Late Fall Crankbaits

You know, the fall is known for throwing crankbaits, and for good reason, because the bass are chasing baitfish all over the place, and what better resembles a baitfish than a crankbait, right? They work great for fall. But as we get towards the end of the fall and transitioning into winter, a lot of people put their crankbaits away a little too soon. You can catch bass on crankbaits all the way up until there's ice on the water. Yeah, when it's, you know, in the 40s, lower 40s, you can still catch bass on crankbaits. You just have to change your tactics a little bit, and where you throw them. And it differs from the northern part of the U.S. versus the southern part of the U.S.

So let's talk about the northern part first. You know, the northern parts, there's a lot of natural lakes, not so many reservoirs, so you don't see so much of that, you know, backs of the creeks and backs of the coves kind of thing. You know, fish chasing shad, you know, that you see in "Bassmaster" magazine, because that's a lot, what happens in the south. Sure, you have shad in some of the lakes up in, you know, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other areas, but for the most part, it's a lot of natural lakes, and you don't have that kind of forage. Instead you have bluegill, you have perch, even crawdads, things like that, the bass tend to gorge on during this time of year. Plus the areas where they go, you know, they tend to go up where there's flats of weeds, right? Big weed flats or in the weeds that ring all the way around the lake.

As fall...as the days get shorter and the water cools down, that's not conducive to good weed growth. Actually, the weeds start to die off. And the challenge is to find the bass. Typically, you got to go a little deeper. Sometimes as you get closer to winter, you got to go deeper than where you were during the summer months. Now, the best way to find good weed beds is use your graph, you can see the strands of weeds coming up off the bottom, take a crankbait that gets down to those weeds, cast out there and pull up some weeds and bring them up and take a look at them. If they're brown, well, they're dead and dying, and they're consuming oxygen. So the baitfish and the bass aren't going to be there. But if you pull up healthy green weeds, well, that's what you're looking for, that's what you want.

Now, there can be a ton of that in a lake, so how do you narrow that down? Well, there's other things to look for. For example, cover that's right along the weed line or right inside the weeds, just right there on that edge. Things like boulders, rock piles, brush piles, laydowns, logs, things like that, stumps, where the weed line is right there. That is a hot spot. That's the areas you want to concentrate on. Now pair that with a good structure change, like on a point, hump, any kind of steep banks, sharp drops, drop off or a ledge, that type of thing. You have those three elements together in one small area, you better fish it because that's going to be where everything congregates. That's where the action is. So yes, that's the first thing is finding those locations before you even start throwing your crankbaits.

Now, to exploit those, there's a couple things you need to...several different crankbaits. First of all, you want tight wobble and wide wobbling crankbaits, and you want them both in rattling and non-rattling versions because the bass, they're finicky this time of year and sometimes they want a wide wobble, silent crankbait, and the next day they want a tight wobble rattling crankbait or some combination thereof. So you have to have those ready to be able to experiment. Now to fish these areas, there's two ways to fish them. One is on top of the weeds, and the other is along the weed edge. When you fish the top of the weeds, you want the crankbait to get down there and just tick the top of the weeds. Mostly stand on top and not get into it, but every once in a while you can get kind of snagged in there. That's what you want. You take your rod and you give it a good hard yank, and just pop that crankbait right out of those weeds.

Now there's two things you can do at that moment to trigger a strike. One is to keep reeling like you were. What that does is it looks like a bait fish that's been flushed out of the weeds and now it's trying to escape something. Oftentimes it triggers a bite from actively feeding bass. So that's a great way to catch them, just that quick...yanking it free of those weeds and keep on reeling, pow, they'll come out and pounce on it. Now on days when the bass aren't so active, maybe you've had some big fronts come through or it's just after turnover, something like that, a different approach. You still pop it out, pop it out of the weeds, real good hard yank, but pause, wait two, three seconds or so. What that will do is it kind of looks like a disorientated bait fish and that pause, sometimes the bass will come up and go, "Oh, that's an easy meal." [vocalization] and they hit it while it's paused. Or they'll come right up to it and look at it, and then you start to crank it and boom, they hit it. That change, it's like, "Oh, it's getting away," and they hit it.

