The Fall Feed Bag
-Cletus

THE WEATHER IS STARTING to cool and the leaves are beginning to turn and before too long the bass will start to put the feedbag on.  I’m talking a big ole sack of feedbag too.  The bass will begin to gorge themselves on shad or whatever baitfish they can run down.  They will hunt down the crawfish and hammer them with aggression.  They will look at that little bream that has been hanging out near them all summer, and this time see them as dinner and then go eat him.  The fall is a great time to be on the water due to the activity level of most bass.  They have been through a hot and sticky summer where they fed early and late in the day or mainly at night when the water wasn’t bubbling hot and the cooler water temps have triggered that alarm in their head that sounds a lot like the dinner bell. There is a lot less traffic on the water because the deer hunters are in the woods and the jet skies and pleasure boaters are putting their boats up for the winter.  The bass like the fact too that the water is less choppy and they are out in droves chasing down a meal.  Here are a few tips and tactics that may help you load the boat with fat chunky bass this fall.

  Find the bait…….find the fish. I Know this is a "DUH" Comment...

Find the bait…….find the fish.  I know this is a “DUHH” comment here but now more than ever will this hold true.  If you are fishing big water then most likely you will find the creeks and arms of a big reservoir filled with baitfish and the bass will be right there behind them feeding up.  Try to “match the hatch” as best you can and you can do that by a couple methods.  In certain instances you can look right there in the water and see the bait and get a feel for how big or little the baitfish are.  Another way to do this is check the mouth of the bass you are catching.  That’s right……open up that large mouth and a lot of times you will see a bunch of shad in it’s mouth, so just dump them out onto the floor of your boat and see if you have anything in your tackle box that looks like the real thing.  Once you do this you can load the boat and be prepared to fish this area for a while because in the fall, unlike summer where the feedings can be fast and furious, the feedings in the fall can last for hours and hours.  Your arm may feel like falling off but it’s a price I’m willing to pay in order to load the boat!

"You can use a Rapala#5 shad rap in a shad color scheme and chunking a spinnerbait"

So you may ask yourself…..OK I have found the fish, now what do I throw at them?  A lipless crankbait is an excellent bait to throw because it mimics what the bass are feeding on and you can chunk it a mile so you stay far enough away from the ball of bait without spooking them.  A little trick that I have found effective when throwing a lip less crank at feeding bass is after you cast your bait into the water just let it fall through the ball of bait.  Don’t crank it or anything……just let it fall.  I say this because a lot of times the biggest bass in a school are not the ones up on top freaking out like they are front row in a Van Halen concert, but rather they lay low and wait for the easy meal to float down to them.  The bass on top are feeding so aggressively that they knock a lot of the baitfish around and some float down either dead or stunned and the big ole boys and girls just swim up to them and gobble them up without having to expand a lot of energy.  This method has proved to be very effective for me over the tears.  You can also use a Rapala # 5 shad rap in a shad color scheme and chunking a spinnerbait at these feeding fish can produce great results too.  When the fish are feeding this aggressively you really can’t go wrong with throwing any bait towards them…….as long as that bait looks like a shad!

What if you are a pond fisherman (like me) and you don’t get out on big water too much……can you still catch fish in the fall on small water?  My answer to this question is…… “You bet your bottom dollar you can.”   Pond bass will put the feedbag on just like their cousins on the big lake.  You still want to look shallow though because that’s more than likely where they are going to be feeding.  You still want to use baits that resemble what they are feeding on.  I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about here.  A few years ago I was pond fishing on a pond located on the outskirts of beautiful Athens, Ga.  I had had great success that summer on a green pumpkin worm.  Once the season began to turn and the water cooled they didn’t hit the worm as good.  So I noticed in the very back of the pond that there was some serious feeding action going on.  I mean the baitfish was getting thrown up onto the bank so I took my little shad rap and I cast it over to action.  On the very first cast I caught a 3-pounder.  I then caught several 2-pounders, mixed in a few dinks and then football sized 5-pounder hammered the shad rap as soon as it hit the water.  This was an afternoon bite and the wind was blowing a little bit and the wind had pushed all the baitfish in this back corner and I stood on the bank and ripped lips and stretched my hips……meaning……I straight wore them out.  I probably caught close to 30 fish in a little over an hour and I do believe some of the fish were repeat customers.  It was an excellent day at the pond and a day I shall never forget.

Fall is right around the corner and for the bass fisherman it should put an extra jolt in your step.  The bass are feeding, the weather is great and if you can find your way to the water you may have a fishing experience that you will never forget.  The feedbag is on……now get out there and get your hands on some fat bellied bass!

Tight lines Folks!
Cletus