Bass fishing is about as iconic a summer time exercise as consuming hotdogs at baseball video games and launching fireworks on the Fourth of July. It’s a time for heat, sunny days on the water, chucking baits and lures into the shallows, and ripping fats bass out of lily pads and from beneath boat docks. When the leaves start to alter although, and people first sparkles of frost seem on the early morning grass, most bass anglers put their gear away for the 12 months. It is a mistake, particularly if you happen to love to focus on smallmouth.
As a result of as water temperatures start to chill, smallmouth bass turn out to be voracious. With winter looming, the fish transfer away from their summer time haunts to deeper water the place they begin gorging themselves like unfastened pigs in a corncrib. It’s a time when the oldest and largest bronzebacks lose their inhibitions, and fishing for smallmouth within the fall can imply the bass of a lifetime — as long as you realize the place and the way to fish for them.
Fish Smooth Plastics and Flies in Early Fall
Spring and summer time smallmouth usually congregate round rocky shoals, shady jetties, and shallow weed beds. However when fall climate drops water temps into the mid-60s, these fish remodel into deep-water hunters. Roving like hungry jackals, smallmouth bass will transfer down and alongside drop-offs, looking for the holdout crayfish, leeches, and bugs alongside their means. Discovering and catching these slowly dropping smallmouth means fishing transition zones.
Early autumn smallmouth will congregate and patrol alongside drop-offs that present fast entry to each shallower and deeper water. Rocky factors, steep banks, and the sides of gravel and sandbars in 8 to 12 ft of water are all ideally suited areas to focus on, and these are the primary locations you must test while you see the leaves begin to change. Relying on the model of fishing you love to do, you may work these spots successfully with both soft plastics or flies.
Picture by Kubie Brown
Gear anglers are going to need to use bottom-contact mushy plastic baits that trigger numerous commotion and draw bass in from a distance. Massive 1/4 ounce to 1/2 ounce jig head hooks tipped with creature baits just like the Craw Papi and the Jumbo Leech are perfect for such a fishing. Solid these baits all the way down to the specified depth, letting them sink to the underside, after which retrieve them with sharp, pulsing lifts that make the bait leap and dance alongside the underside. Permit the bait to fall all the way in which again to the lake mattress between lifts in order that it might probably fire up sand and clack in opposition to rocks as you fish it, ringing the dinner bell for roving bass.
When you’re coping with finicky bass or fishing throughout a pointy chilly entrance, you may also have luck utilizing a drop shot rig. Set it up by tying a 12 to 24 inch size of 6-lb fluorocarbon to your foremost line, leaving a 3- to 4-inch tag finish off your knot, after which tie on a 1/4 ounce casting weight to the underside of the road. Tie a size 4 to size 2 octopus hook to the tag finish of the fluro after which hook a small mushy plastic baitfish or leech, comparable to a Tiny Fluke or a Slug-Go, by its head. You’ll be able to drop the rig vertically or solid it a brief distance, letting it hit the underside after which including motion with fast fast jigs till a smallmouth strikes in to inhale the bait.
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Fly anglers can strip small, weighted streamers like Clouser Minnows and Conehead Wooly Buggers. Utilizing a 9-foot chief on a floating or sink-tip fly line, solid the streamer alongside rocky drop offs after which let it sink to the underside. As soon as it reaches the specified depth, begin retrieving it with fast quick strips in order that the fly bounces and jigs because it strikes up within the water column. If there are fish round, it normally gained’t take lengthy for an enormous smallie to trace the fly down and crush it.
Cowl Floor with Jerkbaits and Spinners in Late Fall
Fishing for smallmouth within the fall adjustments later within the season, as water temps drop beneath 60 levels. That is usually when smallmouth will transfer off of construction and into deeper, open water. Patrolling depths of 10 to twenty ft, these bass will begin keying in on suspended faculties of baitfish like minnows, shad, and ciscoes. Catching them might be tough as they’re on the hunt and transferring round always. Electronics on a ship generally is a enormous assist throughout these conditions as they will assist in finding each baitfish faculties and the bass themselves. In case your boat isn’t geared up, you may nonetheless discover roving smallies by searching for floor exercise.
On vibrant sunny days, faculties of baitfish will transfer to the highest of the water column to feed on phytoplankton. Pods of smallmouth will usually linger simply beneath these baitfish, ready to tear by them like tuna feeding on herring. You will discover these baitfish by scanning the floor of the water close to rocky shorelines and sandy flats. Search for small, raindrop-like ripples on the floor of the water, and even frantic silvery splashes. As soon as you see these faculties of baitfish, the bass gained’t be distant.
Picture by Kubie Brown
Whether or not you see these floor faculties or discover bass in your sonar, masking water continues to be the secret for late-fall smallmouth fishing. Jerkbaits just like the Husky Jerk and the X Rap are perfect for these conditions as you may solid them a good way and work them slowly again to the boat. When you’re utterly blind-casting and must cowl extra floor, it’s laborious to beat a spinner. And I don’t imply the massive, willow-bladed skirted spinnerbaits you utilize for bass throughout the summer time. I’m speaking concerning the smaller, inline spinners which are generally used for panfish and trout.
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Inline spinners just like the Blue Fox Vibrax, Roostertail, and Panther Martin are autumn smallmouth magnets. Their refined flash, vibration, and smaller profile make them ideally suited imitations of small baitfish which have gotten misplaced from the herd — one thing {that a} large smallie gained’t have the option to withstand. You’ll be able to fish these spinners shortly slightly below the floor, or allow them to sink and retrieve them slowly when bass are holding deep. They’re nice lures for masking all the water column and in search of out roving fish, and so they can work properly on sluggish bass which were following however not committing to different baits.
Bonus: Fall Smallmouth Ideas from a Bass Professional
By David A. Brown
Smallmouth are a gluttonous lot and fall solely magnifies their gorging tendencies. Nevertheless, Minnesota’s Bassmaster Elite professional Seth Feider is aware of that these fish like to look at their six whereas protecting themselves in areas the place small strikes yield large beneficial properties in both their feeding alternatives or their security/consolation.
“Within the fall, I like areas the place they’ve shut entry between deep and shallow water as a result of they transfer up and down once they get hotter days and colder days,” Feider says. “The perfect state of affairs can be a hump that got here as much as at the least 8 or 10 ft on prime, however broke actually sharply into at the least 20 ft … That would offer someplace they might (retreat to) if the climate turned actually unhealthy.”
Feider minces no phrases in noting that larger baits will get you larger bites, particularly throughout the fall feeding frenzy. Native forage has a powerful bearing on productive profiles, however throughout the board, the most important smallmouth will usually forgo chasing hundreds of smaller baits, in favor of concentrating on heftier meals. Tullibees, large blueback herring, yellow perch are all truthful recreation.
“I’ve had 3- 4-pound smallmouth puke up 8- to 9-inch tullibee,” he says. “It’s all about protein and packing on as a lot weight as they will for the winter.”
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