Glenn: There we go. Here we go. Here we go. Boy, he's cold. Water temps are in the lower 50s, man. Nice coloring on them though, boy.
Keri: Mm-hmm.
Glenn: Beautiful fish.
Keri: Mm-hmm.
Glenn: All right. Let's let this boy go. Off he goes.
Hey, folks. Glenn May here with bassresource.com. And today, let's talk about fishing worms in the fall. Worms can be really deadly in the fall because they kinda mimic a baitfish, which is exactly what the bass are chasing during the fall. They are actively feeding, chasing schools of baitfish up and down that lake everywhere they can, and this works really well, especially if the fish are a little bit lethargic. If they're not in a super feeding mood, they don't want to chase down a crankbait, for example, or topwater, that's where this comes into play. It's a really good time to throw it or if they're buried up in those weeds.
So, I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about how I fish with it during the fall. But first, I wanna talk a little bit about the equipment that I'm using here. This is a 7-foot, medium-heavy power rod. The fast action tip, it's pretty stout because I don't know where I'm fishing in the fall. They can be anywhere. So, I want something that's a little heavy that I can fish those areas in case I get into some thick weeds or something.
Here I'm using a 15-pound Seaguar InvizX line. This is a fluorocarbon line. I'm using it straight up. I'm not using braid. I'm not using leaders or anything like that. I do have backing in here, so I only have to put like 50, 60 yards of it on here because it gets expensive. But I'm not using anything else. I'm not even putting braid on this because braid...braid doesn't work so well in rocky areas. So, I don't know where the fish are gonna be in the fall. They can be anywhere. They can be up on main lake points in the morning and can be all back in the coves in the afternoon and anywhere in between during the course of the day, sitting up on chunk rock or gravel beds or anywhere. So, if they're in a rocky area, I don't necessarily wanna throw braid because it can get frayed and get nicked and cut up.
So, InvizX is pretty abrasion resistant and it's got that sensitivity that I really want. Plus the water as it begins to clear throughout fall, it gets clearer and clearer, braid is really opaque, you can't hide it whereas fluorocarbon, it's got some stealth capabilities to it. You don't see it as well in the water. So, this is the reason I like using fluorocarbon.
And I've got... The reel on it is a...this is a 7:3:1 reel. Yeah, 7:3:1 reel. You don't have to have that speed. We're not fishing real fast. You can go down to 6:1 reel if you want, but a nice smooth drag is what you want. And here I'm using a Yum. This is a 7-inch ribbontail worm and I've got it tied on here. This is a 2/0 extra-wide gap hook and I'm using an 8-ounce. Man, this is three-eighth-ounce weight with a bobber stopper.
Now, this is really important, a lot of times when you're fishing Texas rigged baits, you're using a quarter-ounce or bigger. Sometimes a half-ounce weight. Well, this doesn't have a lot of appendages to it. It doesn't have it at all. It just has the ribbontail. Plus it's a thin profile bait, so it goes through the water really fast. And a lot of times your bites are gonna come on the fall. So, if you have a heavy weight on here, it's just gonna go right through that water column and you're gonna miss that opportunity to get bit. So, you want a lighter, lighter weight on here and it...have that nice slow fall. You know, 1/8-ounce weight seems really light, but when you watch this fall, the water falls about the same rate as those thicker Texas rig plastics that are using a 3/8-ounce weight. So, that's how I rig it. That's what I'm using throughout the fall. Now, let's go out and fish it.
Keri: There we go. Nice one. Woohoo!
Glenn: That'll do. Come here. Come here.
Keri: Nice. Get him in the boat.
Glenn: I win!
Keri: Woohoo! Worm fishing.
Glenn: Wow.
Keri: Fall worm fishing.
Glenn: That is called fall worm fishing right there, boys.
Keri: Nice. I'm in the middle of nowhere.
Glenn: It's a good fish. Look at the front. I'll put my hand in and get the hook out. Wow. There we go. I like that.
Keri: Nice little two and a half pounder.
Glenn: That'll work.
Keri: Yeah.
Glenn: He's probably close to three. This looks a little short.
Keri: Yeah.
Glenn: But that'll work.
Keri: He's more fat than he is long.
Glenn: We'll take it.
Keri: Yeah, we'll take it.
