Fishing and Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a special time of year. It is the time we should all stop and think of all the things we have in our lives that make us happy. We really should do that all the time, but this week is a good time to focus on how good we have it.

Most of my thankful things involve the outdoors. Very little makes me as happy as spending time fishing or hunting. That has been true all my life and almost all my Thanksgiving memories have something to do with spending time outdoors. So hunting, fishing and Thanksgiving go together in my life.

Almost every Thanksgiving while I was growing up meant big meals with family and friends. My mother’s brothers were older than her and all but one lived near us, and they all had big families. We would always eat with at least one of my uncle’s families and all the cousins on Thanksgiving Day.

Most of those days also involved a quail hunting trip after lunch. Several of the uncles had land and most of them had bird dogs, as we did, so hunting quail was a tradition. Back then there were a lot more quail since farming was still more compatible with quail habitat.

My career in education always meant a four day weekend for Thanksgiving. Since I got my first bass boat my second year out of college, almost all my Thanksgivings after I moved to Griffin involved going to my place at Raysville Boat Club on Clarks Hill for the long weekend.

Most years I would go over after work on Wednesday, fish Thursday morning then go to my parent’s house in town for the afternoon for the meal. Then I would head back to the lake for fishing the next three days.

One year my mom decided to have the big Thanksgiving meal at the lake. I know she did it that way so I could fish longer. That morning as I got ready to go out at daylight she reminded me to be in for dinner. My brother and his family and a couple of uncles and their families were coming there for the meal. I assured her I would come in early enough to get cleaned up before eating.

I will never forget that day since I landed a big bass, weighed it at seven pounds one ounce, put it back in the water and looked at my watch. It was 12:02 pm and I was thankful my mother had planned dinner at the lake. Most years I would have had to head in before the time I caught the fish.

That was the only time my mother ever got mad at me for fishing, and one of the very few times Linda has. When I went in at 3:00 pm to get cleaned up for dinner I found out she meant dinner at noon, not at dark. We always called the noon meal dinner while I was growing up but after going to college I got used to calling the noon meal lunch and the night meal dinner.

By the time I came in all my family had gone home. The only thing colder than the stares of my wife and my mother that day was the cold turkey sandwich I got for my Thanksgiving “dinner.” But I did catch a seven pound bass that day!

There were many Thanksgiving weekends that it was just me and my dog Merlin in the boat all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I would often stay later than I should on Sunday and get back to Griffin well after dark and have to unload and get some sleep before going to school Monday morning. But there were a lot of great memories.

Back then it seemed much easier to catch bass. I would often leave my boat under the boat sheds at the lake, get up at daylight and start fishing. I didn’t need to run anywhere, just put the trolling motor in the water and start casting a crankbait to the points and banks around the boat club.

There was no reason to leave Germany Creek. I got to know every stump, rock, clay bank and point that way. There was one small cove with an old sunken wooden boat back in it. I could count on catching a bass beside it every time I fished it with a crankbait. Learning little keys like that has always been important to me.

I also learned to fish a jig and pig one Thanksgiving at Clarks Hill. On Thursday morning I had caught a lot of fish on a crankbait but kept thinking about a bait I had never caught a fish on, the jig and pig.

Friday morning I tied one on and vowed to fish nothing but it all day. At 2:00 pm I was disgusted, I had not had a bite on it. The day before I had landed about 15 bass up to two pounds in four hours of fishing.

At 2:00 I was going down a bank where I had put out a brush pile. I cast the jig and pig to the right side of it and caught a three pound bass. Then I cast to the left side and caught a 3.5 pound bass. That gave me enough confidence to go to a deeper brush pile, where I caught a 6.5 pound bass. Every since that day back in the late 1970s I keep a jig and pig tied on and fish them a lot!

Spend your Thanksgiving wisely – and be thankful you have the freedom to make the choices you make for the day.

What Fish Are Targeted for Telemetry Tagging on Lake Pontchartrain?

