By : Bob Jensen
When you go fishing, if you want to catch a fish, it’s really important that you put your bait where a fish lives. That might sound very basic, but the most basic concept of fishing is to fish where the fish are. You can have the nicest boat around, lots of expensive rods and reels and tackleboxes full of lures, but if you don’t put your lure near a fish, all that other stuff is going to do you no good.
Here are some ideas for finding different species of fish in the next few weeks. Let’s start with crappies. Crappies are abundant and popular almost everywhere. In the spring we catch them near cover like rushbeds and docks and timber in shallow water. In the fall, if you fish those areas you probably won’t be eating crappies for supper. They’re not in the shallows in large numbers now in most places.
In some lakes the crappies will be on or near the deep weedline. The clearer the water, the deeper they’ll be. Sometimes they’ll be twenty five yards off the edge of the deep weedline. On a calm evening you can see them creating dimples as they suck bugs off the surface of the water. Try a Mr. Crappie Grub or an XL Shadpole on a sixteenth ounce jig and you’ll probably catch crappies. If they’re being finicky, tie on a Shoo Shiner jig, tip it with a minnow, and work it under a slip-bobber rig. Even when the crappies are being fussy, the Shoo Shiner/minnow combination will get at least a few to bite.
Crappies will also be found on the bottom in the basin of some lakes. Cruise the basin in twenty to thirty feet of water with a close eye on our sonar. When you see a concentration of fish, work them with eighth or sixteenth ounce jigs and plastic. Try a variety of shapes and colors until the fish show you what they want.
Walleyes can be in a lot of places depending on the lake. Different lakes provide different hang-outs. In shallow lakes with stained water, you can find walleyes on windblown points in water two feet deep sometimes.
In deep, clear lakes they’ll be in twenty feet of water or more on deep structure. Or they might suspend away from structure near baitfish in some bodies of water. They’ll go on a night-bite in other lakes. Research the body of water that you’ll be fishing to determine where you should focus your efforts.
Largemouth bass will also be in a variety of areas, but as the weather gets colder, you’ll find fewer of them in the sloppy shallows that many inhabited during the summer. On a warm, overcast day in the fall you can find them cruising reed-beds near deeper water. Reeds in six to eight feet of water that are close to cabbage beds in deeper water can be very good. The bass hold in the deeper water during cold conditions, then move shallower when there’s a day or two of warmer weather. A Tour Grade Swim Jig tipped with a bulky piece of plastic, something like a Rage Craw, will get most largemouth bass to bite. Big bass like bulky baits in the fall.
Some lakes have a lot more options than others for fall fish. In some lakes there will be just a couple of types of areas that will hold fish. On other lakes you need to try different things to get bit. Keep that in mind and you’ll find yourself getting lots of bites.
