Pat Brown

Tank @T-Billy I'd LOVE to catch a 5 lb smallmouth end of this month when I fish/camp Lake James out in Western NC. Not many pure SM left in James but I'm hopeful. It'll at the very least be the first time targeting smallmouth since I was a teenager!

I'm a big fan of the Storm arashi cover pop. Original Rebel is hard to beat.

I think change makes them active somewhere and the trick is knowing where they bite when it gets hot and where they bite when it gets cooler. This can be applied to day to day shifts in weather caused by rain and cold fronts or very hot, still weather. Somebody always shows up to the lake and gets excited about the conditions because it's somebody's strong suit. I'm always trying to get stronger at fishing every scenario that the seasons present etc.

It just goes back to 'you can't tell from a picture' Perspective is a weird thing. I'm gonna guess 8# @Catt but really hard to say Gotta put it on a scale and tell us! I can't see how wide it is or how long it is in a picture and how fat it is DOES play into it's weight. Point being. Only person who can say for sure is a person with a scale! ???

Yeah night fishing for bass is a famously fun way to catch giants. Pat Cullen caught over 1100 double digit bass all at night and all on Buzzbaits at all times of year and many different size bodies of water. Try it!

In my humble opinion, cold fronts in the fall are one of the best things that happens to bass fishing all year long. Your mileage may vary. This is about the time I start flipping visible cover again and for me that's about as fun as bass fishing gets.

Bass weight is a funny thing. I've caught the same fish 3 times over the course of 6 months at a small pond. A very large aggressive female. First time I caught her in early February at 6 am on a swim jig with a belly full of shad and some eggs still on board. But she was not peak pre spawn weight. She had clearly already been on bed and had a bloody tail. Caught in 1 foot of water. 9 lb 1 oz. Second time was in April on a red lipless crankbait and she weighed 8 lb 12 oz. Near the out take drain/vegetation line outside of the spawning flat. Less belly but still 'girthy'. Third time I caught her was in July on a hollow body frog and she weighed 7 lb 12 oz. She was very spawned out....but not COMPLETELY spawned out....and was probably just beginning to feed back up. A lot of big fish use this flat early in the day and late in the evening. I actually hooked her a couple weeks later on a buzz toad and she got off right at the bank before I could weigh her a 4tb time. I've spotted her hunting/waiting to ambush shad early in the day a few times since the last encounter but she is getting smarter. Crazy part is this fish isn't the biggest I've seen on the pond by a long shot....just a very aggressive fish. But yeah. They can actually vary in size quite a bit. Especially large fish. Measuring the fish with a scale or fishing line is always better than eyeballing it but I'd say it's a beautiful fish and a monster. It's impossible for any of us to accurately guess it's weight from your picture. Congratulations on that awesome fish and keep going. The big fish flood gates have opened up for you and I'm sure you're gonna upgrade that one in no time. ??????

Soft plastics and heavier faster rods are like peanut butter and jelly. I like lighter wire hooks. Offset worm or straight shank are great. I don't use huge hooks. In my experience small fish (8-12 inch) and huge fish (24 inch +) are both generally gonna inhale that thing all at once. I've caught more dinks than giants on big worms and in the summer you can't keep the sunfish off of them in the brush piles! ???? When a bass hits it I set hard and fast on plastics. They gut hook themselves far too quickly.

24" with a full belly and a healthy life would be 8 lb. That one looks more 6.5-7 which is typical for the end of the summer before they put their weight back on! Nice fish! In the future: cut fishing line off a rod and wrap the fish and cut it for girth and hold it straight parallel to the fish from tip to tail to get the length and save the line for when you get home.