Telemetry Tagging on Lake Pontchartrain
from The Fishing Wire

Tagging a fish

As part of an ongoing study of speckled trout, red drum and bull sharks in Lake Pontchartrain, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries will again host its annual fall acoustic telemetry tagging event during the week of November 16.

In the fall of 2012, the department launched the project to collect continuous data on individual movements of these species over time. The data collected provides insight to seasonal migration patterns, habitat use and how movements may vary between sexes.

Tagging events are held twice a year, in the fall and spring. The department depends on volunteer anglers to capture fish and carefully transport them to a nearby LDWF surgery boat. There, the fish are weighed, measured, tagged with an external dart tag and surgically implanted with an acoustic tag. Tagged fish are held in a recovery tank for a minimum of thirty minutes to ensure a healthy release.

Acoustic tags are much more effective for tracking fish movement than traditional tagging techniques. Conventional tagging involves marking and releasing a fish that will hopefully be recaptured at a future date, yielding very few data points. Acoustic tagging allows scientists to repeatedly locate and track tagged fish in remote or inaccessible settings, thus providing a more detailed look at patterns, usage and behavior.

Since the program’s inception, biologists have tagged 218 speckled trout, 56 red drum and 18 bull sharks. With four years of data already in hand, the agency has arrived at some interesting conclusions.

Tagged fish is released

Speckled trout movements are most strongly influenced by salinity. The salinity in Lake Pontchartrain is low during the spring, and tagged trout can be observed leaving the lake from March through May. The salinity in the lake begins to rise in the fall, and trout begin returning in November. “Many Lake Pontchartrain anglers reference ‘World Series trout’ because they begin to catch them around the time of the World Series baseball tournament, which occurs in late October to early November,” explained LDWF biologist Ashley Ferguson. “The fall migration observed with the tagged trout correlates very closely with angler observations, lending legitimacy to the fable.”

Biologists have also used acoustic tagging technology to determine that bull sharks in the lake are mostly influenced by temperature and can be observed leaving the lake in cold winter months.

“Red drum have only been tagged for one year of the program. They can be observed using all habitats in the lake but spend a majority of their time along natural shorelines,” explained Ferguson. “We will be tagging additional red drum during this upcoming event to determine how their future behavior compares.”

Movement trends of all acoustically tagged fish can easily be observed using our online Fish Tracker.

Anglers are encouraged to report all tagged fish recaptures. These tagged fish are very valuable to this research project, and we ask that if caught, they be released so that data can continue to be collected. Tagged fish that are part of this program can be recognized by a blue external dart tag. Please call the number provided on the blue tag, and report the date, time, location of catch and health of the fish when released.

Anglers interested in volunteering for the fall tagging event can email aferguson@wlf.la.gov for additional information.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is charged with managing and protecting Louisiana’s abundant natural resources. For more information, visit us at www.wlf.la.gov or www.FishLA.org.

What Are Magical Places Outdoors?

Some of my Magical Places Outdoors

Way back when I was in the second grade I read the book “Two Boys and A Tree.” The book is about two boys growing up in a northern state. An apple tree is on a nearby hillside, and it is a magical place for them.

The story follows them season by season as they grow up and the tree matures, with many adventures around the tree. At the end of the book they come back and bring their children to share the magic of the tree even though, as adults, the magic is mostly gone for them.

That loss of enchantment and innocence was sad to me back then and even more so now that I am much older. It is a shame we can’t retain more of the excitement of youth as we grow old.
Over my years growing up I found some of those enchanted places. Not long after reading that book I ventured out from our farm to explore nearby wood. I grew up on a 15 acre farm where we had chickens, cows, hogs and a couple of ponies. Most of the farm was a big field with Dearing Branch running along one side of it back in a small strip of woods. I had gone over every inch of it before I was ten years old.

One day in the late summer I crossed the fence at the back of our field and went into the woods on a neighbor’s property. Back then kids were welcome to play and explore pretty much anywhere since everyone in the area knew us and our parents, and knew we would do no damage.

The woods behind the fence, unexplored territory for me, sloped gently down to the branch then rose steeply on the other side. On the steep hillside were some fairly big rocks and one huge white oak tree. It was so big it shaded other plants out near it so it was clear for fairly big area.

