Underwater tactics
Still time to catch fall bass While the temperature may be dropping and attentions may be turning to fall pursuits like days in a deer stand, October and November isn’t the time to put away your fishing tackle – that is if you like catching fish. Even though the mornings and evenings on the water can be pretty brisk, fall can be a great time to target bass as they begin feeding heavily on schooling bait fish.
During the fall, bass will spend a good amount of their time gorging on baitfish like shad in the backs of creek channels. Eventually, if there is deep, rocky habitat in the lake that you fish, the bass will wind up in the deeper portions of the lake near those rocks. If there is other cover like standing timber or boat docks nearby, these deep, rocky banks will be even more to a bass’s liking. Once you locate such a deep, rocky bank (hopefully with some more structure nearby), the idea is to fish as much of this bank as you can, searching for the first bite of the day. Once you locate a fish by getting your first bite, there’s a good chance that there is a group of bass in the immediate area since this is the time of year when bass will group in small areas that they find to their liking. Though this area can be hard to find, once you find them it is possible to catch numerous fish out of these schools.
The best lure choices when trying to catch these fish fall into two categories: food lures and reaction lures. While bass during this time of year may have slowed down compared to their warmer water activity levels, they still possess the instinct to attack an easy meal when the opportunity arises. Because of this, I use reaction lures such as jerkbaits as my search bait. Jerkbaits seem to be ideal for drawing a reaction strike from a somewhat lethargic bass.
Once I get my initial strike, I sometimes continue to cast a jerkbait, but more often that I will slow down and try to get the bass to eat. My favorites for this technique are Berkley GULP! baits like the Sinking Minnow and Wacky Crawler. I fish these soft, non-plastic baits on a drop-shot rig or a tungsten jig head. These rigs allow me to fish these baits slowly on or near the bottom, allowing the scent cloud to build up around them like a live bait would. This scent cloud convinces the bass that it is food and entices them to eat.
This is when a sensitive rod, reel and line combination is crucial to success. My rig for this situation consists of a 7-foot, medium fast Fenwick Techna AV spinning rods because it is lightweight and its sensitive action helps me to detect strikes. My spinning reel is the Abu Garcia 503 ALB, which has an excellent drag feature that allows the use of light line without fail. Small diameter line is important to your success when trying to get bass to eat, Larger line sometimes scares fish away. Smaller line, though, can also cause you to break off fish, so having a reel with a smooth drag is vital to keeping a fish on. I also use Berkley Vanish Transition fluorocarbon line for this type of fishing. It is virtually invisible to the fish while allowing excellent feel of the lure as it drags along the bottom. With bass in this transition period, getting them to eat the bait instead of reacting to its presence can be difficult. Having the right equipment is a must.
With the days getting shorter and the temperatures getting cooler, fewer and fewer people will be taking advantage of all the wonderful fisheries we have around the country. Though you may be waiting for hunting season, there’s plenty of fish still to be caught. So before you settle in to your treestand for the remainder of the year, take a shot at catching some fall transition bass.
Ken Cook is the 1991 Bassmaster Classic champion and a 14-time Classic qualifier. A former fisheries biologist, Cook lives on his ranch in Meers, Okla.