It’s hard to talk about bass fishing in October in terms of things that should happen because so many things can. October is a month of change; a lot of things are happening, and there are a lot of variables depending on the weather, the level of the lake you’re fishing, whether or not we’ve had a hurricane or tropical storm and you’re fishing flooded conditions, or if there’s been a drought and you have low water. The weather can be hot, cool or cold.
A number of years ago, for example, Randy Blaukat won a bass tournament at Buggs Island Lake by removing the plug from his bass boat and halfway sinking it to get under a bridge and fish a little creek in Buggs Island. Nobody else could get to it, because the water level was unusually high after a couple of tropical storms. But two or three years ago, you couldn’t have gotten to where Randy won the tournament because there was no water — the drought was so severe the lake level was down close to 10 feet in the fall.
Generally speaking, however, in October, fish are usually moving up out of deep water into a more catchable range. They can be anywhere from 2- to 12-feet deep, depending upon where you’re fishing and how far along you’re fishing in the month.
If I had to pick a depth to fish in October, it would probably be 5 to 8 feet, especially from the middle to the end of the month.
One thing that has consistently worked for me has been going halfway back in the major creeks that feed a big reservoir and fish either a little bit farther up in the creek or a little bit out toward the mouth. Fish that go all the way back in a creek tend to be in shallow water, and I tend to like to fish a little bit deeper. I’ve had some excellent catches fishing around the middle of a creek in the fall.
Exactly where you find fish in a section of a creek depends a lot on the water level and the fishing pressure the lake gets.
If you pull into a creek and there aren’t many boats and the level is close to normal, bass will pull up shallow and be around the kind of cover you can easily see — shallow rockpiles and brush, stumps or laydowns and docks.
If you pull in a creek and there are a lot of boats and the water is down a little bit, they’ll pull out off the bank; they may be on stumps or brush that you can barely see the top of when you get right up on it, where the top of the stump is a foot or so below the surface.
Another factor is where you are in a creek. If you’re back in the back of a creek, you’re going to be sitting in no more than 7 or 8 feet of water in the middle of the creek channel, and you’ll still be fishing the bank. The farther out you go out in a creek, they’ll pull back out closer to deep water. They may hold on an abrupt drop, or somewhere on the creek channel where it swings in close to the bank, but very seldom have I caught ’em in October way up on a flat.
Bass tend to get scattered out in October because there are so many things going on. You can catch them a lot of different ways; you just have to sit down and try to figure out how to catch the biggest ones.
I like to fish a crankbait any time I can, and October is a month when I don’t have to try too hard. It’s usually a good crankbait month because bass are keyed in on shad, they’re aggressive, and you can cover a lot of water with a crankbait.
Bass don’t tend to be schooled up like they are in June. It’s not unusual to pull up on a little rocky point and catch four or five, but you aren’t going to catch 15 or 20 without moving.
As far as colors go, shad colors should dominate — shad, carp, plum shad. Rapala has a new color out that’s a killer: it’s got a brown back and kind of off-colored sides. It’s a little bit darker than the old carp color, and I’ve had a lot of success with it. I think Bass Pro Shops has an exclusive on it; it’s a really good color.
A DT-10 can be a really good crankbait, depending on what time of the month you’re fishing, and a little DT-6 is also really good. But my favorite crankbaits are little flat baits.
Rapala’s is the DT-Flat. Flat baits are small baits that look like big baits because of their flat sides. They’ll have a little bit wider action and because fish are more aggressive, that’s fine.
A flat bait will have a good roll, and it is a bait for aggressive fish; it will trigger a lot of strikes.
We worked really hard to get the DT-Flat just right, and it’s an excellent bait when the bass move up in the fall.
Editor’s note: David Fritts is a 49-year-old professional bass fisherman from Lexington. He was the 1993 BASS Masters Classic champion, the 1993-94 BASS Angler of the Year and the 1997 FLW Tour Champion. His sponsors include: Bass Pro Shops, Evinrude Motors, Ranger Boats, Chevy Trucks, Minn-Kota trolling motors, American Rodsmith, Rapala crankbaits and fishing line, Zoom plastics, Solar Bat sun glasses, Mountain Dew, Gripper (ECS Anchor Supply), VMC hooks, Pro Pocket and Blue Fox.
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