There was something magical about being under that tree. I could sit on a rock and listen to the quiet. The only sounds were the gurgling of the branch or wind in the tree limbs. I spent many hours just sitting there, enjoying the feeling of freedom and being alone at that age.

Friends did go with me at times. We hunted squirrels around the tree in the fall, “skated” and fell through thin sheets of ice on the branch in the winter, and built huts under the tree in the spring and summer.

To get across the branch and to have fun we cut a big vine on an overhanging tree and could swing across it like Tarzan. That vine lasted several years until it got weak and one of us broke it trying to swing across.

We read about log cabins so three of us boys decided to build one. We had no idea about notching logs to stack them for walls, and our little hatchets would not cut down big trees anyway. So we found four small sweetgum trees in something of a square about ten feet on a side at the edge of the clearing under the big oak and cleaned up around it.

With our hatchets we cut dozens of sweetgum saplings about two inches thick. From the farm I got a bucket of old bent nails. We never threw anything away on the farm and I got good at straightening out nails with my hatchet and a flat rock.

We started nailing the saplings to the standing trees and got about two feet high all the way around before thinking about door. We managed to adapt and leave a gap for a door and finished the walls, then laid more saplings, these with limbs and leaved attached, across the top.

We had read in school about thatched roofs and thought that is how it was done. The first rain proved it took more than just laying limbs with leaves on top. We never did get a roof that would keep the interior of our log cabin dry.

The last time I saw that tree was when I was about 21 years old. The land owner had built a house back there, put a pond dam on the branch, and cleared out all the trees but that one big oak. It was still majestic standing on the hillside beside the pond, but the magic for me was gone.

I wish all kids could have the experience of exploring unknown woods and finding magical places. Unfortunately, the world has changed. In many places it is dangerous for kids to go far from home by themselves, and lawsuits have made land owners afraid to let kids play on their property in way too many cases.

If you can, help a kid find a magical place and let them learn about it all on their own.

Thunder and Lightning

I admit it. I am scared to death of lightning.

I have fished when the air temperature was 15 degrees and I had to dip my rod in the water every cast to melt the ice in the guides. I have fished when the wind was so strong the front of my boat dipped under about every third wave and my trolling motor would not hold my boat in place. I have fished at night when it was so dark I could not see the rod in my hands.
But if I hear thunder fairly close by, I am off the water!

It all goes back to a night when I was about eight years old. The old wooden house I lived in had a huge screened in porch with a concrete floor, and two of my friends and I were “camping out” on it in our sleeping bags.

About midnight there was a ferocious thunderstorm. Lightning flashed every few seconds and thunder made the house shake. I was terrified for what seemed like hours, just knowing I would die. It is an irrational fear, but still it overwhelms me almost sixty years later.

Over those years I have had many bad experiences with thunderstorms while fishing. In the mid-1970s Bob Pierce and I were fishing at Bartletts Ferry during the summer. We had run way up the Chattahoochee River, picking our way around unmarked mud flats and stumps to get there after lunch.

It was cloudy but not raining. Suddenly, about 5:00 there was a crack of lightning and an immediate boom of thunder very close to us. The wind started howling and the rain pouring down.
We could not run the 30 minutes back down the river to the boat ramp so we pulled into a small creek, just a few feet wider than the boat. I hoped the overhanging trees would give us some protection from the wind and, in theory, lightning would hit one of the higher trees up on the bank and not get to us.

Even back in there the wind made me stay on the trolling motor to keep us under the protecting trees. After a few minutes I realized the boat was no longer moving with the wind. It had rained so hard water in the boat had pushed the boat down enough the motor was on the bottom.

We stayed there for about three hours before the storm stopped. We had to raise the motor and push with paddles to get the boat off the bottom and pull the plug as we tried to get on plane to drain the water. We barely made it back to the ramp before dark. After that I put a bilge pump in the boat!

Another late afternoon summer trip was to Jackson to practice for a weekend night tournament. My dog Merlin was with me and it was one of those cloudy, hot, sticky days of August. But there was no wind or rain, and no thunder.

