Vance McCullough

 

“If you’re not 10 minutes early, you’re late.”

– your grand dad (or somebody similar)

Hurry up and wait. That’s often the drill in adult life. It can be much the same when fishing, especially in the fall.

To put it more accurately, ‘Fish fast, then slow’.

Bass scatter and become nomadic during the fall more so than in other seasons. What had been a stable, if less enthusiastic school of fish holding in predictable places during summer has now dispersed to chase roaming baitfish, mostly in shallow pockets and far up creek arms and tributaries. The good news: fun baits rule now! Crank secondary points, rip jerkbaits and burn flukes over bars and humps, sling spinnerbaits – everywhere. It’s time for walking baits, poppers, buzzbaits and Whopper Ploppers.

 

Put the trolling motor on a steady pace and go cover water because there’s no telling where you’ll find fish right now. Except, there is. There are very few sure bets in bass fishing but there’s more than a chance that some bass will post up on some form of shallow hard cover and let dinner come to them. Often, these are the biggest, most mature bass in the fishery. They get big and fat because they conserve energy this way.

Docks are an obvious choice, as are laydown logs. Don’t overlook corners or turns in bulkheads and ‘seawalls’, especially in current heavy environs such as rivers. Any place bass can ambush, or trap prey is a high value target. Many such places exist way up the tiniest creeks and canals. Find a ditch and keep going. You can’t fish too shallow in autumn. As options are generally limited, absolutely every piece of cover with water on it is a prime suspect to harbor fish in these types of places. Tread lightly and make long casts.

Clear water calls for faster retrieves so, conversely, the more stained the water, the more valuable a hard target, such as wood, becomes because it gives an angler the confidence that there are fish present and that it will be worth the extra time required to pick the structure apart. Besides, as a general rule, the more off-colored water becomes, the tighter fish will hold to cover.

Fall bass can be stubborn. Repeated casts are often needed to trigger a bite. Switch up the angles too. I remember a trip on a tough Kentucky Lake fishery when Strike King Pro Mark Menendez cranked a tiny pile of brush in 3 feet of water with a squarebill. Repeatedly. “There he is,” said Menendez as the fish finally choked the lure. “I knew there had to be a fish in there, but it took 8 casts to get him to bite. So often that’s the deal – repeated casts. You just have to be more stubborn than the fish when you’re around some obvious cover like that and you know there’s a fish or two in there.”

 

Jigs are popular in such obvious shallow spots as the weather continues to cool. Not only does a jig offer a bulky profile and substantial meal, but anglers can swim them up in the water column to imitate baitfish and just as quickly hop them along bottom when they suspect the bass have switched to crawfish as a preferred forage species. Versatile as jigs are, they’re not always the best choice. Stick baits may be the undisputed champions of go-to lures when you just gotta have a bite and nothing else is working. They skip well and, as such are great lures to pitch around docks. Flukes skip a little better and land softly, making them indispensable in the shallows as well.

Go burn the flats at warp speed but if the bass don’t think your lures are as fun to eat as you think they are to fish, find an obvious piece of shallow hard cover and hunker down on it.