Bass will take just about anything that suggests food to them, but it has to have a natural look, smell or move. If an angler can satisfy any of those requirements when a bass is hungry, he might get a strike.
But that principle only goes so far. To some degree, bass are conditioned by instinct to expect their food to conform to certain natural laws. A frog, for instance, is not supposed to be bobbing in the waves of a New England lake a half-mile from shore in November. Such anomalies, duplicated by lures put in the wrong place at the wrong time, probably repel bass more than they attract them.
On the flip side, an angler can increase the number of strikes he gets by observing the rules of engagement as they apply to seasonal determinants. Consider bass and bugs.
A TASTE FOR INSECTS
In summer, bass prey primarily on minnows, frogs, crayfish and juvenile fish. Sure, they’ll eat the occasional terrestrial insect encountered along the shoreline—a clumsy caterpillar here, a wayward June bug there—but it’s more a snack than the main meal. When the days begin to shorten, however, and a chill creeps into the mornings and evenings of Indian summer, bugs play a larger role in the diets of bass. Perhaps the mental picture of a fat bluegill or shad is replaced by the image of a plump cricket, but whatever the reason, something in the genetic memory of bass tells them it’s time to start prowling the banks for the stray insects that just sort of let go of their summer perches and drop into the water.
Flyfishing tackle and big poppers or imitators such as Dave’s Hopper are old favorites to catch bass with a taste for terrestrials. Plug fishermen can choose from a number of topwater lures that suggest that they are bugs by their finish or duplicate the real thing. Lures that mimic bugs are nothing new. The first one patented was called The Flying Hellgrammite, an oxymoron if ever there was one. Introduced in 1883 by Harry Comstock, the sinking lure was a wooden imitation of a hellgrammite, the submergent larval form of the dobsonfly.
In 1939, lure maker Fred Arbogast carved a cicada or summer locust out of a piece of broomstick, screwed a curved metal bill to its nose and called it a Jitterbug. The floater sold well. The following year, rival lure manufacturer James Heddon’s Sons started to market a topwater plug that Jim Donaly had invented in 1906. Donaly named it the WOW. When Heddon’s Sons obtained rights to the lure, the company changed the name to the Crazy Crawler. Like the Jitterbug and another Arbogast introduction, the Hula Popper, the Crazy Crawler still is being marketed and catching plenty of bass.
The Jitterbug, Hula Popper and Crazy Crawler are suggestive topwater lures. They’re not shaped like anything in particular, but to a bass, any one of them could be a frog, insect, field mouse, baby bird or even a baitfish, depending on the color pattern the lure wears and how the plug is retrieved. A newer generation of insect imitators such as the Rebel Crickhopper, Cat-R-Crawler and Bumblebug is less subtle in appearance and represents hard-plastic clones of living insects.
Lures that imitate bugs range from 1/10-ounce (in the case of the Rebel family of baits) to 3/8-ounce or so (for bigger plugs like the Hula Popper).
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BE THE BUG
Contrary to the angling adage “big baits catch big fish,” downsizing insect baits may draw more strikes from bass of all sizes than bigger versions.
“I use smaller lures like the Crickhopper and the 1/8-ounce Tiny Torpedo in the early fall, and the bass I catch then are about the same size as the ones I catch in the summer on much bulkier baits,” observes Bill Schultz, a bass fisherman who lives near Milwaukee. “I caught a 5.2-pound largemouth in a Green Bay feeder creek last year and a 3.2-pound smallmouth in Sturgeon Bay. Those are pretty good fish for up here and they both took 1/8-ounce lures that were about an inch long. Maybe the fish are just programmed to look for food in smaller bites in the fall.”
A medium-action spinning rod and reel loaded with 4- or 6-pound-test monofilament matches up well with the ultralight baits. Schultz employs an ultralight Shimano spinning reel teamed with a six-foot, six-inch light-action spinning rod marketed by St. Croix. Often, Schultz fishes from the bank so the longer rod helps him cast the light baits greater distances.
Bug baits can be especially effective when fished along banks overgrown with shrubs and trees, since that’s where bass expect to find insects. Considering the diminutive size of such lures and the small amount of movement required to present them properly, these topwaters are ideal choices for quiet farm ponds and slow-moving streams. However, the lures still can fool bass in swifter rivers, as long as they’re kept in slack water.
Insect lures should be retrieved in a manner that corresponds with the behavior of their natural counterparts. When a horsefly hits the water it might lie there immobile for a few seconds and then begin its feeble attempts to move away. A grasshopper might begin a series of erratic scudding movements across the surface, separated by short pauses. It’s not necessary to move the plug more than a few feet before cranking it in and trying again. Be prepared for a hit the moment you start reeling in the lure. Sometimes no retrieve is best; simply letting the lure stay where it lands for a minute or so might result in a jarring strike.
Some purists might scoff at the notion of using a plastic plug that looks like the mother of all insects, but that’s their call. Bug baits are especially effective this time of year and in the end fishing is all about giving bass what they want, not what you want to give them.
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FLIES FOR FALL BASS
When the weather starts to turn chilly and I’m after bass, I like to fish big baits up against windblown points and shores that have fast drops to deeper water. Where shad provide the main eats for bass, a few days during which the temperature hovers around 40 degrees knock such baitfish into thermal shock. They start sinking toward the bottom, twitching as they sink. Full-size hard or soft suspending jerkbaits do well on such occasions. It may come as a surprise, but big-profile flies also work well, even in really chilly water.
Striper guide Dan Marini figured that out a while ago. One spring day Dan took his fly rod to fish with a pal who competes in local bass tournaments and uses conventional tackle. “I caught fish on the usual small flies,” says Marini, “but not as many as he did on a jig-and-pig and spinnerbait. I realized that to do as well, I would have to copy whatever it was in the size, looks and action of those lures that attracted fish.”