Just as it got dark I was fishing right at the dam. Back then there was no drum line to keep boats away from it and it was a good place to fish. Suddenly wind started howling over the dam, rain fell in proverbial sheets, and lightning flashed and thunder boomed.

I was scared to try to run back to Kerseys Boat ramp so I eased over right beside the dam and tied the boat to it. I hoped the concrete dam extending up 20 feet and the metal rails on top would protect me. I sat down in the driver’s seat to get as low as possible and Merlin crawled under the console.

Even with my eyes tightly closed and my face resting on my arm on the steering wheel I could still see the bright flashes. And the thunder was immediate, with no time between the flash and the boom.

I sat there for two hours until the storm passed enough to me to run back to the ramp, load the boat and go home. No more practice that night.

Most folks are not worried about getting struck by lightning in a boat. I saw that at a Top Six tournament at Lanier in the early 1990s. I was boat 23 in the first flight of 92 boats. We were all sitting in a big group out from the ramp waiting to take off.

Without warning there was a flash – crack – boom with no time between them. I hate that, it means the lightning is very close. I looked around and the folks in the other 91 boats just sat there.

I couldn’t stand it so I cranked up, idled to a nearby dock and got under it. I told my partner if he insisted I would get out under the dock and he could take the boat out in the storm. He declined and waited with me.

None of the other boats moved until the tournament director let them go. They all took off. About 30 minutes later, after the storm passed, I took off too, a little late but much safer.
If you are brave enough, or dumb enough, fish in the lightning. I will be somewhere protected, waiting out the storm.

What Does Find the Bait, Find the Bass Mean?

Find the Bait, Find the Bass!

By Livingston Lures Pro Joe Budzinski
from The Fishing Wire

“Lake Conroe on Fire right now, Break out your Deep Cranks”

Big Lake Conroe bass

It is the time of year where a sportsman has to decide to grab a rifle or a fishing rod. Chuck and I chose wisely. We grabbed our Power Tackle Cranking rods paired with our Ardent reels, and went to work.

Lake Conroe, Texas, is on fire right now. The big fish have begun to move up to feed for the upcoming winter months. We drove several areas until we found bait balls being FEASTED upon by feeding bass.

Bass feeding on baitfish

Bait balls are easily found this time of year, but you will need to find the ones being pummeled by bass on your graph. You can see this on your graph or side imaging by the bait balls sporadically broken up through the water column. Massive, uniform schools of bait tend to be the ones that are not bothered by predators.

Bass eats a crankbait

Chuck and I discovered an area of approximately 50 yards of sporadic chunk rock bottom in 14-16 ft of water where the majority of feeding was found. The Livingston Deep Impact 18 with EBS MultiTouch was our weapon of choice. The bass this time of year have shad on the brain, so ensure you set your MultiTouch setting to the third biological Baitfish sound – Fleeting Shad. This was key. Our retrieve was a stop and go retrieve after our Livingston Lures began digging the bottom and/or bouncing off the chunk rock. This retrieve coupled by the EBS Sound on the pause was a great one-two punch.

Do not be afraid to bounce these Deep Impact’s off the bottom to generate strikes. Often I call this technique “planting corn”, meaning the bill of the lure digs into the bottom enough to create a corn row, worthy enough to begin to seed. Your color of choice depends upon water conditions, and lake forage. Get yourself a variety or colors and hang on. This is the time of year you can get your arm broke by a Green Monster!

Fish on!

— Joe Budzinski, Army Bass Angler

Conditions Recap:
Time: 2:30 pm to dusk
Skies: Sunny
Surface temp: 73
Water: Clear
Wind: 1-5 NE
Hooks Rating: 4 of 5

Jordan McDonald and Douglas Outdoors

Jordan McDonald called me Tuesday to tell me he was leaving for New York. After doing well on tournament trails this year, he is starting a full time job with Douglas Outdoors. That is a dream come true for him. He will be working with a great outdoor company and spending his time hunting, fishing and talking to fellow hunters and fishermen.