Glenn: Thank you, guy. So the fall, what I like to do is I break fall up into two different seasons really. There's the early fall which is late summer into mid-fall which is when the water temperature gets down into the 50s, mid-50-ish or so. That's the first half of fall. The second half is from that mid-50s range when the water temperature gets down into the mid to low 40s, basically early winter. That is the whole fall season for me. That's how I break it up.
So, in the beginning, the first half, the fish are roaming around a lot, they're very active, they're chasing down those baitfish, and they're not gonna stay at any one place for that reason. So, it's hard to track them down but I have a methodical pro approach to that. What I first do is I start on the outside of bays and coves that have freshwater feeding into them. The freshwater brings in oxygen-rich water, and that's what the baitfish are looking for this time of year is oxygen-rich water.
So, if a bay doesn't have any freshwater flowing into it, I'll skip it and move to the next one. And what I like to do is I'll just start on the outside of those first. I'm looking for main lake points, humps, ridges, drop-offs, those types of things. And I'll take this, not too deep of water, 10 feet, 15 feet of water, not that deep, and I'll throw it out here and I'll just let it fall way to the bottom. And all you're doing is when you're letting it fall, is you're watching. Just watch your line. Watch and watch and watch. And it's on slackline so you're not gonna feel the bite. A lot of times a bite occurs when it's falling. So, you'll watch that line and you're looking forward to twitch, pot, jump or sometimes it just accelerates as it's falling. And that's a fish on the other line. So set up, set the hook, get that fish.
Just let it fall. Once it falls, I just lift up on the rod tip about a foot or two and let it fall back down. And that's all I'm doing. I'm working it down that point off that hump in a little bit deeper water. And I'm doing it pretty quickly. I'm not really letting it sit on the bottom very long at all. I'm just moving it along, covering water. And I'll make two or three pumps like that, reel it back up, and throw again.
And then make my way towards shallower water as I work into that cove, throwing at everything I can. I'm throwing at laydowns, I'm throwing at chunk rock, docks, anything like that. I like to throw over at that stuff. If I don't get bit, pick up, and move again. I'm covering water quickly. You gotta move fast to find those schools of fish. Yeah, I like to throw it over... This is great to swim over the top of weed beds. When you get those big weed flats towards the backs of coves, you can throw this over the top of them and just swim it back. I just reel it in just like you would a crankbait, nice and slow over the top of those weeds. Those fish, if they're in there, they're gonna come out of it like a Polaris missile. Just boom, crush it, right? A great way to fish it.
Now, once I do catch a fish, here's what's gonna be hard to do. You've now caught one in a school because these bass, what they do is they school up. They're moving in packs of 3 to 20, 25 or more chasing down these baitfish. So, if you catch one, there's gonna be more in that area.
So, the hard thing to do is you've been moving along covering water really quick, fishing aggressively and fast, and boom, you catch a fish. Well, you're gonna think, "Okay. That's how I catch fish. It's easy to do that, so, okay. I've got to keep fishing that way." Don't do that. You've now found that school, slow down and work it. Catch as many as you can. So, what you want to do is like I do, I'll throw out a buoy and I'll just sit there and I'll fish that area, crisscrossing it different ways, slow down my retrieves, speed up my retrieves, maybe try a different color, but I'll milk it for the best I...most I can to get as many fish out of that school.
Now, once I've caught a bunch and the bite slows down, depending on where I'm at...so, if I'm fishing a good piece of structure that the fish are really set up on, then I might hang out there again and wait for the next school of fish to come by and set up and catch more fish that way. And sometimes you only got to wait 15, 20 minutes for the next school to come by and then the action picks up again and you'll catch a lot more fish. I have won tournament who's doing it that way.
But if it's not as good a piece of cover, and it's kind of...they're loosely relating to it, then once a bite dies off, pick up sticks and move on down and keep covering water again. Go back to fishing fast, hitting everything you can, every visible piece of cover.
And then if I don't, for example, if I've done all that at this point and still haven't caught fish, then what I'll do is I'll pull off and I'll look for that creek channel. And I'll look for areas where the creek channel where it swings in closer to the shore, where it connects with maybe a secondary point or connects with a sandbar or just shallow water. I'll look for those bends. And specifically, I'll fish the inside bends of those coves. So, if the bend is like this, this area on this side here, the inside of that “C”, that's the inside bend. It's shallower there. The current isn't as strong. If you can find chunk rock or any kind of cover like weeds or log, something like that, stumps, that's an excellent place to fish. And I'll target that. A lot of times the fish will come out there and suspend over that kind of cover. And you bring this worm over the top of it, you can even swim it over that like I just mentioned, and you'll catch a lot of fish that way.
