Grass Action Can Be Red-Hot In Fall

By David A. Brown
Special to BassFan

Shorter days, falling water temperatures – such cues tell bass that fall has arrived and it's belly-packing time. But while a great many fish will move up from summer depths to chase shad back in the creeks, another game offers tremendous autumn potential for the open-minded angler.

We’re talking grass beds – the thick, topped-out mats that linger well into the early edges of holiday season. Throughout many southern lakes, this scenario offers a convenient option during the fall feeding frenzy.

The Attraction

As Bassmaster Elite Series pro Terry Scroggins explained, hydrilla and other vegetation like coontail, milfoil and hyacinth will be at its densest point by late summer-early fall, so this is your prime southern bass habitat. Oxygen, shade and bait cover all the basic bass needs.

Favoring grass beds close to major channels, Elite pro Greg Hackney said that some grass scenarios find bait schools making brief pit stops en route to backwater destinations, while the seriously heavy vegetation will often hold the forage all the way up to the fall-winter transition.

For bass looking to boost their bulk for the approaching cold season, this creates a food-rich scenario. For anglers, this means a bass-rich environment that’s easy to pinpoint. Compared to the traditional creek runs where bass chase shad schools in open water, the grass scenario offers the benefit of greater predictability.

“Those bigger fish are hard to target when they don’t set up on anything, when they’re just running around chasing shad,” Hackney said. “But when they set up on that grass, you can figure out a target, right where that fish is sitting.”

FLW Tour pro J.T. Kenney agrees and points to the big-bite potential.

“I really believe that you still have the opportunity to catch a big fish,” he said. “I know a lot of fish follow the bait back into the creeks, but I don’t think the 6-, 7-, 8-, 9-pounders do. In the fall, it’s harder to catch a big fish. I just think if you can find some main-lake grass fish, you have a better opportunity to luck into catching a 7-pounder.

“Not that you can’t catch a 7-pounder in a creek; I just think you have a better chance of doing that on main-lake grass. I just don’t think the big fish are as apt to migrate long distances.”

The Movement

Now, bass in grass is no news flash. Rather, the heightened opportunity hinges on seasonal repositioning.

“Those fish that have been in those mats all summer long are about to pull out and position on the edge,” Hackney said. “They’re just putting on their feed bag for winter. As soon as that water temperature starts to drop, they’re coming out.”

Here, it’s all about access and proximity. Bigheads that have dodged summer’s heat far back in the cozy reaches of dense grass beds are heading to the perimeters.

“Especially in the South, it’s hard to catch those big fish during the hotter months because of the way they’re positioned,” Hackney said. “It’s like they’ve been gone all summer and then all of a sudden they just reappear again.”

Kenney anticipates close contact for his autumn fishing: “This time of year, I don’t expect to find them way back in the mat. If they’re in the mat, they’re in the first 10 feet.”

And, as Hackney notes, bass on the edge of a grass bed sit there for one reason: “They’re in an aggressive posture. They’re sitting there looking outward and waiting to ambush something as it comes by.”

The Sweet Spots

Treating a fall grass bed like a shoreline, Hackney looks for points, gaps and any contour variance that may direct baitfish movement and thereby offer ambush spots. He also likes distinct holes within a grass mat – a clear sign of rocks, logs or some fish-attracting structure blocking the grass growth.

Kenney adds this nugget: “Whenever I find a raft of hyacinth blown into a hydrilla mat, I know there’s a cavern below. The hyacinth is a floating plant and it will choke out the hydrilla below it.”

When he’s picking a fall grass spot, Hackney instinctively looks for an isolated mat that’s clearly detached from a larger adjacent mat. Most anglers automatically equate mass with opportunity, but Hackney said he often finds a gold mine of opportunity in a smaller grass mat.

“I always look for those isolated mats because they’re the ones that everyone overlooks,” he said. “Most people will blow right past a little grass mat and stop on the bigger ones. You’ll catch fish on the big mats too, but oftentimes, they get picked over pretty good.”

Grab 'Em in the Grass

Because the bass tend to congregate in key areas within a grass bed, covering water with reaction baits promotes time efficiency. Top choices include bladed jigs, spinnerbaits, buzzbaits and frogs. Fall bass may be focused on shad, but they’ll gobble anything they can catch – as long as they can reach it.

“Hydrilla gets pretty thick, so you’d have to target areas where you have more open holes for the fish to get the frog,” Kenney said. “That hydrilla can be 6 to 8 inches thick and it’s not that they couldn’t get through there, but it’s hard for them to know the bait’s up there. It’s different with milfoil – they don’t have any trouble blowing right through milfoil.”

Kenney loves his fall froggin’ too, and in the thick stuff, the bait’s belly color is more important than the back. Here, he wants a white bait that most closely resembles a shad to upward looking bass.

“Something else that works pretty good too is a white (buzz) toad,” Kenney said. “With those legs kicking and bubbling, I guarantee you they think it’s a shad that’s got up there on top of the mat, flickering around.”

Rigging a Gambler Cane Toad on a 5/0 Gambler KO hook, Kenney casts his bait onto a mat and patiently works it back to the edge, where he’ll increase his retrieve speed. This strategy allows him to blend the slow, hopping cadence of a hollow body frog, as well as that classic buzz-toad action

With an active area located, Hackney flips the edges with a Strike King Rodent or Rage Tail Menace grub on a 5/0 flipping Hook and a 1-ounce tungsten weight or a 1-ounce Strike King Hack Attack jig with a Strike King Rage Craw trailer. The jig is his big-fish bait, while plastics tend to catch numbers.

“With that jig’s big profile, you eliminate a lot of smaller bites,” he said. “Normally, you don’t get as many bites on the jig as you would a piece of plastic because it’s an aggressive bait and sometimes those little fish will shy away from it.

“There are certain times of the year when the big bait-big fish theory holds true and the fall of the year is one of those times.”