Jordan will be a great representative for Douglas Outdoors. I have known him for ten years. He joined the Flint River Bass Club ten years ago and has fished with me in club tournaments over most of the years since then. I have watched him mature, learn about bass fishing and increase his skill levels.

Many young people have the dream of fishing professionally but very few make it. Just like many youth dream of playing football or soccer professionally, very few are able to make it. Jordan has done what it took to reach the level he is at currently and is in a good position to go on even further. I think Jordan McDonald and Douglas Outdoors is a good fit.

I wish him well.

Why Does Burning’ Spinnerbaits Bring Reaction Strikes from Fall Bass?

Burning’ Spinnerbaits Bring Reaction Strikes from Fall Bass

Yamaha Pro Matt Herren Uses a Fast Retrieve to Trigger Bass Into Biting
from The Fishing Wire

November ranks as one of Matt Herren’s favorite months of the year, but not because he enjoys deer hunting and most whitetail seasons open this month. Rather, the Yamaha Pro knows November means it’s time to burn his spinnerbaits for autumn bass.

“Burning,” in this case, means reeling the blade baits as fast as he can turn his reel handle, keeping the lures just two to three inches below the surface. It’s a technique the Alabama-based angler has used successfully on lakes around the country for more than two decades, but one many of today’s fishermen frequently overlook.

“Burning a spinnerbait is purely about getting reaction strikes,” notes Herren, who will be competing in his sixth Bassmaster Classic® next March. “Throughout the autumn months, when water temperatures are still generally in the 60’s or high 50-degree range, bass are gorging themselves on baitfish, and a spinnerbait probably imitates a shad or herring as well as any lure made.

“There is a lot of feeding competition among the bass, and they go after a fast-moving spinnerbait without hesitation, just trying to get it before another bass does. It works in stained to clear water, and typically throughout the day, too.”

Spinnerbait for burning in the fall

The Yamaha Pro chooses spinnerbaits featuring what is known as thin wire construction. A thinner wire increases the lure’s overall vibration and also makes it easier to retrieve. Herren’s color choices are simple, too; any color is fine as long as it matches a shad, such as white or white/chartreuse. For maximum vibration, he uses double willow leaf blades, and his weight choices range from ¼ to ¾-ounce.

“When I fish spinnerbaits this time of year, I usually have three different models tied on and ready to use, depending on how the fish act, and on the size of the baitfish,” Herren explains. “One will be a very compact spinnerbait between 3/8- and ½-ounce, but which looks small, in case the bass are feeding on smaller threadfin shad. I’ll also have two other spinnerbaits weighing ½-ounce and ¾-ounce, but with different blade colors, such as gold or even copper.

“White or nickel blades will usually produce on most lakes, but just in case the bass are finicky, I can offer them something different.”

Using a fast 7:1 reel and 15-pound fluorocarbon line, Herren concentrates in larger tributaries and upper-lake arms where baitfish migrations are often the strongest, targeting steep bluffs, rocky banks, submerged vegetation, standing timber, and even channel breaks. Depth is not that critical, because he’s caught bass suspended in water as deep as 50 feet.

Matt Herren with fall bass

“I really think one key to burning a spinnerbait over deeper water is slowing my fast retrieve just for a second to make the blades change their speed,” he continues. “This can be as simple as stopping my retrieve, shaking my rod tip, or slowing down so the spinnerbait sinks a few inches. It’s just for a split second to change the blade cadence. Then I start reeling fast again.

“Changing your retrieve like this is a pretty standard way to fish a spinnerbait anytime of year, but it’s important to remember to do it even when you’re reeling as fast as you can because it’s a major part of getting bass to react. In the fall, you’ll frequently have a bass following your spinnerbait, even though it’s moving fast, and just a simple change of cadence can be enough to bring a strike.”

In recent years as the spinnerbait’s popularity has lessened and other lures have taken its place, the technique of burning has practically become a lost art, concludes Herren. Nonetheless, it’s a technique the Yamaha Pro will continue to use wherever he fishes this time of year because he knows how effective it still is.

