This week let’s talk about Fall fishing for black bass in the southern part of the USA. Fall is my favorite time of the year to fish for bass. The weather is a lot cooler and as a rule there is not a lot of wind or rain.

Most of the lakes don’t have a lot of fishermen as most are in a hunting mode starting with dove season, teal season, followed by archery season for deer, followed by gun season for deer, and of course my favorite pastime of quail hunting.

Fishing public waters in September to the middle of November is like having your own private lake. I also like the Fall because the bass bite almost every day until the cold fronts start to blow down from the North. As the water temps begin to cool down, the blacks begin to move from their summer haunts in deep water back to shallow water where they bite really good. The bass remind me of bears in the Fall as they feed a lot and very often to get ready for the upcoming winter and hibernation for several months.

I prefer to fish the creeks in the Fall and I will use a spinner bait along the banks of the creek to locate the bass. I really enjoy fishing Sam Rayburn Lake in the Fall going up the Angelina River and then fishing the feeder creeks. I like to put my boat in the middle of the creek and then cast a spinner bait to the bank of the creek slow rolling the bait over stumps, logs and any kind of a lay down in 3 to 8 feet of water.

In Texas the Fall usually is a dry period and most of the lakes are 2 to 3 feet below normal pool. This means that you have to use your electronics to find the bait fish which have moved to the creeks and brought their friends with them—the bass. I use this very same pattern to find and locate the bass in dead of winter except I change from a spinner bait to a black & blue 3/8 oz jig with a pork trailer.

The bass are not the only fish that migrate to the creeks in the Fall as this is a great time to catch crappie in shallow water. I have several brush piles in 15 to 20 feet of water in Cedar Creek Lake. Well, the crappie left my piles around the first of October and are now around boat docks that have brush in 4 to 8 feet of water.

I personally don’t enjoy fishing boat houses but they are an excellent place to catch blacks in the Fall or really most of the year if you enjoy fishing these structures. You need to be fairly proficient in casting up under the docks, especially in the summer when the sun is bright and the bass seek the shade.

This concludes this week’s tips. There won’t be a blog post or e-mail next week as I am going to Lake El Salto and Lake Comedero in Mexico. Denny Brauer takes a group of friends to Salto every year in October and they just left after having great fishing. They had many bass over 10 lb. and I really need some of that action!

Good luck with your fishing and wear that lifejacket!

There’s always more to learn about fishing!

I want to remind you all that this week we open up and start our Mexico bass fishing and Brazil peacock bass fishing as we begin our 37th year of outfitting.Now let’s get down to this week’s fishing tip. I am always talking about black bass on this blog so let’s talk about another fish this week. Crappie! During the early 1970s all of us in the fishing business began to see a great decline in our black bass populations. We began preaching CATCH & RELEASE to help save our favorite sport fish. This program has been very successful and we now have good populations of black bass in most of the lakes in the USA. It’s true the bass are harder to catch today than they were before the tournament age began in the early 1970s.

We have many more bass fishermen with great equipment, and lots of great know-how. Since we began to not keep bass to eat that left a lot of us bass eaters without our favorite fish as table fare. Therefore many of us went to catching crappie or channel catfish as table fare instead of bass.

Crappie are just plain good eating anyway you cook them and they can be a blast to catch if you use light tackle. Sometimes I use minnows but 90% of the time I use small jigs and small spoons in the 1/8 oz or even 1/32 oz worked straight up and down. I personally prefer to use 6 lb mono up to 10 lb mono on a small level wind reel fitted to a very small light weight rod. This type of equipment will turn your crappie fishing into a nice challenge with a good fight from your fish.

I feel the very best way to become a great crappie fisherman is to put out some brush piles in the lake or river or where ever you plan to fish. I like to use a mixture of willow trees and some hardwoods in my brush piles. I weigh down the piles with a 2 gallon plastic bucket filled with concrete tied to the trunk of the trees. The willows will draw in the baitfish within a week and then the hardwood will last for a longer time after the willows have rotted.

The brush piles will begin to grow algae which will attract bait fish and then here comes the crappie, bass, and lots of different species of fish. These crappie piles will bring you lots of pleasure for a long, long time and provide many hours of pleasure for your guests. This is way to get a child or a beginning fisherman started as the action is normally fast and furious. You won’t waste a lot of time looking for places to fish, which is boring to children.

Brush piles are really easy to make as most people know someone who wants to get rid of brush or unwanted trees. Old vacant lots are a good place to look for unwanted brush and trees and in one hour with a chain saw you can cut all the brush you will need for years.

Now the secret is where to put this brush in your favorite lake so you can fish it most months during the year. I prefer to find a sharp drop in depth of 15 to 25 feet of water and I scatter the brush from top to bottom. Using these depths I can usually catch crappie most all months of the year except during the spawn.

Try spending a little work time building crappie brush piles and you will have years of enjoyment catching and eating these fine fish.

Good luck with your fishing and wear that lifejacket.

There’s always more to learn about fishing!