodes in far flung places. A lot of what he does is done in Erie itself, by design. He’s also gone as far west as Cleveland, north into New York and south as far as Lake Arthur in Butler County.

In the future, he expects to do episodes on places like Pittsburgh’s three rivers, too.

But he’s not looking to go too far afield. He doesn’t have to, he said.

“There’s literally so much to do here, in Erie and the region around it. We’ll never run out of ideas or show topics,” he said.

“It’s fun doing what we do and doing it here. And that’s what it’s all about. Having fun and showcasing this cool place we live.”

Getting a look at Erie Extreme

Erie Extreme airs in three markets: Erie, Pittsburgh and Buffalo.

It’s on WICU TV, the NBC affiliate, in Erie at 7 p.m. Saturdays and on The Pittsburg CW and WUTV Fox 29 in Buffalo at 7 a.m. Sundays.

Season one episodes can also be seen in their entirety on the Erie Extreme website here and on the show’s Youtube channel, here.

Season two episodes will appear on both sites by mid-April or so, after the originals air on television.

Going forward, there may be changes, though.

Dave Lefebre said he may investigate changing the air times in Pittsburgh and Buffalo, for one thing.

Another possible change is when season three might debut.

The first two 13-episode seasons launched right around New Year’s Eve. Season three might start to air in November, to take advantage of shorter, colder days that push people indoors.

In the meantime, anyone with challenge ideas for Lefebre and his crew can submit them at the show’s Facebook page by clicking here.

Erie Extreme often involves challenges.

Erie Extreme had Dave Lefebre fishing from a kayak for the first time ever, on Lake Arthur.
Photo from Facebook

Bob Frye is the everybodyadventures.com editor. Reach him at 412-838-5148 or bfrye@535mediallc.com. See other stories, blogs, videos and more at everybodyadventures.com.

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