A Favourite Time of the Year

FALL IS PRIME BASS TIME

It was a beautiful, sunny October day when Hooked Published Kevin Stobbe and I met up with angling professional Jeff Gustafson.  It was the fall of 2019 and Jeff had just finished a successful Bassmaster Elite season, qualifying in his first season for the Super Bowl of bass fishing, the Bassmaster Classic.

On this day we were looking forward to hearing about his adventures, catching some fish along the way. Our first stop was for black crappie but after two hours and just one fish, it was time to change gears.

Switching over to largemouth, Jeff moved us to a shoreline point that had some weed growth. Gussy says this is becoming more and more difficult to find as the rusty crayfish in the lake continue to destroy habitat. While good for the smallmouth, for largemouth, their fry don’t have places to hide after they are born, making predation so much easier for other fish. He says this has seriously impacted the population in the lake. Now most anglers just fish for the abundant smallmouth.

As we pulled up to the weed line Jeff cast out a wacky rigged worm close to shore. He let it sink on a slack line, leaving the bait in one spot. After a pause, he twitched it a couple of times. Bang, fish on! Leaning into the fish, he got the largemouth over the top of the weeds and into the boat. Man, what a way to start, a nice plump two-kilogram fish to be held up for a quick photo and release. Meantime, Kevin had a fish on of his own, a smaller largemouth caught on a Ned Rig.  For Jeff, these were to the baits of choice at this time of year. It showed as in the next hour we landed several fish from the same shoreline.

 

JUMBO SMALLMOUTH NEXT ON THE LIST

Next on the agenda were some jumbo smallmouth. To find these Gussy headed out to some deep humps. He said most of the fish at this time of year are in 20 to 30 feet of water. For these deeper smallmouth Jeff started with a dropshot rig. Meantime he gave Kevin a small white swimbait, with a Mimic Minnow Jig head made by Northland Tackle. I was given a Ned Rig to use, which consists of a black jighead rigged with a ZMan Hula StickZ.

Because the Z-Man plastic floats and stands up in the water, it makes a great crayfish imitation. Gussy likes to use a 1/6 ounce jig, which is fairly heavy but will go lighter if the bottom is really snaggy.   He most often uses a Z-Man Hula StickZ cut down about a half inch but Z-Man also makes the TRD CrawZ and the Finesse TRD, which is the original “Ned” bait.

EQUIPMENT CHOICES

Gussy likes to fish these small jigs on a seven-foot medium action G. Loomis spinning rod, a 2500 sized Shimano reel, eight-pound Power Pro braided line with an eight-pound fluorocarbon leader attached.  For largemouth, cast near shallow rocks or boulders and bounce the jig along the bottom.  These baits can also be used for fishing deeper water by dropping it under the boat to fish you spot on your electronics, which is what we did for the walleye and bass on this day.

Gussy did switch up for a bit while we fished for smallmouth, dropping a large spoon to trigger strikes. He caught three nice fish on that as well in short order.

At the end of the day we pulled up to shoreline point near deep water where Gussy switched over to white swimbait. Five minutes later he landed a trophy walleye,

THE NEXT WEEKEND

Motivated by my love for fall smallmouth I headed back the next weekend with friend Jim Price. For years I have fished Lake of the Woods for these spectacular game fish and with the weather turning colder I knew our time was short.

We decided to concentrate on the northeast section of the lake, from Clearwater Bay south. There is a never-ending supply of spots to try but we were looking for main lake points on this trip.

On the first place we stopped, we marked a ton of baitfish in 27 feet of water off the side of the point. The bait was suspended so I knew that the bass and walleye would not be far behind.  We started out fishing Ned Rigs, slowly drifting the length of the structure to pinpoint key spots.

An hour later we had landed five jumbo smallmouth and three nice walleye. It was to be the start of an eventful day and as the sun came out in the afternoon the wind dropped. This is perfect situation for late fall fishing, and it showed as the bass started to really turn on.

HOTSPOT

On our last spot, we found the fish scattered near a rockpile at the mouth of a large bay.  As I moved us slowly around with the front troll motor, we figured out the fish were not on the bottom. These fish were roaming for suspended forage and if we got our baits to the right level, it was game on!

IN SUMMARY

All the fish we caught over the course of three days were on plastic. Most were caught on Ned Rigs, but we also got some fish on big swimbaits. When we were fishing with Gussy, he caught a monster walleye on one. Meantime with Jim Price, we caught multiple walleye and also a bonus lake trout. It doesn’t get much better than that.