(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Many bass anglers head out in the fall looking for bass to be gorging on big pods of baitfish, only to come home disappointed, thinking they should have gone hunting or watched football instead.
Even Bassmaster Classic Champion and past AOY Mike Iaconelli has suffered that fate: “It can be a really, really tricky period,” he said. “It’s a time of change and the fish are transient as all get-out.”
Both air and water temperatures are dropping and the days are getting shorter, but Ike said that the most significant change to the bass is one that stems from those others – the movement of the bait. He divides fall fishing into two main periods, referring to the first as the “fall feed,” when temperatures first start to drop and bass are keyed in on moving shad. The second involves their transition to the areas where they’ll spend the winter.
On lakes with spawning coves and pockets, he’ll think back to where the fish spawned in the springtime and simply head back there. He said that works 70 to 80 percent of the time. The best pockets and creeks, he added, are the ones with active drains in the back.
As the bait moves back into the creeks, they’ll follow the contours, pausing at “stopping points” or “roadblocks” like secondary points, just like bass. On lakes without many creeks, the process is similar – they’ll make the same sort of stops on places like humps and flat points off of islands. You’re looking for bait to key you into their location, either with your eyes, or with your graph. When it looks like rain is pounding the lake’s surface or your depthfinder screen blacks out, that’s where you need to start looking.
While finesse techniques can play a role during the fall feed, Ike believes that power fishing is “absolutely the deal.” Not only do lures such as crankbaits, lipless cranks and spinnerbaits allow him to cover water, but they closely replicate the bait, too. He also likes walking baits and buzzbaits, and said that “it’s hard to beat a swimbait, especially in clear water,” although his preference is for slightly stained or dingy water, which he claims is “like a magnet” for bass at this time of year.
When he first locates the bait and the bass, he’ll always try to match the hatch, but sometimes an ultra-natural lure gets lost in the shuffle. In that case, rather than adjusting his presentation by a matter of degree, he’ll go to an opposite extreme: two favored examples include a bubblegum pink fluke or a spinnerbait with painted blades, often gaudy chartreuse.
Ike admits that the second fall period, when temperatures really start to plummet and days get much shorter, is often the tougher of the two. The upside is that when you find the fish, you can have some incredible days on “mega” schools. They’ll reverse back out from the backs of the creeks, he said, but “it’s not like a light switch.” That’s because it starts being less about bait and more about where they’re going to winter. As a result, the jig starts to come back into play because crawfish are as important as shad. These fish are patternable – if you find them halfway or three quarters of the way out of one creek, they’ll likely be halfway or three quarters out of the others, too.
If you’d like to learn more of Ike’s keys to finding bass throughout the various changes in the fall, including what to do if there’s a warm rain as winter approaches, check out the full video seminar by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