Buzzbait for the win @Kites R4 Skyfishing !!!! I've caught more fish this month on the buzzbait then all other topwaters combined up to this point in my life! It's the deal and I'm glad I committed to it. Here's a gorgeous fall second pre spawn bass I caught on the @Siebert Outdoorsswim jig in black and blue with a blue bug rage craw on the back. I got to see her wake on it in less than a foot of water and the hook set was oh so satisfying! 5 lb beast before work today:

Cold and warm are relative and what you gotta think about is sorta three pronged: surface temperature is about all the bass are really concerned with in terms of the temperatures as they relate to a cold front and until it hits <50° consistently, they're gonna be pretty active. Weather every day is probably the single most important thing to pay attention to during the fall. You'll have 'fall days' and 'summer days' in the fall (cooler, gloomier days with steady prevailing winds) and on these days you wanna go all in on your fall techniques. Reaction baits. Jerkbait, square bill, mid diving crank, lipless, chatterbait, spinnerbait, buzzbait, swim jig, heavier weighted casting jigs so they fall nice and fast and allow you to do some nice quick hops on the bottom. You'll find on days like this, the fish will be everywhere you look literally and fishing is hard to pattern, but junk fishing with your instincts can be more rewarding at this time of year than any other. You'll also have more summery days as fall creeps in.... The techniques more or less stay the same but the speed of retrieve and location and depth will usually change on those muggy hot still days with very little cloud cover. You'll want to find more shade. Harder vegetation lines. Heavier cover. Steeper drops. Then you'll have to target them at the depth they're holding. I slow down my retrieves and drop down in weight on my jigs once I've found them on days like this. They seem less apt to chase when it's muggy and still. I find they bite much better on the summery days if you get some steady wind. In general I find it's best to think of fall almost like the pre spawn transition where the fish want to slide up shallow and throughout the day as conditions change and bait moves, that's precisely what they will do. They are usually found in between deep and shallow most days in the fall. I find that the bite does steadily get better during daylight hours than early morning/early evening but that doesn't fully change over until winter and even then, fish still feed heavily under low light conditions (caught my biggest fish of this past winter at 6 am in pitch black in early February, 9.1 lb). In lower visibility use darker or lighter colors and more flash and vibration/sound. On clearer fisheries go with more visual baits that more closely resemble natural forage and rely less on thump and vibration/sound. But by all means don't be afraid to try the 'wrong' bait for the conditions....I've been proven that fish don't read the same books we do time and time again. What I'm more concerned with than light intensity in general is depth the fish are holding at on any given day and the level of activity of the forage. If the forage is going nuts and schools are flickering everywhere and I see bass eating, reaction will be glued to my hand. If the lake looks dead, I'll probably start with reaction and gradually get more quiet and methodical and bottom contact will be most of what I'm tossing. It you want 5 baits that you can leave home with and catch fish in the fall: 1/8 oz Buzzbait, 1/2 oz Spinnerbait, 1/2-3/4 oz casting jig and craw trailer, Jerkbait, shallow/medium diving crankbait. I'm of the mind that fall starts when your days start to shorten and nights start to lengthen and the transition tends to flicker to life and not happen all at once for all fish in all parts of the lake, much like the spring.

@Blue Raider Bob it sounds like your bass are still very much still in their summer feeding patterns. Our peak water temps (89°) have come down a whopping 10° in the past two weeks and I think that coupled with the darker moodier days and longer nights has them feeling fally ??? here!

Happy birthday @ol'crickety ! I have been noticing the 'bite in the dark before sunrise' is steadily shifting more to 'bite as the sun is rising'. This past couple weeks. Seems I always catch the bass at the pond right as the daylight breaks.

My son has been bringing his ultra light pan fishing rig on the boat because of how slow the bass fishing gets this time of year. He drops gulp minnows on tiny hooks exposed in front of 1/16 oz sinkers on 4 lb test line. Basically micro t rig fluke ???? It is amazing the stuff he catches. He's able to identify the forage in an area in a matter of minutes usually. What has been very interesting to me is that in certain areas you only catch certain types of forage but everywhere you catch bass. This started to make me wonder if at least making some small effort to match your overall color flavor to the most prominent species in any given area is worth exploring more than I give it credit for. Jake caught some yellow perch with bright red tails and dorsal and pectoral fins....I got my red spike it marker out and hit my jig tails. Caught a fish on that point a couple minutes later. Don't know if the little adjustment helped or not, but it would make sense on fisheries where fish are getting hammered and eating one thing a lot in an area.

