Stick Worm Fishing In The Fall

Fall bass fishing is associated with fast action, right? Crankbaiting, you know, buzzbaits, spinnerbaits, stop water. The bass are just slamming bait fish. They're busting shad on the surface, lots of action and activity. Yeah. Absolutely, but it's not always like that and sometimes guys are a little disappointed or not sure what to do when they go out in the water and that's not happening. Sometimes you have some fronts come through, progressively stronger and stronger fronts as the fall gets closer to winter. The water starts to cool down. You may have lake turnover. Things like that start to shut the fish down or, at least, temporarily slow the bite down. So what do you do during that time? Well, that's when I break out the trusty Senko or the Yum Dinger. I like to fish them in several different ways, depending on the circumstances and so, I'm gonna go through five of them with you right here.

First one I like to do. Well, it's the old traditional way. It's this way. It's just weightless, you know, Texas rig weightless. This is, you know, the old standby of how everybody else learned how to fish them and it still works today. This one's a little beat up because I've been catching fish on them quite a bit. It shows you how effective they are. But this here, what I'll do is I'll just fish it in, you know, say 0 to 20 foot of water and I'm targeting docks, walkways, weeds. I like to skip it underneath docks, rock piles, brush piles, things like that. The fish, a lot of times, when they don't wanna chase baits, they'll snug up against these things and this is where the Senko or the Yum Dinger works really well. Just cast up to it and let it fall on a slack line all the way down until it hits bottom. Oftentimes, it gets hit before it hits the bottom. So you need to watch your line very closely to watch for any movement that you didn't impart because if that happens, well, something on the other end has it so you better set the hook.

Another way to fish it is wacky style. Wacky style is the same thing, you just put a hook through the middle of it and it can be weightless or you can use a jig head and give a little weight to it. Either way, I like to have a weedless, that little wire guard on it, just to give it a little more versatility in casting to areas because of the open hook, it could get snagged a little bit more on wood debris or stumps or into weeds. So I tend to not throw it into those areas, as much as I do the Texas rig version here, but a wacky rig can be very productive.

The rod I use here. This is a 7 foot 2, medium heavy fast action rod. And I pair that with 15 pound fluorocarbon line. I like to use Seaguar InvizX line for this, mainly because it is so versatile. You can fish it virtually everywhere. It's more abrasion-resistant than braid, believe it or not. It actually is, so it's more durable and fluorocarbon sinks. Braid doesn't sink. So fluorocarbon will fall with this, you know, the sinking bait. A braid might inhibit its ability to fall through the water column. So I tend to go straight fluorocarbon, no leader or anything like that, I tie directly to the lure.

The thing about both of these. Both the Texas rig and wacky rig Senko or Yum Dinger or whatever, you know, knockoff, I still have them on the deck of my boat even when bass are hammering those fast-moving lures. Why? Well, a lot of times you get follows or you get bass that'll swipe at your lure, but miss. That's when you just reel up your lure real quick, put it down the deck, grab your Senko, it's gotta be ready to be cast, guys. Have it ready. Rigged and ready with a line already hanging out because you wanna be able to... line hanging out from the tip because you wanna be able to just grab that rod and fire it right out there, right where you saw that fish, right away. So have it at the ready. Do that and as it falls, sometimes that fish will still be there and grab it right away, and you'll catch that fish that you just missed.

If it falls all the way through and reaches the bottom of the water column and it's on the bottom of the lake or river, don't pick it up right away. Let it sit for a good 10 seconds, maybe up to 30 seconds. Now this could be painfully slow if you've been fishing fast-moving baits and now all of a sudden you're like, stop. But just hold on. That bass that swiped at your lure may have gone off for a few seconds and then he's come back. He's getting acclimated to his surroundings again so you gotta wait a little bit and then give it a good pop off the bottom. That fish will go, whoa, and bam, nail it. So that often works. If you have that swipe or follow, that's usually the way that I catch them. If that doesn't work, I'll reel back up and fire out there maybe one more time and see if I can catch them that way. If that doesn't work, I just go back to fishing.

If I do catch them that way, you guys gotta remember this. We do this as bass hunters, oh, we just caught a fish on this lure so let's cast it right back out there. Remember the pattern. The pattern was that you got that fish to... you activated them. You got them to come after your lure and get aggressive and you followed up with the Senko to get them to bite. So remember that. It's like, okay, now that's how I got to get them to bite. So you just caught a fish on that Senko, re-rig it, get it ready to cast, set it down, and go back to casting your fast-paced lure, and watch for that next swipe or miss and get ready to do it again. Sometimes that is the pattern, the way to catch fish. So that works really well in the fall.

Well, there's three other ways that I fish the Senko during the fall. One of them is this way. I Texas rig it but with an 8 ounce tungsten weight attached to it and I have it pegged. If you can see I got that little bobber stopper on there. The reason I do it this way is this is for when the fish are in the weeds. A lot of times when the bite is off, the fish will get... they'll bury into the weeds, or into bushes, or into the brush pile, you know, in a sunken vegetation, that kind of stuff, or flooded vegetation, and you gotta go in and dig them out. So I'll throw right up in there with this weighted Senko. Now this works really well. All you do is you just cast in those open pocket areas, you know, the lily pads or in the weed pocket, the hydrilla, that sort of stuff. Just let it fall down in there, and work it a little bit, and reel it back up, and find your next pocket, and cast right back in there again. And you'd be surprised how well that works. So that's another effective way to fish them. And you go all the way up to 20 feet deep. Anywhere in that range, 0 to 20, is where the fish are gonna be.

