Fall Bass Fishing with Swim Jigs with Jeremy Lawyer

Hi, guys. I'm Jeremy Lawyer here with BassResource. I want to talk to you about fishing a jig in the fall. You know, the fall, to me, is when you start seeing some of the leaves come off the tree. You know, in the Midwest, that may be October or early September, but October especially into November. You know, so depending on what part of the country you're in, you know, it's going to be where that water temperature starts to dip down. You're putting your boat in and you're seeing the fog and the steam come off the water because you can tell temperatures are changing. It's going down. And you know, all summer long we've throwed a jig out on the bottom and done things like that trying to mimic perch and crawdad.

Well, in the fall, to me, is whenever you can pick up a swim jig, a shad imitator, and really cover a lot of water, and fish it no wrong way.

You know, the fish are really going to be kind of nomad. Some of them are wanting to come up shallow. Some of them are wanting to kind out stay out deep. Some of them will come up at night and be on the bank for a few hours. And then at other times they just absolutely get chasing shad, schooling action. And a swim jig is something that you can definitely attack all these type situations, you know, to your benefit.

Now, I prefer white, I prefer something in a half-ounce, and I prefer something with a trailer that's going to be a shad imitator. You can see here, a lot of your trailers are going to lay horizontality with the bait. I like to turn them vertically. I want that profile to look like a shad imitator. When that fish sees it from a distance and maybe comes off of a lay down and tries to eat it or out from a corner of a boat dock. When he sees it going, I want him to see the tail looking like a big gizzard shad or some sort of herring, whatever it might be for where you're at. But that's just a really great way to, I think, convince that fish that it's real, get him to commit that last few feet and not come out there nip at the bait.

Gee, I'm going to throw this on a 7'6" Denali Lithium rod. This is a swimbait model, but it's really nice. It's kind of a 70/30 rod as far as fast and stiffness. But it's a really nice rod that they've modeled for a swimbait, but it works great for a swim jig. It's a rod you can throw both fluorocarbon and braid on depending on your situation.

I probably throw this 90% of the time on fluorocarbon, FC Sniper from Sunline, 20-pound. It's kind of the middle of the road. I don't really like to go any lighter that. And I feel like if I go any heavier than that, it kind of drags in the water.

The only thing that offsets that a little bit is if I go with a heavier swim jig. If I jump up to a 5/8ths or something that I'm really wanting to move fast and burn down the corner of a boat dock or race through some schoolers, then I can go to a larger line.

And always take the advantage to go to larger line as long as your presentation allows you, because that puts every advantage to you over the fish not breaking off, not having to retie as much, and less stretch. So, if you make a longer cast with larger line, your hookup percentage is way better out there.

But I like to use a high-speed reel, something around an 8.3. And then this setup right here, I feel like if I go by a boat dock and want to flip it under a float, I can. If I want to make a long cast to schoolers, it's still a great rod. So, I mean, I don't have it to really mix it up and have many rods on the deck.

But what I'm going to do is I'm going to take and I'm going to wind this just around the lay downs, down rocky banks, places where maybe the shad are congregating in the fall in the backs of creeks, that last deep water. And then maybe when I do get a bite or two, I might slow down and flip something actually up there that works on the bottom. But this swim jig allows you to cover a lot of water and actually not waste time finding those fish. And then once you do find them, you might use a different technique. But it's also something that you can sat there and throw at schoolers that won't quite commit up on a topwater bait, say a spook or something that's on topwater. Some of those bigger fish always lay just underneath the school and let those little ones kind of do the work, hack some shad up and stuff, kind of let some injured shad flitter down through.

And I think a swim jig, when you can throw it past the school and come underneath the actual schooling action, that's where you stand to catch a bigger fish, maybe a tournament grade fish. You know, it's fun to throw out there with a topwater, and they're fun. You can throw this swim jig right in the middle of them schooling and still catch a lot of fish. But I think to target those bigger ones, a swim jig allows you to get down below the school under the action, and then you actually have a chance to maybe catch that larger fish that thinks he's being a little bit sneaky.

But there's no wrong way to do this as far as time of year or anything like that. It's a great follow up with a buzzbait, with something that they miss along the shoreline. And you can throw that swim jig back out there as a secondary cast. And a lot of times that fish won't commit to come up on that topwater again, but it will commit to eat this two foot underneath the water.

You know, and then a great way that we utilize it in the Ozarks is around boat docks. There's a million boat docks in the Ozarks. And as them shad migrate to the backs of the creeks, they'll kind of use the center of the creek, but then bass will use those boat docks in the center to get as far out close to those shad as they can for an ambush point, but not have to be out in the open water. And they use them for shade lines. It's a really great way to cover a bunch of water, head into a creek fast, throw it across the dock corners.

And one thing I like to do when I get to a dock corner is I like to kill it. You know, wind it up there really fast and just dump your rod towards it. You really don't want to shake your rod this way because if one runs out of there and eats it real quick, well, you're kind of behind the 8 ball. So, what I like to do is wind it really fast with my rod a little high and then dump my rod towards the boat dock. And that way if he does eat it, I'm ready for the hook set. It's a really great way to absolutely cover a creek quick, cover unfamiliar water, and just catch a lot of fish. It'll catch both little ones, big ones, all three species.

But a swim jig is something that's utilized all over the country, something we like to use in the Ozarks especially in the fall when it's keying on shad more than a crawdad base or anything like that. So, give some of that a try. Hopefully that'll help you out.

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