FALL FISHING SUCCESS
There are some things about fall fishing that I really love – the fishing is top-notch for most species; the shoreline colours are spectacular, and I enjoy the cool weather. Every year since I was a little kid, I have spent many days in the boat right up until freeze-up and I’ve countless good memories.
Many of my biggest Sunset Country fish have been landed in the fall. My best musky, largemouth, smallmouth and crappie were all caught between Labour Day and freeze up. Here are a few of my top fall fishing tips to hopefully help you put a few more fish in the boat.
USE THOSE ELECTRONICS
Most fish species move to generally deeper water in the fall where they are easy to find on your electronics units. I run Humminbird Helix 10 and Solix 10 units on my boat as well as an Aqua-Vu underwater camera mounted on the console. Regardless of which species I am targeting, I use sonar to look for fish (smallmouth, walleye and crappie), the presence of baitfish (pike and musky) or even vegetation (coontail for largemouths).
WORTH THE WAIT
Sometimes it takes some patience to find what I am looking for, but it often pays off to spend some extra time behind the wheel before starting to fish. You are just able to cover so much more water and find a school of fish, increasing the odds that you are going to catch both numbers and likely, bigger fish.
I would not even consider dropping in the line in the water for walleyes, crappies or smallmouths, which will all be found in deeper water during this timeframe until I find them first.
RELATING TO STRUCTURE
Walleyes and smallmouths will be around some form of structure, while crappies will probably be found over mud flats. You want to see the big schools of bait around the reef structures or neck-down areas you fish for toothy critters and when I’m looking for largemouths, I want to find rocks with lush, green coontail growing around them.
The problem we’re seeing now on Lake of the Woods is the invasive rusty crayfish is literally wiping out much of the vegetation in the lake. It seems to be having the most negative impact on largemouth bass who evidently rely on the vegetation to flourish. There are bays on the lake that were full of beautiful weeds, where we had really, really good largemouth fishing ten years ago and those areas are now cleared of any weeds. It’s almost impossible to even catch a largemouth anymore. It’s pretty disappointing. Most species are eating these crayfish and doing well, including walleyes and smallmouths but they have literally decimated the weeds in many areas.
AQUA-VU IS A GREAT BACKUP
The Aqua-Vu comes in handy to verify what your electronics are telling you. Sometimes it’s species identification if you are marking fish but can’t get them bite, other times it’s nice to drop the camera down and see what the fish are relating to – it could be a boulder, a log, a patch of sand. It is a great tool to help interpret what your electronics are telling you. I use mine a lot and have fun with it.
TOSS AN UMBRELLA RIG
Over the past few years, I have mentioned using umbrella rigs in the fall for smallmouths. They are a proven bait for catching big bass but the fun part of throwing them on main lake humps and points is that trophy walleye, big pike and even musky will take a run at them as well.
Umbrella rigs do a great job emulating a school of baitfish. I like to use a rig with blades on the arms and I use swimbaits between 3.5 – 5.5 inches. Over the past couple of years I have started using the Z-Man Diesel Minnow swimbaits. Their durability is nice when you are catching a bunch of fish and the baits are all nice and straight out of the package so they swim perfectly.
MAKE SURE YOU ARE LEGAL
In Ontario, we can use four hooks on one line. Most umbrella rigs come with five arms so on the fifth arm of the rig, I’ll actually cut the hook off the bait so one of them is considered a dummy bait. Manitoba allows the use of two hooks but if you run the hooks on the bottom baits you’ll still hook up on most fish.
MATCHING EQUIPMENT
If I am fishing 15-20 feet of water I’ll use five ¼ ounce jigs on my rig and for water between 20 and 30 feet, I’ll put a couple of 3/8 ounce jigs on the bottom arms and use ¼ ounce jigs for the top three. G. Loomis makes an umbrella rig rod in their IMX-PRO and NRX line ups. These are heavy duty rods capable of handling these over-sized rigs and they make fishing them all day comfortable. I like a Shimano Curado 200 reel, which has a bigger spool for handling the 20 pound fluorocarbon I like to throw them on.
My first experience with an umbrella rig in a tournament came with my pal Mike Reid. We had one tied on a rod not long after they became popular several years back. I had caught a couple of small bass on it in practice but on the second day of the three day tournament Mike threw it out on a windy point and caught a pair of four pound smallmouths at the same time, it was incredible. We caught several other big fish in the tournament on an umbrella rig and since then I always have one tied on in the fall.