There’s one thing about September that I’m absolutely sure of — it can be a tough month to catch fish.If you tournament fish, you realize it won’t take the kind of weights to win or place that it takes most of the rest of the year. At Lake Murray, for instance, those 20-pound stringers it takes most of the year to do anything — in September, you see a lot of 12- to 15-pound winning limits.
There are two big problems I think I can identify.
First, there’s the issue of water quality. A lot of times, in September, a lake will go through the “turnover” phase and fishing will be tough. There are a lot of situations where the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water will be relatively low, and fish will be affected and won’t bite as well.
Second, bass tend to suspend in open water, so it’s tough to catch them because they’re not relating to any specific kind of structure of cover you can target. They’re also hard to locate because they’re not in the usual kinds of places where they set up to ambush prey. They’re relating to schools of baitfish instead of bottom structure.
I know a lot of fishermen notice shad starting to come to the top of the water by mid-summer. All the bait seems to suspend, and the bass typically go to those same areas where the bait is. Most of the bait is near the surface, in deep water, and bass will be around suspended baits in open water.
However, there are so many suspended bass you have a chance of getting a fairly good early-morning topwater bite. Fish are roaming around and feeding a lot at night.
You can generally expect to be able to catch some of those fish in the first hour or so of daylight using a variety of topwater lures.
A little later in the fall, bass tend to feed heavily as the water starts to cool off, but in the Carolinas, it’s usually very late in the month before that happens. So what you have to do is find situations where you have bass that are suspended and are relating to some kind of cover.
Two situations I like to fish in September are brush piles and bridge pilings. A bass can suspend off the bottom and still relate to a brush pile, and they often will. And bridge pilings are really good,because the bass can suspend in deep water, and at the same time, they can be relating to concrete pilings.
Aaron Martens almost won the Bassmasters Classic at Lake Wylie a couple of years ago by fishing the pilings of one bridge (N.C. 49) a few hundred yards from the launch point. He didn’t move very much, and he was very patient, which is extremely important.
You can fill up a boat, such as my Triton TR21X, and run the gas tank empty if you want to — but you don’t have to. You have to be confident there are fish in an area and just fish for them, slowly and patiently.
Patience was a big key for Aaron, who finished second at that Classic. But he definitely caught more keeper fish off the bridge pilings, by a large margin, than anybody else — and that almost won it for him.
When you’re fishing bridge pilings, you want to cast upstream and work your bait back downstream. Baitfish and bass definitely relate to the shady side of those pilings, so take that into account when you figure out where you want to set up to fish at pilings.
When I’m fishing for suspended bass, I like to fish a jerkbait, but I really like to fish a plastic worm with a very light sinker, no heavier than 1/8 ounce. Most of your bites are going to come as the worm falls because bass aren’t anywhere near the bottom. So you want a light weight to make a slow worm fall.
The worm I fish in this situation depends on the water. If I’m fishing clear water, I will probably fish a 4- to 6-inch Berkley Power Worm. If the water is stained, I may go with a worm that’s anywhere from 7- to 10-inches long. The only thing I want to be small is the weight.
As small a weight as I’m fishing, I’m still fishing a fairly long rod. If I’m at the upper end of a reservoir where the bass may be suspending only 5- or 10-feet deep, I’ll use a 6 1/2-foot medium-heavy All-Star bait-casting rod and a Pfleuger reel spooled with 14-pound Trilene XT or Berkley Big Game line.
If I’m going to be fishing at the lower end, where the water is deeper and clearer, the bass probably will be suspended deeper, maybe out to 15 or 20 feet, then I’ll go to a 7-foot rod, because with that longer rod I can get a little more leverage for a better hookset.
But more than anything you bring to the lake, the most important thing is patience. There aren’t going to be any of those limits caught where all the fish are 5-pounders. You have to head out from the dock with that kind of attitude, knowing it’s going to be tough, and it can be frustrating.
If you knock out a fish or two on topwater the first thing in the morning, and you can scratch out a fish or two at a brush pile, and another fish or two at a bridge piling, those five “little” fish might wind up looking pretty big at the weigh-in stand.
Davy Hite is a 40-year-old native of Saluda, S.C., who now resides in Ninety Six, S.C. He has fished professionally since 1993, when he qualified for his first Bassmasters Classic. He was the BASS Angler of the Year in 1997 and 2002, and he has won the 1999 Bassmasters Classic and the 1998 FLW Tour Championship. He is sponsored by Triton boats, Evinrude outboards, All-Star rods, Pfleuger reels, Pure Fishing (Berkeley), Owner hooks and Solar-Bat sunglasses.
Be the first to comment