We are officially entering the golden hour of bass fishing.
As the jet skiers and pleasure boaters slowly begin to pack it up for the season, and the air has a bit of a crispy chill to it, especially in the morning, largemouth bass are getting ready to turn into absolute gluttons, gorging themselves on baitfish to pack on weight before the winter freeze.
But here’s the problem… every guy with a boat is going to be throwing some of the same patterns. I even blogged about my 5 favorite fall techniques recently. But the fish get smart to it if they see it often, and there’s a handful of sneaky, perhaps underrated, largemouth lures that will get you bites, and aren’t the standard Chatterbait, crankbait, jerkbait trifecta you typically see during the fall months.
So if you want to pull a monster out of the cooling waters, and the regular arsenal isn’t working, you need to show them something the rest of the weekend warriors aren’t. It’s time to dig a little deeper into the tackle box.
Here are five highly underrated fall transition baits you need to have tied on right now:
The Glide Bait
Shad, shiners and most of the other baitfish species spawn in the spring, so by fall you a ton of bite-sized minnows in the water. Most bass anglers tend to throw tiny profiles in the fall and are absolutely terrified to tie on a massive glide bait. Let them be scared. When water temps drop, giant bass want one massive meal so they don’t have to expend energy chasing around tiny baitfish. A slow-crawled glide bait can draw out the absolute biggest swamp donkeys in the lake, and it’ll probably be a different look than what they’re mostly getting.
Colors: Burnt Bone, MF Blue Gill, Shad
Colors: Gizzard, Bluegill, Ghost Bone
Colors: Bad Bone, Bad Shad, Heavy Metal
The Weightless Fluke
When you see bass busting schools of tiny shad on the surface but they refuse to touch your expensive topwater plugs, throw a fluke. Twitch it erratically just under the surface and it’ll perfectly mimics a dying baitfish falling out of the school and getting picked off. It’s basically an idiot-proof technique that is guaranteed to catch them.
Colors: Olive Shad, Pearl, Electric Shad
Colors: KVD Magic, Pearl White
The Swim Jig
Everybody thinks swim jigs are only for the spring spawn or summer lily pads. Wrong. A white swim jig paired with a paddletail trailer is an absolute weapon in the fall. As those deep summer weedlines start to die off and thin out (especially up here in the Midwest), swimming this jig right through the remaining stalks is a great way to catch them. I particularly like it in the inside weedlines, but when they move up shallow, don’t sleep on a swim jig. Especially when a Chatterbait isn’t getting bit.
Colors: Bruiser, Guilty Pleasure, Goldilocks
Colors: Black and Blue, Candy Gill, Bad Shad
The Underspin
When a nasty fall cold front rolls through and the fish get lockjaw, you need finesse with just a little bit of flash. An underspin paired with a small swimbait gives you the drawing power of a spinnerbait blade, but with a highly realistic, subtle profile that suspended fish simply can’t resist.
I really like the Great Lakes Finesse Sneaky Underspin, which was primarily designed for smallmouth, but will catch largies too. If you have larger bass, AKA you live in the south, try that Gamakatsu Underspin.
Colors: Electric Shad, Shad, Pro Blue Red Pearl
Size: 3/16, 1/4 oz
Size: 3/16
Colors: Green Pumpkin Shad, Pro Blue Pearl Red, Ayu
The Lipless Crankbait
Ask any angler when to throw a trap, and they’ll tell you “early spring,” or maybe even late winter. And they’re not wrong, but that might mean they are missing out on an insane autumn bite. Ripping a silver or shad-patterned lipless crankbait over flats and through the tops of dying grass triggers some of the most violent, aggressive reaction strikes of the entire year. And once again, if they aren’t hitting the Chatterbait, give them a different look with a trap.
Berkley Jack 6 – 1/2 oz – $14.99
Colors: Special Red Craw, Firetail Green Craw, Mossy Ghost