So those are ways you can trigger a strike when you're crank baiting over the tops of these weeds. The other way is to go along the weed edge. Position yourself so you...here's the weed edge and you want to, as much as possible, run the crank bait right along the edge of the weeds parallel to it, especially when they're not as willing to bite because what they'll do is they'll get down towards the base of those weeds. They'll just snug up right down there or they'll snug up tight against some of that cover I told you about, like right next to a rock. Take your crank bait and you want to go down there and this time not so much getting stuck in the weeds but you want it to bounce off those objects. And do the same thing again. You can either pause for a few seconds or continue to retrieve, but try those two different things to see if you can trigger a strike. Those are the two best methods for crank baiting this late part of the season for northern waters.

In southern waters, it's a little bit different. The bass are going to be positioned a little bit differently. Here you're going to be going after mostly shad, bass that are chasing shad. Now, of course, they've been up in the coves, they've been up in the creek channels and way up deep for the early part and middle part of the fall. They're not there anymore. They're working their way back out now towards the main channel. So don't go that far back. Start maybe midway and hit the bus stops. The points, the rock piles, brush piles, docks on the way out to the main lake. One often overlooked area is right in the dead center, deepest middle part of the creek itself up in that area. Sometimes the bass gets belly down in that area. If a big front's come through or something like that, they'll be right there in the middle of it all. When those big guys banging the banks, you go out there to where that channel is and fish right down there in the middle of it, and sometimes you can hit pay dirt. So pay close attention to that.

Now, as the water gets colder and you get closer to winter, they're not going to be out there on the main lake. You want to look at the river channel now. You want specifically swings, the bends, river bends, because that's going to be the deeper part of the lake. That's where they're going to set up for the wintertime. So they're going to be heading for that, particularly if a swing comes close to the bank, to the shoreline. Like that's a hot spot. That's going to congregate the baitfish, going to congregate the bass. Now to find these areas where they're hanging out at, yeah, take your graph and look for like standing timber. Look for those boulders and those brush piles. Again, it's going to be deeper, so you're probably not going to find as much weeds, but if you can find green weeds, bonus. But really, what the bass are keying on are the balls of shad. That's what you want to really look for more so than weeds on your graph.

And most importantly, note the location, the depth that they're at, because let's just say they're at 12 feet. Back your boat off within casting distance. Now again, you want those wide wobble, tight wobble, rattling, and silent crankbaits, but add in a little bit more in the mix. You want the set of crankbaits that dive down to 8 to 10 feet deep, and another set that dive 15 plus feet deep. So above the school of shad and below the school of shad is what you're targeting. Why? Well, in nature, there's safety in numbers. So the shad will ball up. That's why you see these...you know, they ball up like this. They are less likely to get eaten when they're all together. So if you stray out of the pack and you're by yourself, you're not protected and you're vulnerable to being eaten by a predator. And that's what you're trying to mimic here. You're trying to imitate one baitfish that's not with the pack and he's out there by himself and he's easy fixings, right? That's what the bass are going to key on. So you want to go above and below, except now you can't bang it against stuff because you're typically mid column. So you have to impart the action yourself. So a stop and go retrieve with your reel. And every once in a while yanking on the rod and give it a good pull, you know, stopping, that sort of thing. Give that...impart that erratic action often will elicit a strike.

Now a couple key things here. Guys, you've been watching my videos long enough, you know I tend to hold the juicy tidbits towards the end. Some of the other guys have already turned off the video, so you're the ones that get to hear the next pieces here. First of all, in the northern climates, the color of crankbait, you want to go for like your perch, your bluegill, your shiners, and also crawdad colors. Those tend to work best. In the south, well, it's all about the shad. So make sure you got shad colors. You can also go for the crawdad as well, but I tend to go for...those shad colors tend to work the most because that's what they're keying on.