If I do catch fish that way, then I'll go down on the next creek bend. I'll skip the whole straight area. You don't catch a lot of fish that way. I've never really have. But go where to that next bend is and concentrate on that. Again, what you're doing here, this methodical approach is you're hitting all the targets, the places where fish can be set up ambushing baitfish.
There we go. Yeah. That will do.
Keri: A little bit better fish. Got a lot better fish. That's what you're looking for right there.
Glenn: There we go.
Keri: In the boat, Joe.
Glenn: Come here. Come here, you.
Keri: That's what you're looking for. He had to turn around so that he could steal my spot.
Glenn: That'll do the spot. That'll do the trick.
Keri: That’ll do ‘er.
Glenn: It's a good fish. I'm gonna let you go, buddy.
Another good place to fish as you get to that middle of the fall and start transitioning to the late fall, and this a good segue way from mid-fall into early winter, the weeds, they start to die off. And as they die, they consume oxygen. And like I said earlier, the baitfish, they like to go for oxygen-rich water. So, they're gonna pull out of those weeds as they're dying and go to the deeper weeds where it's still green. So, those outside weed edges and that 10 to 25 feet range, that's an excellent place to target during the mid to late fall with this worm.
And here, all you're doing is still somewhat fast fishing. You're throwing it out there and letting it fall all the way down looking for that bite as it falls. If you don't get bit, lift up, let it fall again, lift up, let it fall. Try that technique for a while. If that doesn't work and you know the fish are in those outside weed lines, then swim it. Slowly swim it. You're throwing it really deep now so it doesn't take much to get it to go too high on the water column. Keep it down and then just slowly moving it just enough to keep it off the bottom. It's not a fast move, but it's just slowly moving along. And a lot of times those fish will clock it and they'll come out, and they'll dive out of those weed lines and hit the bait.
We'd like a bigger one, please. One of us. There’s the pick up and there’s the hooksset.
Come here.
Keri: That's better.
Glenn: That'll do.
Keri: A little football. A little football. I got me a football.
Glenn: Another worm fish.
Keri: I got me a little football.
Glenn: Yeah. That'll do. We'll take it.
Now, as you're moving towards the end of fall, what's happening is the fish will start pulling out of those shallow areas and now they're gonna move deeper. What would be really nice to know... If you know this and you're like... Because where are those fish gonna set up for the winter? Deep is relative in any lake so I can't tell you exactly where they're gonna be. I have some lakes where the fish will sit in 45 to 55 feet of water during the wintertime, whereas I have other lakes that don't even get that deep. And that's not necessarily the deepest part of the lake. And those lakes where they're that deep, the deepest part of the lake is over 100 feet deep. So, you need to find out for yourself, like maybe go on the BassResource forums and ask on that particular lake. That's a good way of finding out. Look at fishing reports during the wintertime.
But if you know where those fish are gonna set up house in the wintertime, look at where they are now and then what is that route they're gonna take? What are the stopping areas along the way such as humps, points, drop-offs, roadbeds, any kind of structure, where are they gonna sit as they make their way to deeper water? I call those bus stops.
I wanna fish those bus stops during the late fall and in early winter, deeper and deeper and deeper looking for those fish. They are going to congregate and relate to those areas. In that time of year what I'm doing here is I'm not moving the worm as much. I'll throw it out there, but if I've positioned the boat out into deeper water, say I'm fishing the point, a lot of times what happens, so you're out here in deeper water, you cast, it lands here. If you lift up the rod a whole lot, it swings out towards you and then way down it drops. So, you've covered a lot of water and it's too fast. The fish aren't chasing bait as much. They're not gonna chase it down that much. So, I only lift 3, 4 inches. Lift it up, swing it down, boom. Lift it up, it swings down, boom. So, I'm still covering water, but not as fast. I start to slow down that retrieve the colder the water gets.
And in fact, there are times where I'll take the boat and I'll position it up shallow and I'll throw it out to deeper water. I'll position it right on top of the hump, for example. And I'll fish it, throw it out in deeper water, let the worm reach the bottom. And here I just use the rod and I just slowly drag it up with the rod. And once I reach about here, I'll reel back down and then I'll slowly bring it up again with the rod. And I'm just feeling it bump along the bottom. Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.
So, those are the different ways how I fish it during the fall and into the early winter. I hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this, visit BassResource.com.
