Late Fall Smallies: When All Else Fails… - Jordan of EJ's Fishing 

This time of year it is hard enough to find weeds, let alone live ones, which the bass are usually abundant in during the summer. The bass's metabolism is slowing right down and they are spending much less energy on chasing their prey. However, they still gotta eat. This is where the plastics come in to play, and do they ever!

This fall I spent quite a bit of time fishing for northern pike and I soon forgot about the all-mighty smallmouth bass. One day I decided to head down to the river is search of fall smallmouth, presumably the best time for fishing for these fantastic fish. Unfortunately it was getting down to the end of the season and the bass weren't hitting any of my stickbaits and crankbaits that they were slamming a couple weeks before. That night I came home without even a single hit or follow of a bass. I knew they were out there but what did they want? What were they hungry for? I decided that I would head back the next day in search of the same fish but with a different approach. I decided to bring out my box of plastic baits.

The next day I got up at around 8:00 and it must have been no warmer than 5o C so I decided I would stay at home and watch some fishing shows instead until it warmed up a bit. I arrived at my fishing hole at around noon. I opened up my tackle box and decided to through on a gold medium-weight jighead with a 3 1/2" orange spider grub that I got over the Internet a couple days earlier. I suspected that the fish were going to be on or near the bottom so I through my grub out and let it sing the 6 feet until it reached the floor. I than dragged it ever so slowly towards me, lifting it off the bottom by maybe a couple-three inches. Than I'd drop it again. I did this a couple times more until suddenly I felt something, it wasn't a rock for I could tell my line was slightly moving so I tightened up the line, set the hook good and hard, and a half a minute later I was releasing an 18" smallmouth bass back into its near-freezing watery world. I cast back to the same location and managed to hook 4 or 5 more good sized bass.

Don't be afraid to drag your jig head right along those rocks. If you are constantly getting hung-up, you are using too heavy of a jig head. Every one and a while I will get on a snag. The trick to freeing your lure is to not pull real hard but to jerk your rod in short and quick intervals from various directions.

After using this technique for a good solid week and finding it to be very productive I made the following conclusions about late-fall smallmouth bass: 1. They seem to hang on or very close to the bottom. 2. They school up around deep structure (boulder, rock hump, rock ledge, drop-off). Casting many times around the same place can be very effective. 3. The odd bass is found in between these structures possibly moving from one to another. 4. Fish are very picky, so using as light a jig-head as you can get away with seems to be they way to go.

This is what I learned about fishing for late-fall smallmouth bass in a time period of a week, so use this article as a guideline but don't be afraid to try something new that you think may work. Good Fishin'!

 

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