Why Al Lindner Loves Fall Bass Fishing
Fall is in the air! I can feel it, I can smell it, I can see the trees just starting to change colors. I love it! The next 6 to 8 weeks mean big fish and lots of them.
Two days ago, I had the best largemouth bass bite I’ve had all year up here in the north country. I caught three between 5 and 5.5, three between 4 and 4.5, along with numerous in the 3.25 to 3.5 range. It was a real big fish bite!
I was out on the water alone, on a lake I’d never been to. I was exploring new water, and boy did I find a gem. You can bet I’m going to shoot a few television shows on this baby. Who knows, I might even head up there to film later this week! The lake had some impressive fish for this part of the country.
To have success, I needed to fish in two extremes. I had a lot of fall bass in the bulrushes, not much on the in-between flats, and then I had a lot of fish on the deep weedline. I was catching the deep weedline fish on a 3/4 oz VMC jig tipped with a Big Bite craw, pounding in the milfoil.
Then I went up shallow in the late afternoon. It was kind of warm, kind of muggy out. I took a Terminator frog and started fishing it in the bulrushes. Now frogs aren’t traditionally known as bulrush baits. When most people think frogs, they think heavy shallow-water slop, but that isn’t always the case. In the last few years, we’ve learned that you can catch bass on a frog in a lot of different environments, even in open water. It doesn’t need to be choked up lily pads, wild rice and shallow-water slop.
What I really like about fishing a frog in the bulrushes is that you can throw it right up into the middle of the bed and you almost never get caught up as your retrieve your bait back to the boat. If you haven’t thrown a frog in bulrushes for bass, I want to encourage you to go try it. It’s absolutely deadly. Naturally, you need 65 pound braid. I was using a 7’4” St. Croix heavy-duty rod, so I could pull those fish out of there.
Fall is just setting up and things are just starting to get “right”. If you haven’t been doing a lot of bass fishing and you’re kind of tired of chasing walleyes, muskies, crappies, etc — bass fishing is kicking in. They know the water temperatures are starting to dive.
Most of the lakes I’ve been on are 66-67 degrees and slowly going down. We haven’t had a frost yet, but it’s going to be here real, real soon. That’s all it really need to light up the bite.
Take advantage of the hot fall bass bite that’s going on right now somewhere near you!
