Hoping I can take a trip up north in a month and I've never taken a fall smallie trip before.  At what temps are they feeding heavily in the shallows?  What kind of depths and structure do they hold on throughout the fall and how does that change as the water temps go down?  I know what they do around Chicago in Lake Michigan but that is all breakwall related fishing.  I am wondering about natural areas such as Door Co, Erie, and St Clair.  Any help is appreciated.    

I can tell you that at 68 temps, the smallies are still deep.  I only caught 1 bass relatively shallow and instead caught everything on deep mainlake structure yesterday.  Even caught 1 at 37' deep.  

 

 

 

Door County is tough can be tough Fall--especially in September. It's usually windy, and there's a lot of water, so you get big waves. I normally drive around in 15-30 FOW and look for them on my graph. Windblown shorelines are worth checking too. Fish can be anywhere, and when you do find them, they can be very negative. It's no fun driving around for hours only to find fish that won't bite, so I always have suckers with me.

I have found in late season, deep cranks, from 10ft +, deeper jerkbaits, dropshot, jigging blade baits,  and of course cracking tubes :), work extremely well. Cracking a marabou jig along the bottom also works well.