Finding a sinking-head line to deep-six a fly was no problem, but Dan at first thought there was no way to imitate precisely the action of a conventional bass lure. Or was there?
Read Next: The Best Flies for Catching Bass
MATERIAL GAINS
Bob Clouser’s introduction of the Deep Minnow streamer some years back opened the door for a rich variety of fly-weighting systems whose composition includes beads and cone-shaped heads. Not only do such weights aid in sinking a fly to the strike zone, but they enhance fly action as well, depending on the retrieve. Additionally, various epoxies and sealants are used now to finish fly heads and provide tuned slow-sink capabilities. The more heavily weighted the head, or the more forward the weighted dumbbell fly eyes are positioned on the hook shank, the more up-and-down jigging action you can coax from a streamer between strips. Sometimes that’s better; sometimes it’s not.
Just think of the various soft and hard jerkbaits. Some have short bills while others have longer bills. Some suspend while others sink slowly between rod twitches. Now think of a streamer fly—the original suspending bait—and it’s obvious that flyfishers must be successful in virtually any situation where jerkbaits produce. All that remains is the profile component.
Bob Clouser’s original dumbbell-eyed Deep Minnow bears little resemblance to the variations sold commercially now. Many of the newer versions have heavier eyes that are placed near the hook-eye. And the flies are shorter than the originals. They tend to produce that quick up-and-down action of a jig with trailer or head-weighted plastic worm. Again, that works occasionally, but we’re considering the imitation of larger forage fish—or jerkbaits. Clouser’s originals, designed to catch smallmouth bass, were up to five inches long!
A master fly tier himself, Dan Marini took an approach similar to Clouser’s when he attempted to concoct a streamer for bass in his neck of the woods. Marini knew that some bulk-producing natural materials were more opaque than other hairs and also that some synthetics—whether by accident or design—were more translucent than others. The former he tied with extra flash material, after experimentation demonstrated that the opaque, yet glittery, style excelled when greater silhouette was required. He found that a somewhat less dense look with more translucence was preferable in clear water under bright conditions.
Most flyfishers hunt bass either with surface poppers or streamers and creepy-crawly leech things that measure about 3 to 3½ inches long. If you’re trying to imitate the profile of a big jerkbait, however, that’s not nearly long enough. Here’s a good gauge: with your hand open and fingers extended, check the distance between the tip of your middle finger and at least the middle of your palm. That’s about the right size for a fall or early spring flash streamer for bass. Shad, perch, smelt and alewives are great color/pattern archetypes. Captain Dave Beattie of Epping, N.H., makes a deadly factotum of a streamer—a multitasking pattern with grizzly feather flanks that freshwater bass just can’t let go by.
OTHER OPTIONS
What about those times when the big suspending or sinking-minnow look imparted by your streamers falls short, maybe because the bass decide they’d rather have a plastic worm on the bottom? The Woolly Bugger and various leech patterns will catch bass in such circumstances, but their profile falls a bit short of a standard worm. Let’s borrow from salt water again. Several years ago, well-known fly-angler Lou Tabory concocted a simple, deadly pattern for stripers that eat eels whenever they can get them. Lou’s Snake Fly undulates beautifully and can be worked slowly near the bottom like some kind of leech/eel critter. A flyfisher can’t replicate the exact hop of a weighted plastic worm or jig-and-eel, but this fly comes close.
There are a variety of shorter silicone- or epoxy-headed saltwater flies available that’ll do just fine when the fish want something a bit smaller to chew. If you’re a fly tier, try one of my Tubelet flies built with a conehead weight inside a length of tubing (like Corsair) with rubber tentacles that imitate those of a plastic tube lure.
Like any bass angler who knows his stuff, Dan Marini prefers sharp drops close to various structure when fishing in open, cold water. In many reservoirs, old river channels provide such drops. But just how cold can the water be and still give up largemouths to a giant streamer? The coldest water in which I’ve found streamer-eating bass was around 38 degrees. Friends catch fish when it’s even a couple of degrees colder. What about smallies?
“Smallmouths—they’re an enigma,” says Dan. “In fall, the bigmouths are about where you’d find them in spring. But smallies may or may not use the same areas; you’ve got to get on them right away before they move again—at least when you’re flyfishing. They’re harder to pattern, but I’ll figure it out.” No doubt he will.
HEAVYWEIGHTS OF FALL
As she prepares to spawn, a mature female bass carries hundreds of thousands of eggs, and the added weight can be substantial relative to the size and age of the fish. In fact, of the 10 heaviest bass on record, only two were caught beyond spring, the normal spawning season. George Perry’s world-record largemouth of 22 pounds, 4 ounces, came out of Lake Montgomery, Ga., on June 2, 1932, and David Zimmerlee caught the sixth largest bass, 20 pounds, 15 ounces, from Lake Miramar, Calif., on June 23, 1973. “Boy, just imagine how much she would have weighed if she still had her eggs!” is a common lament of anglers who catch bass in late spring. But much depends on when in the post-spawn period the bass is caught, according to Gene Gilliland of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. “If the bass has spawned recently, it is lighter by as much as the roe weighed and will remain underweight for several days,” says Gilliland. “Then the female will go on a feeding binge. By fall, the bass may weigh just as much as or more than it did when it was carrying eggs.”
Gilliland notes that a primary reason so many record-size bass are caught in spring is because that is when they are most vulnerable to fishing pressure. They congregate in the shallows then and anglers can sight-fish them. Afterward, momma bass disperse and are harder to locate.
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