Fall Locations

Mid-Fall Locations

Once water temperatures fall into the 40°F to 50°F range (though some waters never reach this chilly temperature range), submerged vegetation thins even more. In the North, emergent plants like bulrushes, maidencane, cutgrass, and wild rice dry up and rattle. As their cover declines, bass begin congregating in the fewer remaining locations suited to them. This means slower fishing, until you find where they’ve concentrated. Then you can catch a bunch, but only by fishing slowly.

Cover

In natural lakes, inside turns that harbor the remaining cabbage and coontail patches concentrate largemouth bass, particularly when the plants are located on steep breaks near large flats. At this time of year, water temperatures in the shallows may fluctuate 5°F to 8°F between morning and afternoon. Largemouths shy away from such instability. Inside turns, with their more even temperature, draw bass. Weedbeds thrive there, enriched by silt and organic materials deposited from the shallows, and this living cover draws bass from points, humps, shallows, and other windblown structure. If a few large rocks are present or there’s a change in substrate, even better. These remaining weedbeds provide cover and prey, even when the plants themselves are withering. In some dark, eutrophic lakes, even after plants have become reduced to black, slimy stalks in midfall, bass still hold next to them. Poor cover is apparently better than no cover at all.

In dark waters, bass may stay relatively shallow. Fish in clearer water—on sunny days with rising barometric pressure and/or rapidly falling water temperatures—sometimes shift deeper, past the stalks of the deepest weeds into 20 to 25 feet of water. Mild, sunny days with warming afternoon temperatures often pull bass shallow, where they hold in springtime spots like lily pads and fallen trees.

During mid-fall, bass abandon offshore humps, no matter how fine their weedgrowth. This pattern appears to be universal, once temperatures fall into the 40°F range.

Weather

Don’t overlook wind direction when seeking mid-fall bass. Calm water and sun increase their activity. They rarely bite well on the windy side of the lake at this time of year. Moreover, the need to fish very slowly (even deadsticking baits) makes windy spots unproductive. As the water temperature approaches 40°F, the largemouth’s metabolism slows significantly.