Two other ways are finesse tactics. Okay? This is when the bite is really off, but it does work. One of them is with a Split Shot Senko. You'll find this is interesting here. So I've got a Mojo weight here, just like this. This one right here. And I've got a Texas Rig Senko here, a weedless Senko. Note though, this is only 4 inches. So this is a smaller version, not the normal 5 inch that we normally throw. This is a smaller Senko. This is a more subtle presentation. What you do is you cast it out and let it settle down to the bottom. And now you're just gonna work it on the bottom, right? You're just gonna slowly reel your reel, and slowly bring them in and let it pause. Just let it sit for a little bit and then reel it in again. And it's not super slow fishing. You can actually cover a lot of water using this kind of setup. A lot of people fish a split shot rig too slow. And it's one of the ways you can actually, if someone's crank baiting, you can actually keep up with them using a split shot. You can reel it in almost that fast. That doesn't always work, but you get my idea. You can actually fish it a little bit faster than what most people do. A real slow methodical crawl, and stop, and pick their way through. You don't have to do that necessarily. You can just move it along at a pretty good pace and cover a lot of water.

Alternatively, yeah, you can fish it very, very slow. And the way that I do that is I'm crawling that... I'm feeling the weight. I'm letting the weight tell me what's down there and I'm feeling for a boulder, a small rock, a tree branch, anything different. A lot of times what the bass will do... Say you, you know, turn over. You had a big front come through. Big cold front, you know, shuts the bait way off. The bass are gonna snug right up against that cover. They're gonna be a part of it. So what you do is you slowly crawl it on the bottom, feeling these things, and when you touch it, and you feel that little resistance. Okay, I'm up against something. Pause, just hold the rod in place. And then all you're gonna do is just quiver it. You can hear my weight hitting it. But just quiver it just a little bit. Not a whole lot of action. But you just want that bait to just kind of dance there right in front of them. It's like, I see you. I know you're there. You just have to entice them to come over and bite it. So you have to slowly kind of give that little bit of an action without moving it much to get them to commit. So that can be very effective when the bite is painstakingly slow. That's how you can eke out a few bites when you're struggling to get anything with using a split shot.

But otherwise, I use it to cover water in a finesse manner when the bass aren't actively chasing other kind of baits. And here, I'm using, you know, this is a 7.3, medium power, fast action, spinning rod. I'm using 8 pound... Whoops, this is a 6 pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon line. Again, no braid, no leaders, no muss, no fuss. I'm just a straight-up kind of guy tying it directly to everything. I just want a full complete connection the whole way. Again, fluorocarbon sinks, so it helps it stay on the bottom, fluorocarbon's extremely sensitive. But more importantly, when you're fighting a fish back to you, this rod has to have a lot of give in it, so it keeps the fish pinned, and the line has some stretch in it. So again, as the fish is fighting you back, he's not gonna use, like, a braid has no stretch to it. And the fish will actually use that as leverage to pull free from the hook. So there's benefits to using fluorocarbon. And in the fall, well, you have clearer water, too. And fluorocarbon is less visible than braid. So using this setup is great for covering water or picking it apart depending on what the mood of the fish is.

Another type of setup I use is, of course, the drop shot, right? So here we go. We've got, don't hook myself, another spinning outfit. And this is interesting, guys. So a couple things. First of all, I'm using a 3 inch Senko on here. So really small, little bait. And, you know, a lot of times, the bass are feeding on bait fish, and what size are they? 3 to 3 and a half inches long. So that's one of the reasons why getting a smaller size works. Plus, look how far apart I have, you know, the weight's way down here. And the reason for that is you want the fish to focus on this, and you wanna get it up away from the cover a bit so it's visible at a further distance. The fish are, you know, if they're being a little bit lethargic, you gotta get their attention this time of year. So using a drop shot rig, you're positioning the bait in a way that has more visibility. Plus, a drop shot is really used for pinpointing and taking apart specific pieces of cover or structure. It's not really intended to be used to cover water.

So I'll cover water with a split shot, and when I come to a point, a hump, rock pile, brush pile, a ledge, drop off, a stump, whatever, that's when I'll set the split shot down. And I'll pick up the drop shot. And I'll pick apart that piece of cover, very slowly, methodically. And you just get the weight down. Get it to touch the bottom. And then what you're trying to do is just shake the rod tip in a minor... don't apart a ton of action. What you're trying to do is shake the weight, but not the bait, right? What you're doing is you're just feeling that tension, and then letting off of the tension, feeling the tension, letting off of the tension. That's how you just barely move it. And then stop, and just hold it, and don't even move. The action of the boat moving, the waves lapping up against your line. Just hold it tight, and just feel that, you know, the wind hitting your line, whatever, is enough to make... that bait is moving and dancing around, a little current over there, that kind of stuff. It is moving all on its own. You don't really have to do anything and, oftentimes, that's all it takes to get bit. The key thing is patience. All right? You gotta be very patient and work that piece of structure very methodically at all depths, you know, 0 to 20 feet. Until you get that bite, and figure out where they're positioned in the water column. Then you can narrow down like, hey, if I got bit in 10 feet of water. Then I don't need to fish 20 feet deep. I don't need to fish in 4 feet of water. Focus on that 8 to 12 foot zone. That'll help you narrow down your areas that you fish.

But those are the different ways that I fish a Senko in the fall. And doing that, you're gonna be very productive and catch a lot more fish. Hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this, visit bassresource.com.