Hey guys, Cliff Pirch here with Bassresource.com.
I want to share 3 baits or techniques that I use in the fall. And I want to remind you, the fall is a crazy time. Lots of stuff going on. Lots of fish in different areas of the water column. You've got baitfish—shad are moving shallow, moving deep. And so the fall is a real smorgasbord of junk fishing. There is a lot of stuff going on.
I'm just going to give you 3 things that I like to do. And you know one day you could be doing this and the next you could be doing something totally different. So remember the fall has a lot of things going on. Things are real fluid in the fall.
One thing that's really become popular the last few years is shaking a minnow. Fall a lot of times revolves around bait fish—you know, the shad movements, big schools of shad. And a lot of times your big numbers of bass are going to be around the big numbers of shad. So the minnow shaking technique is not going to go away anytime soon. It's something you can use with your sonar, your live sonar.
I'm looking on my Active Target up there, scoping around, looking for specific bass or schools of bass. I'm throwing the minnow out there, letting it get down quick. Going to keep it right above those fish and shake it back until I can get one of them to react. Sometimes you might shake it for a little bit and have to reel it a little bit away from them, make them think it's getting away and trigger them to bite. Other times you might have to just shake it over them like it's just wounded and finally talk them into biting. But they will bite a minnow suspended, shaken all through the fall. It is a really great technique to catch them.
A couple of my pieces of equipment—I’ve got the Gamakatsu Horizon Head on here. This is the EWG model and I caught the biggest striper of my life this morning on it. And so it'll handle a big striper, it'll handle plenty big bass. It's a great way to catch them.
As far as my rod, I've learned—and by watching the guys that are really minnow experts—you want a really soft rod. This is the Phenix K2. It's a medium light. It's a little shorter. Almost all of my rods I use are 7'6", close to 8 feet. This one's a little shorter—the 7'2" medium light K2 from Phenix really is the right action.
You're going to generally be using a little bit lighter line, but the actual lightness of the rod allows you to shake that bait and the recoil of each shake just kind of makes that trimmer, makes that bait really work in the water. So it's something, you know, in the beginning we weren't really sure—you know, when we watched some of these guys from Japan developing this technique—I wasn't sure if I should go with a little heavier action spinning rod. Medium action. One thing that's really come to light is the light action spinning rod. So light action on my shaken minnow and that's a great way to catch them all through the fall. And that's where the biggest population of your bass are going to be is around the bait and open water shad movements. So that's a good fall technique.
I'm going to go to the opposite end of the spectrum now. In the fall, I've won several boats by just finding some of that dingy water and looking to key on the biggest bass in the fishery. Sometimes that's the back of a creek, the back of a cove, or the upper end of a lake. And I'm looking to give those big fish that are using cover a good beefy option.
This is a flipping jig, guys. Everybody who's been watching bass fishing, been a part of bass fishing—you've all flipped a jig at some point. And a jig has just stood the test of time. It still gets big bites, it still catches big fish, and it's still a great technique to catch them.
So in the fall of the year, a lot of times, like I said, I'm going to look for dingy water opportunities. If you get a little bit of runoff in the back of a creek, it gets muddied up a little bit. This is going to become a great way to dissect those overhang limbs, flooded brush or bushes, and any heavy cover. Rock walls is another good thing. Bluffs, rock slides—any time I can put a little bit of color in the water around those rocky areas, those are going to be really good too. So a flipping jig, guys, is just really hard to beat for getting that big bite, the kicker fish on your fall limit, and maybe win the tournament.
So I'm going to use it on a flipping stick. This is the Phenix Super Flipper. It's 8-foot heavy action—a medium-heavy action—but it's a pretty heavy setup. I've got it on 65 LB braid with a 25 LB fluorocarbon leader. And you know, if it's real dirty, you can just go straight braid. But if you've got some clarity, I like to, you know, get a few more bites. When you've got some clarity and the fish can see pretty good, I go ahead and go with a fluorocarbon leader.
So that's a fun way to fish, guys. Short line—you want to be stealthy in your boat with your quietness, closing compartments, moving around, making noise—because you're short-range. You're short range. So you want those fish to be focusing on eating something rather than on you being there. So want to be quiet and catch those big ones.
The third thing I'm going to talk about in the fall, guys, is a drop shot. It never leaves my boat. But one neat thing about the fall that I've seen—and this has come from guiding over the years—you know when you've got two or three other guys in the boat, and you see which guy's getting the most bites.
For some reason, in the late fall, when you get around those big suspended schools of bass—you know, underneath the suspended schools of bass, or if they're on a ledge or on a point or on a shoal—the bright colors seem to work the best. And in bass fishing, you can never make a hard fast rule. You know, there’s sometimes you probably catch them better on a natural color, but most of the time in the fall I have seen that a bright color works best.
This one's called Polluted Dawn. This is the Cliffhanger in the smaller model of the Cliffhanger and it's just a great worm. But the bright colors like Polluted Dawn, Cranberry Juice, Southwesty—those real bright bold colors—tend to work best around the shad and in the fall. I've even used the natural shad colors and these seem to outperform the shad colors when you're fishing around shad in the fall. And so I don't know what the reason is, but it's just a good bet that the bright one is going to catch the most fish in the boat.
So that's the Cliffhanger, guys. On a drop shot. I'm using it on a Phenix medium-action—the 7'6" medium. I can throw it a long ways. I can fish close, fish far, deep, shallow. It targets everything. And so it's a good technique to always keep on the front deck of your boat.
So hopefully those 3 techniques give you a little bit of variety to throw in the fall when you encounter different situations. But don't overlook lots of other things. Fall can be a great topwater time, a jerkbait time, a deep crank time—even you know, if they get deeper, you can get them on a jigging spoon.
And that's where your shaking a minnow can come in handy. It works at any depth range that they get. And you know, when you're on a school of bait or a school of bass that's feeding on a moving school of bait in the fall, one thing you'll notice is they can be on the surface boiling in one minute and they can be all the way back down in 40 or 50 the next. So having something that targets those fish in any depth is really a good thing to have on the front deck.
Have fun fishing in the fall, guys. There's a few less people on the water. And the fish really, really feed up when they hit that transition. And that they can signal that winter is just around the corner. A lot of times they will put the feedbag on and really get after it. So it's great days and opportunities where you might have that 50-fish day in the boat and really get a lot of practice using those different techniques.
So hope that works for you and good luck out there this fall, guys.
