Fall Bass Fishing with Wobble Head Jigs with Mike McClelland

Hey everyone. Mike McClelland, Tour Pro coming to you with BassResource today talking a little fall fishing. And the fall can be one of those times of years that a lot of things start to change. And one of the biggest things when you really start talking fall fishing, in my mind, that happens to, especially our reservoirs, is the thermocline easily breaks up. And a lot of people don't quite understand what happens when the thermocline breaks on these lakes in the fall. And typically, what happens is when that water temperature reaches its hottest point in the summer, some of the oxygen level in the real midsection of the water column becomes just kind of off. I mean, it doesn't have good oxygen. It doesn't have good quality. So fish are either forced to kind of go really, really shallow, or they really have to live right at that thermocline because below the thermocline, the water quality is just I mean trashed. But when that thermocline breaks, essentially what happens the lake will turn over, and the whole water column becomes the same from zero to as deep as the lake can be, so the thing about fall is fish can really scatter.

And when I'm trying to approach a fall time scenario, I mean, one of the biggest things that I wanna do is put myself in a position where I'm throwing a bait that I can cover a lot of water with and fish at a lot of different depths. When you start looking at just consistent ways that you can catch fish, a lot of things come to mind, Texas rig and Carolina rigging, but one thing that I'm really excited about and I mean it's not a brand new thing, but it's kind of new for myself and Gamakatsu is this new Gamakatsu Hybrid Swing Head. I worked directly with Gamakatsu on this and it comes in sizes from 3/8ths all the way up to 1 ounce. It is a bait that I can rig almost anything on it.

When you start talking about swing heads, I mean, some people might refer to them as wobble heads or hard heads. I mean, essentially, a swing head is a piece of lead that you tie or tungsten as these Hybrid Swing Heads are gonna be made out of tungsten, you tie directly to your line, and then it's got a hook attached to it that swings freely.

The beauty of this little Hybrid Swing Head is the fact that it's...actually you can change your hook, you can just roll whatever size hook you want on and off of that swing head with the use of that little pigtail.

So that's a big part of why this bait is so versatile because you can throw anything from a little bitty 3-inch bait all the way up to a great big creature style bait or a big worm or a number of different things. And that's the reason in my opinion a swing head is so versatile is you can throw any bait on it.

And I really believe that when you get to that fall time frame of the year, I mean so many of these lakes are getting so much pressure with everybody getting back in the outdoors that these fish have been really, really pressured. And I think in the fall there comes times when you really have to get a little more creative, you got to get a little bit more finesse and follow that shad migration.

I mean so often, the key to catching fish in the fall is gonna be following the shad migration. I mean you are wasting your time if you're not using your Garmin electronics or whatever type of electronics you use to get out there and do a lot of graphing and a lot of down scan and side view, looking on your full review sonar to try to find the areas that got a lot of bait in them. And if you find the bait, you're gonna find the bass. I know you've heard us say that for years and years, but if you really spend the time and idle different creeks and different river systems and things like that, you're gonna find there's going to be areas that there's just way more bait in and that's where the bass are gonna be.

But when I talk fall, I mean there's so many different baits that you can really rig on a swing head. I mean, one of my favorites is a shad-style bait. This is a Big Bite Finesse Swimmer. It comes in a 3.4 and a 4.4. And when those fish are feeding on the shad, I mean this is a bait that I can throw as shallow as 2 or 3 feet, or I can fish it out as deep as 50 or 60 feet, just by upsizing to the 3/4 or 1-ounce swing head.

And that's the beauty of swing heads, you've got an opportunity to fish them at any depth. Just this last fall on Table Rock Lake is a really good example. The thermocline had broke when I started practicing for the Toyota Series, and you get out in the lake and start idling around and, man, there was bait in 5-foot of water, there was bait in 30-foot of water, but there was a lot of bait down in like 42 to 55-foot of water. And when you start graphing around and you start seeing the numbers and the schools of fish that were around that deep, deep bait, I was forced to fish extremely deep and got it done with a 3/4 and 1/2-ounce swing head.

Again, when you start talking fall, I think a lot of times these fish key on smaller baits. This is one of my favorite baits to throw. It's a Big Bite Battle Bug. When you take it out of the package, I mean, that's what the bait's gonna look like. But a lot of times I feel like it is key to make it a little bit more finessey for fall. And essentially what I do to make this bait a little more finessey is I just clip the little antennas off, and you completely change the appearance and the size of the bait by doing that. It just takes some of the bulk away. So it's a great bait to throw with the antenna feelers on it early in the summer, but when you get into the fall, I like to finesse it up a little bit.

This allows me...that 1-ounce head allows me to fish that bait as deep as I want to. And a big thing is adjusting your line size accordingly. Generally, when I'm fishing deeper, I'm gonna downsize my line. So in the fall, a lot of times if I'm throwing a swing head, I'm gonna be throwing that on 10 to 14-pound test Sunline Shooter or Sniper.

And I always wanna keep that bait in contact with the bottom or in contact with the structure I'm fishing whether it be brush piles, tree tops, things of that nature because you're gonna catch fish on this bait not just on the bottom, but even up in the tops of brush piles or as you wind that bait up through treetops and things like that, I mean, fish are definitely apt to eat a swing head.

But the key, again, is to follow the shad migration, follow the bait, cover lots of water, and you're gonna be a lot more successful catching fish this fall.