Winning A Club Tournament At Lake Lanier

Last Sunday nine members of the Flint River Bass Club fished our November tournament at Lake Lanier. I think the rain scared off many of the members but it was weird. It was raining hard at my house at 3:30 AM when I was hooking up the boat and I had my windshield wipers on high all the way to I-85. Then it quit raining.

Everything was wet and misty, but during the tournament I never put my hood up on my rainsuit. Then on the way home I had to turn on my windshield wipers on high about the time I got off I-285 and on I-675 headed back. I am glad it held off while we fished.

In the tournament the nine of us cast for eight hours to land 12 keeper 14-inch bass weighing about 28 pounds. There was one five-fish limit and three fishermen didn’t have a keeper. There was only one largemouth – the other 11 were spots.

We did catch some good spots. Five of them weighed over three pounds each, and the biggest one weighed 4.79 pounds. That is a big spot. Spots fight harder than largemouth and are fun to catch.

I managed to land a limit and won with 8.87 pounds, Sam Smith had three weighing 5.56 pounds for second, Chuck Croft had big fish and third place with his 4.79 pounder and Don Gober was fourth with one at 3.77 pounds.

I started fishing a spinnerbait on a rocky point at 6:30 and landed my biggest keeper, a spot just over three pounds, on my second cast. At 8:00 I landed my second biggest fish on a jig head worm on another rocky point, then got my third keeper on the next rocky point I fished with the jig head worm at 8:30.

Catching three keepers in the first two hours made me feel pretty good, but I did not hook another fish until 2:00 when a keeper largemouth hit my jig head worm back in a pocket around some brush. With 15 minutes left to fish I ran to a rocky point near the ramp and, when I looked at my watch and saw it was 2:25 and I had to be at the ramp before 2:30, said to the fish and myself, ‘Ok, this is my last cast.”

As the jig head worm sank I saw my line jump and set the hook on a 14 inch spot, filling my limit. That is why I never give up and never go in early. You just don’t know which cast will result in a fish.

Fishing was tough for us at Lanier but folks that fish it a lot and know it are doing well. On Saturday it took five spots weighing over 17 pounds to win a tournament there and many teams in that tournament had five fish weighing over 12 pounds. And fishing there and on other area lakes will get better and better until Christmas if the weather this year is like it usually is here.

Atlanta Boat Show Fishing Schedule

2016 Atlanta Boat Show Fishing Seminar Schedule

You can learn a lot about fishing at the Atlanta Boat Show. Look over the schedule below to see what you would like to attend. You can also check out new bass boats and dream of owning one, or buy one. I bought my first bass boat at the Atlanta Boat Show in 1974! I found exactly what I wanted and got a good deal on it. To show how thing have changed in the past 40 years, my first bot was a 16 foot Arrowglass with a 70 HP Evinrude, Motor Guide trolling motor, Lowrance depth finder and trailer. It was one of the nicest and highest power motors available at the time. I paid less for it than I paid two years ago for a Lowrance HDS system with an HD10 on the console, an HD8 up front, down scan and installation!

The Atlanta Boat Show is January 14 through 17, 2016 at the Georgia World Congress Center. Southern Fishing Schools will be there.