Now rod and reel. The kind of rod you want is a 7 foot 3 to 7 foot 6 medium power fast action rod. It's a good bend parabolic action to it. It has a lot of give to it because those treble hooks, they got a small bite to them, and you don't want that fish to shake free. So that rod's going to give and act as a shock absorber as the fish is fighting you back as you reel them in. So it's going to help keep them pinned. Paired with that, I use 12 pound fluorocarbon line. Seaguar Tatsu specifically is what I use. All straight up fluorocarbon. Don't use any braid for several reasons. Now one, fluorocarbon is more abrasion resistant than braid. So going on rocks and that stuff, it doesn't get as dinged up and frayed as braid. Braid also tends to dig into wood. So if you're fishing around woody areas, fluorocarbon will glide over it rather than dig into it. Braid also has no stretch. Fluorocarbon has a little bit of stretch to it. And as I was talking about earlier with the rod giving during the fight, that line has a little bit of stretch too. So it acts a little bit as a shock absorber too as the fish fights.

Braid no. Braid won't stretch at all so the fish can leverage that to pull free from the hooks. Also I don't use leader because braid is buoyant whereas fluorocarbon sinks, and you want that crankbait to reach the maximum depth, and the braid isn't going to allow it to do it as much as the fluorocarbon will. And if you use leader, well, now you've got no stretch and buoyancy versus stretch and it sinks. So the two kind of work against each other and kind of negate the benefits of both. So I just use straight up fluorocarbon period. Also in the fall, the water tends to be a little bit clearer. Fluorocarbon is less visible than braid. I'm not talking about line diameter. It doesn't matter. You can have the same line diameter of fluorocarbon versus the same line diameter of braid, and the fluorocarbon is less visible. That's key for this stuff. So I just use straight fluorocarbon for crankbaiting.

A couple more key tips here. We're getting to the juicy ones. First of all, what I tend to do is I use snaps, not snap swivels or any kind of swivels. I'll use snaps on the crankbait, and that is because, first of all, it allows the freedom of movement, maximum amount and I tie directly to the snap. But also, as I mentioned, we're using a lot of different crankbaits, different colors, different sizes, depths. It's a lot easier to change them out as you're experimenting trying to figure out what the bass want that day. It's a lot easier to do it with a snap than to have to re-tie every time you change a crankbait. A couple other things. I use SuspenDots and lead strips. Lead strips, I'll put that on the underside of the bill, and what that does is it gives a crankbait a steeper angle, a diving angle. When you crank them, it'll get down to that diving depth faster and stay in the strike zone longer. So during the fall, especially late fall, it's a no-brainer. I put lead strips on all the crankbaits that I'm using right underneath on the underside of the bill for that purpose.

The SuspenDots, on the other hand, I have to experiment with that. What happens is when you dig it in the weeds or when you bounce it off rocks or logs, when you pause it, that crankbait will flow it up. Sometimes that is what triggers the strike, is that bait floating up. And also if you're fishing around a lot of woody cover, it's a great way to keep your crankbait from getting hung up is you bounce it and you hit that wood. Stop, don't let the hooks penetrate the wood, just pause and the crankbait will float free, and then you can keep on with your retrieve. But sometimes the fish don't want it going up, or they want it to move up slower, or just suspend. That's when I'll put lead dots right on the belly, center part of the crankbait, and start incremental steps to slow it first and then stop it from floating, and see if that gets the strike. Sometimes that's exactly what the bass want. They won't hit it otherwise. So you have to play around a little bit, but there are other days when they want that fast rise. So I don't put it on all my crankbaits to begin with. I start off without using SuspenDots. And as time goes on, if I feel I need to adjust and put those on there, then I will do it.

Lastly is sharp hooks. Sharp hooks are very important right now because a lot of times the bass will come up and slap at your bait. They won't take it. They fall, they'll swipe at it, and you need those sharp hooks to catch the fish. So I like SPRO crankbaits because they come with Gamakatsu hooks, but with a lot of other crankbait manufacturers, what I'll do is I'll swap out the factory issued treble hooks and swap them out with Gamakatsu crankbaits, Gamakatsu treble hooks. Typically a size larger, a little bit bigger hook, a little bit wider bite to it, gives you a little bit more chances of hooking that fish when they swipe at it. And that will catch some of those finicky fish that you otherwise would miss during this time of the season. You do these things during the late fall and early winter, and I guarantee you, you're going to catch some fish and have a lot of fun doing it. Hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this, visit bassresource.com.