Master Fall Bass Fishing with Soft Swimbaits (Expert Tips!)

Fall Bass Fishing Videos
Russell Lane shares his go-to strategies for using soft swimbaits in the fall. Find the baitfish, target aggressive bass, and land more catches this season! You’ll learn how to locate baitfish and key fishing spots in the fall, early morning tactics using soft swimbaits, and effective use of Livescope for pelagic fish. Watch now and boost your fall fishing game!

Baits and Gear

Big Bite Baits B6 Line Thru Swimbait -- https://bit.ly/3AXxPgr

Big Bite Baits Suicide Shad - https://bit.ly/3xX8zT7  

Sunline Sniper Fluorocarbon - https://bit.ly/3hn3tHt

Phenix Feather Casting Rods -- https://bit.ly/3E5gVuB

Transcript

What's up, y'all? Russell Lane here, BassResource. We're out here on Lake Hartwell, talking swim baits today. Topic of this video is Fishing Soft Swimbaits in the Fall. Now, the fall is one of my favorite times to fish. Everybody knows I'm a big hunter. I love to get out and hunt, but there's something about fishing in the fall that I've always just been attracted to. Fish have the feed bag on, you know, they're eating, they're getting ready for the winter. They're aggressive, and, you know, it's just a fun time to fish. They really key in on bait in the fall.

Like, these lakes, you know, they're dominated by shad or herring. Like, you gotta find the bait. You got to find the bait before you find the fish. If you just go fishing and you're not seeing any bait, then you're not there yet. You got to go find the bait. The way I do that is I idle around, you know, with my garments, and you'll start seeing the bait clouds on your screen, and that's, generally, that's when you need to stop and check it out.

So two things that I'll do. Early in the morning, these areas with these big like flat pockets, flat points in the mouth of these flat pockets, generally, in the back two-thirds of a big creek, like a big main, you know, main creek where the water tends to start to get a little bit dingier than the main lake, those shad in the fall, they'll migrate back to those areas. Not sure exactly why they do that, but they've done it for years. They've always done it, and, you know, it's a common known fact that they just do that. Well, I like to target those flat points in the backs of those creeks early in the morning because I think that that the bass feed back there at night up shallow on those points.

Like, say we got this...this is a rocky point right here. Say out here 7, 8 foot. I guarantee you last night if this was the fall, there was some fish that would pull up here. You could catch them slow rolling, you know, a big old nighttime spinner bait because that's a big deal in the fall. Well, early in the morning, they're still there. They're still there for a while. If it's a calm, still, clear morning it may not last long, but if it's a drizzly, windy, cloudy day, like it is today, heck, it may last a few hours. It may last all day. But it's a good place to start in the fall is looking for those flat points with a little bit of rock or something that you could picture them feeding on at night.

And I like to use this Big Bite B6. It's a 6-inch swimbait. This bait has a tight action. You can throw it a long way, and it swims really high in the water column. You can actually wake this bait, and it makes like a little small tight V in the water on the surface. So if you've got a clear morning, that's a great way to get those fall fish to come up because they're real aggressive. You got to think, they're feeding, so they're real aggressive to come up and get it off of the surface. You got a little bit of ripple on the water, you know, just let it get down a few inches below the surface, and they'll key on it.

They really like big gizzard shad in the fall too, and that's what I think this thing resembles the most to them. Actually this is a blue gizzard shad color which is about my favorite color in that bait. I'll rig it up on 16 or 18-pound Sunline Sniper, 7-foot-3 Phenix extra heavy rod, 7 to 1 reel, make long casts, hold my rod tip up to keep it up high in the water column, and just trying to picture early in the morning where those fish might have been feeding during the night and catching the tail end of that. And that's a great way to catch a big one early in the morning with this Big Bite B6 Swimbait.

All right, on those days where...people know fishing can be tough in the fall at times, especially on those calm clear days where maybe it's still warm but it's just still, everything feels dead. Well, fish are more pelagic in the fall, and we know that now more than ever, you know, with the invention of Livescope. We can actually get out here in the mouths of these pockets and out on the main lake and we can chase that bait around and see those fish swimming around with them. One thing that I really learned last fall chasing those pelagic fish in the fall was the bait, you'll see the bait, and the bait will be at...they'll top out like at a specific depth. I don't know if it's a thermocline thing or what.

But all the bait in an area, say a stretch of the lake, maybe the pattern is all the bait is in the mouths of these pockets on the main lake. And they'll be, say, 20 foot from the surface down to whatever, 35 foot. And you'll see it on your graph, it'll be like a layer of bait. And then you will see sometimes individual fish swimming on top of the bait, and that's 9 times out of 10, that's trash fish. You see them on your Livescope. It's like a catfish or gar or whatever or drum. And I've caught drum and catfish so I know that's what it is.

The key is looking for those wolf packs. You'll see seven or eight swimming together, and that's what you're looking for. That's usually spotted bass, smallmouth, or largemouths. So when people say, you know, "I don't know what I'm looking at on Livescope," that's a good rule of thumb to start off with. It's keying in on those wolf packs that you see and not those individuals.

Best bait, to me, to throw to them in the fall is a little bitty swimbait. This is a little 3-inch Big Bite Suicide Shad. I rig it up on a 3/8-ounce head. This one is from Do-it Molds that I pour. You want it on a heavier head so you can get that bait down to them really, really quick. Get it in front of their face and snap it up and really trigger them to bite. This is in same color that blue gizzard shad. One of my confidence colors. This works in just about any water clarity. But, yeah, get out there, cover a lot of water, looking for those bait balls, and remember to find the bait first, then try to key in on the fish.

Don't waste time throwing at those individual fish too terribly much. Look for those wolf packs and throw at them. Work on your casting, and try to get a bait in front of them like this little suicide shad, and man, 9 times out of 10, if you sneak up on them and you can see them on Livescope and you make a good cast, they're going to bite. So those are the two things that I'll really like to do in the fall with soft swimbaits. And man, get out there, get on the water, try them out, and hopefully, you can catch a few more fish doing these things that I do.