Find the Bait, Find the Bass – On The Water
The fall timeframe for bass fishing in the Northeast is truly special and unique to our bodies of water. The changing of the leaves, water temperature, and location of the bass keeps an angler attentive to the environment. In the words of Shimano Pro and Connecticut native Alex Wetherell, “It’s like a living puzzle. You’re constantly changing from day to day. Everything’s changing, leaves are changing, and cold fronts are arriving. It makes you adapt, and because of that, you become a better angler.”
The fall in the Northeast can bring some of the best days of the year. With all this change happening, there is one constant that can help you consistently locate fish throughout the fall—the bait.
Baitfish are prominent in many Northeast lakes, from smelt, herring, perch, and so on. In the fall, most of these baitfish begin to group and move to their winter areas, making them easy targets for bass. Locating bait schools will keep you near both largemouth and smallmouth bass.
Begin your search for baitfish schools in obvious areas such as big points or entrances to coves and creeks. These locations are where baitfish hold during the summer before they group up and head deeper.
Your electronics are the best way to quickly locate baitfish. Forward-facing sonar works amazingly well at finding baitfish, but traditional 2D sonar will do the job as well. Mark the baitfish and then fish around those schools with imitators, choosing colors based on the primary baitfish in that body of water.
No electronics? No problem. When looking for schools of baitfish in my kayak, I use a dropshot rig with a very small soft plastic. I fish it around high-possibility baitfish locations such as those points and creek mouths mentioned earlier and wait to feel small bites from multiple baitfish. Once located, I switch to a larger soft plastic or baitfish imitator to hunt for nearby bass.
The most effective baits for both largemouth and smallmouth bass are the dropshot, finesse swimbaits, jerkbaits, and topwater baits. You can never go wrong with perch patterns in the Northeast. They are abundant in almost every body of water, and bass love them. Perch group in very large schools, which makes them easy to find. Other than perch patterns, green pumpkin, white, and black match most available baitfish in any lake or pond.
Lastly, don’t forget to go big. Large swimbaits or topwaters that match the hatch can produce the biggest bass of your life in the fall.
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