Ok, last week I said we’d talk about how to find the “fall frenzy” bite when it wasn’t obvious way back in the creeks. Here goes…
When the bass are still moving towards shallow water you can usually find them somewhere along the path they travel as they move from deep water to shallow water. Mostly that’ll be something you can see on a paper map or on your electronics.
It’ll likely be a channel, a drop, a ledge or a well-defined change in depth. Open the map wide to get the big picture when you look for their travel route and try to imagine a natural path. Trust your intuition.
They’ll stop as they travel on or at whatever’s available. It might be a sharp change of direction along their path or it might be something as small as a stump, a log or a rock. In some places I’ve even seen them stop on a small spot of gravel.
Regardless of where they stop they’ll likely bite a shad finished crankbait. These fish are feeding. It’s just that they aren’t feeding in the backs of the creeks yet.
When I say shad finish I don’t mean just any shad finish. It’s very important that the shad colored bait you’re throwing have a yellow cast to it. If you notice, most every sick or crippled shad will look yellow. It happens when they get sick or injured. The bass know that, and they key on it. You want your lure to look exactly like what they’re eating.
Your best depth is usually somewhere between four and 10 feet. Try to keep your lures in that depth range and make sure you’re banging your lure off whatever’s on the bottom. That’ll help create a reaction bite and it’ll give you information about where you’re fishing.
My crankbait choices are the Rapala DT6 and DT10 in Ike’s Custom Ink Disco Shad.
When the barometer is high and the fish have pulled back after a cold front the best way I know to get them to bite is by dead sticking a wacky worm or by throwing a drop shot. I don’t move either bait. I let the natural action of the boat and the waves do that for me. That’s about as subtle as you can get, but that’s the way they like it most of the time.
My tackle and bait recommendations for these two approaches are in last week’s column.
Make long casts. Move your boat as little as possible. Don’t make a sound if you can help it. These fish are skittish. (If you set the sensitivity on your electronics properly you can actually see them swimming away in front of you. They’ll look like little puffs of cotton candy just off the bottom.)
One final thing about the post-frontal situation: When I say the bass move back, away from the shallow water, I’m not saying they move far. Usually they’ll just go to the first or second point back towards the creek mouth. It’s not a retreat. It’s a tactical pullback.
Mike Iaconelli’s column appears weekly on Bassmaster.com. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter or visit his website, mikeiaconelli.com.
