Sometimes you hit the fishing scene just right. That happened to a buddy and me some years ago fishing in mid-October for largemouth and smallmouth bass. We live in the mid-Atlantic area and were fishing a river turned into a lake courtesy of a hydroelectric dam.
It was on the Susquehanna River, but the same experience can occur on any river or lake/impoundment on any of our three coastal areas. And it could occur either earlier or later in the fall, depending upon the temperatures and local conditions in your area.
We tried several previously known hot spots that day with some success, and then decided to drift the rocky shoreline where some crayfish and their nemesis bass might be arguing with each other.
While there was a fair drop off along the bank, it stayed fairly shallow for 10 to 15 feet out, with rounded rocks providing cover for any bass, crayfish, frogs or minnows. We could see the rocks as we fished, and occasionally a crayfish darting around. It seemed that we had hit this shoreline bank at the prime time for fall fishing.
That proved to be the case with the first several casts. Throwing deep diving crankbaits in crayfish and fire tiger colors, we shortly were hitting bass. And before you question our sanity of using deep diving lures, realize that the long-lipped lures we used bounced around the rocks, darting enticingly, and for all practical purposes resembled in action if not color the crayfish of the area.
We literally caught fish on every few casts, all day long, with both smallmouth and largemouth ranging from a pound or two up to five or six pounds. It was fabulous. The bass were there to stock up on groceries for the winter while we were there for the bass. We released all of the fish, but not before taking a bunch of photos of our daylong success story.
We also learned something. While we were both using spinning tackle, I was using a reel with a much faster (higher) gear ratio than my friend. He was taking more fish than me, right from the start. After trying and eliminating other variables such as lure, size, color and even brand, this fact of lure speed dawned on me.
I could have switched to a lower speed reel, but instead just reduced my cranking speed of the reel handle to match the lure speed of my buddy. Immediately, I got a strike, and kept getting them to match my partner’s catch rate as we fished through the overcast day into late afternoon.
Fishing from the front or back of the boat made little difference, it seemed. In all cases, we cast ahead of the boat quartering the casts to hit the shoreline just short of dry dirt and then working the lures back in the erratic zigzag retrieve, all at a slow enough speed for the bass to catch them and for me to get hits to match my buddy.
We have both come close to matching that day since, making it a worthwhile trip for any of us to try to get in on fall fishing at just the right time. You just want to get there when the fish—bass in this case—are working the shoreline to get fattened up for winter!
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