Fishing tip of the week: – 09/30/20

Fall Baits

by Mike Gerry

When the fall bite is on, finding fish is the key to the great activity and success that we are having during the fall time of year. In the fall the bass are generally stacked together, and the key is finding the bass. When you do find them the fun has just begun! There are certainly many different baits that are successful in finding fall bass, but what I like may be a little different than most.

First and foremost, I maintain that search baits are not always created equal. If you are looking just for bites it is different than searching for big bites, especially in the fall. My keys are: big fish means big search baits, or, small fish smaller search baits.
I also feel strongly that searching for fish in the fall differs from the search in summer, or even the spring. The difference is that in the fall one of your best search baits is searching via top water. We hardly ever search for bass on top any other times of year with the intensity that we do in the fall. One of the main keys is: “your eyes seeing is believing” in the fall. One of the most versatile baits ever made is the Zara Spook. It allows you to search on top and use different size search baits to find fish with. If you’re looking for tournament size fish you can search with their full-size spook or if you’re just fishing for bites you can down-size your spook and very easily go smaller with the same presentation and same action.

I also like searching with swim baits in the fall as it allows you to follow the same philosophy easily by using big swim baits to find bigger fish, and down-size to find just bites. It is also a great presentation to search different depths as swim baits are easily counted down to different depths to find fish that will react while suspending.

Search baits are a big part of fall fishing. There are different ways and baits to search with that can make your fishing day very successful; you certainly do not always need to use baits that everyone else uses, especially in the fall.
Captain Mike

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