@Captain Phil twice this summer I got stuck in canals and under bridges waiting for huge storms to pass. It's actually a pleasant experience if you have a good bridge! NC summer weather is down right unpredictable though and racing storms back is not my thing. Had much worse experiences doing that.

Well, I went back to the old pond this morning because it was raining all last night and fished the inflow at the lower pond and on my second cast a little out from the point on the corner of the inflow mouth she crushed it. I gave her a solid second where I really took a breath and just waited a second and then reeled up and pounded it and there she was! 5 lb on the dot ???

I don't know what clicked with the Jerkbait this past spring but I had multiple 20+ fish days in NC with it and that just doesn't happen often with any baits I learn. Seems like when they're in the mood for that presentation, they really have a hard time resisting it. Thing is I KNOW the fluke is the same. I have done really well with it late in the fall on really calm days up shallow. I just haven't put the time in to see what else it's good for. @Woody B thing is, I have NOT had issues hooking up on the buzzbait in general, it's just been this past couple days on this one lake. I think honestly, looking back on it/analyzing each bite/hookset, I'm fairly certain, even though I thought I was giving them enough time, you really gotta let em have it a second. I find spinnerbait is the same way for me. Also trailer hook is out of the question. Snot grass around the pads is so thick you have to immidiately get that thing planing or you're gonna be totally covered in snot but they CRUSH that little guy burned back over tops of those pads above the snot. Tried the buzz toad today and it just didn't get the blow ups my Buzzbaits got. Still missed all 4 bites at the lake on the buzzbait. Oh well. I'm gonna really slow that hookset down tomorrow morning and see what happens (if I get bit before work)

Jerkbait is one of those techniques I can catch a cold on a sunny day with. It's just deadly. Fluke I'm okay with but I know it works. @Kites R4 Skyfishing I am using a 7'3 Heavy Fast action rod with an 8 speed reel and 40 lb braid. Been slamming them on this set up the past couple weeks on the buzzbait. The one I was using for the most part was the 1/8 oz Boogerman Buzzbait in a shad color. It's caught over 10 fish recently and it's still getting blow ups left and right. I don't know what it is about the boogerman but it gets bit.

I think that's exactly what I shoulda coulda woulda done but i had a mental block for some old reason. I think that toad gives em some meat to grab.

Fluke is 365 day a year bait IMHO

That one in particular seems worth it. I'm less concerned about topwaters. I have lost maybe 3 ever.

I tried to slow down in the pads with a frog and a worm but they 'wanted' the buzzbait more, IE, they reacted to it. I may try the buzz toad today if similar conditions happen. I'm hoping the cloud cover holds out and we get a stiff breeze before the storms hit tonight. Could produce a giant very easily if everything comes together. The days between stable weather patterns that are in line with seasonal trends are always the toughest and they tend to happen in late summer and late winter the most.

Incredibly difficult day out yesterday. Slick calm. Nearly bluebird skies most of the day. 96° that felt 136° Managed to miss a total of 8 fish on the buzzbait. I tried all manner or fast and slow hookset and they were just not committed to it. It was always just swatting at it coming through the pads/grass. Very frustrating. Did end up catching a few on little swimbaits and the Hybrid Hunter again. I caught my biggest of the day, an incredibly skinny/stunted 3 lb 12 oz bass. Wish I had some snacks to give her before releasing her. She looked hungry. Jake also caught a slew of baitfish today, including a golden shiner, black crappie, channel catfish, multiple sunfish species, yellow perch and little tiny bass. We also found a floating zombie bass that was close to 7 lbs. Still fairly fresh being munched by turtles on the rip rap wall. No obvious signs of cause of death. Bummer. She was very NOT stunted.

I'm a very determined rookie, but I've only been seriously bass fishing for 2 years now and I consider that very green. I'm always learning constantly.

I'd happily debate Alfred on this one any day ????