Thursday – January 14, 2015

2:00 pm Trophy Bass Tactics, Hawg Trough Fishing team

3:00 pm Crappie Year Round, Al Bassett

4:00 pm Bass Tactics, Rick Burns

5:00 pm Stripers! Captain Ken West

6:00 pm Lowrance HDS Technology, Ken Sturdivant

7:00 pm Fly Fishing, Rene Hess CCI

8:00 pm Lake Lanier Bass, Ken Sturdivant

Friday, January 15, 2016

1:00 pm Crank Baits for Bass, Ken Sturdivant

2:00 pm Trophy Bass Tactics, Hawg Trough Fishing Team

3:00 pm Crappie Year Round, Al Bassett

4:00 pm Fly Fishing, Rene Hess

5:00 pm Lake Lanier Secrets, Ken Sturdivant

6:00 pm Stripers! Captain Ken West

7:00 pm Lowrance HDS Technology, Ken Sturdivant

8:00 pm Lake Oconee, Captain Mark Smith

Saturday, January 16, 2016

11:00 am Crappie Year Round, Mark Smith

Noon Fly Fishing, Rene Hess

1:00 pm Trout on the Chattahoochee River, Chris Scalley

2:00 pm Bass fishing Lake Lanier, Jimbo Mathley

3:00 pm Stripers! Captain Ken West

4:00 pm Lake Allatoona Bass, Matt Driver

5:00 pm Lowrance HDS Technology, Ken Sturdivant

6:00 pm Bass tactics, Rick Burns

7:00 pm Lake Oconee, Captain Mark Smith

8:00 pm Trophy Bass Tactics, Hawg Trough Fishing Team

Sunday, January 17, 2016

11 am Trophy Bass Tactics, Hawg Trough Fishing Team

Noon Lake Allatoona Bass, Matt Driver

1:00 pm Trout on the Chattahoochee River, Chris Scalley

2:00 pm Lowrance HDS Technology, Ken Sturdivant

3:00 pm Stripers! Captain Ken West

4:00 pm Lake Oconee Crappie, Al Basset

Want specific holes to fish each month of the year on Lake Lanier? Check out Keys To Catching Lake Lanier Bass in eBook format, with ten spots for each month of the year, with GPS coordinates, how to fish each and lures to use. The eBook is $4.99. Now available on CD ($6.00) or Email ($4.00) – contact me at ronnie@fishing-about.com I may have some copies printed but the price would be about $10.00. If you want a printed copy please email me at ronnie@fishing-about.com to reserve a copy if I do have them printed.

Targeting Bass During the Fall Turnover

Randy Howell Offers Tips on Targeting Bass During the Fall Turnover
from The Fishing Wire

Randy Howell catching fall bass

Photo Credits: BASS/Wired2Fish

When the thermocline starts to break up and the cold water from the depths begin to mix with the warmer surface water it is called the turnover. The fish scatter and can be hard to locate. Many of the big fish will go very shallow and hold onto any piece of cover or structure they can find. Which is exactly why I like to fish super shallow and focus on targets.

I like to find shallow flats near deeper areas, especially areas where grass is or was present. I look for any sort of structure like logs, grass patches, and even a single stick up can be enough to hold a fish. I will move quickly from target to target and hit as many key spots as possible.

Missing the target by even a foot or two is enough to keep the fish from biting, that’s why it’s important to make multiple cast and intentionally bump the target with your bait. Casting accuracy is extremely important when fishing this way, which is why a finely tuned 7.3 Daiwa Tatula or Zillion reel with the T-Wing casting system is crucial. I like to use a Steez 7’2″ med/hvy rod for casting accuracy and control. I spool up with 16 lb.Gamma fluorocarbon line to haul em out of cover.

My three favorite baits for this time of year are; a 3/8 oz. double willow blade Hawg Caller spinnerbait, a Livingston Lures Walk-n-Pop 77 top water popping bait, and a 1/2 ounce Lunker Lure Flat Shad buzzbait. For sub-surface fishing I will use the Livingston Lures Howeller squarebill crankbait.

Photo Credits: BASS/Wired2Fish

Randy Howell Lands A Bass

When I pull into an area and locate a target I drop my Power-Poles and make several accurate casts at each target. If I am trying to cover a lot of water quickly I will utilize the buzzbait and the Howeller squarebill. If I want to slow down and really pick the area apart I will go with the Walk-n-Pop and the spinnerbait.

The one advantage to the squarebill is that I can bounce it off of the targets and generate a reaction strike. For the spinnerbait I can slow it down quite a bit and really keep it in the strike zone longer than the other baits.

As your water begins to turnover, and fishing gets slow, I suggest going shallower than ever before. Make an effort to slow down, make precise casts with a variety of baits, and you can make one on the toughest seasonal changes, very productive.
Until next time, Good luck and God bless!!

–Randy Howell

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