By Scott Norton
This fall has been “hit or miss”. Some days they are revved up like they should be, and other days you have to work hard to get them. That’s fishing at its best and that’s why you need to be versatile as an angler. Be sure to throw a few heavy cover to finesse rigs in with your gear so that you don’t get stuck without what you need to catch them.
This year, I found myself using more jigs in heavy cover then open water moving baits. You can use this to your advantage. You can now go to every brush pile and throw your jigs tight in the center and dissect it from shallow to deep. I was glad to know that I could eliminate all the shoreline between laydowns to save time. Lots of quality fish were eager for an easy meal.
Typically in the fall, they should be blowing up on shad, which makes it easy to find them. When all is calm and a jerk bait is not getting noticed, it’s hard to know where to start. When the water cools down, the bass will start their journey up the creek channels and will stop at the secondary points to feed up. If you see laydowns on those secondary points throw a jig deep in the back and work each lane between branches. This is where we were finding some quality bass. You can also try skipping under docks as well. Leave no rock unturned.
What’s a flipping stick and a finesse rod? I like to use a 7.6” extra heavy rod with a 50-pound braid on a bait caster as my flipping setup. When you go for finesse I like to use a 7’ to 7.6” medium extra fast tip rod with 10-pound braid to 10-pound leader on a spinning real. When times got really hard, I downsized and used a ned rig with this set-up.
You would see blowups on the surface, but don’t pay any attention to those because if you try and chase those down, you would have already missed your chance. It seemed that that the open water bite would turn off as soon as it turned on.
This is the time of year I like to use a kayak, since your launching area is usually in the creek channels. You do have issues with how much gear you can take unless you have a big kayak. This is all preference of course. I hope this helps guys and remember to introduce new people to the sport.
Scott Norton is a native of Western North Carolina. Born in Asheville, NC, he is a long time avid hunter, angler, and weekend warrior. He is a member of Southern Raft Supply’s prostaff team representing them in his Jackson Kayak Coosa FD.