When I back my boat down the ramp this month, there’ll be some different baits tied to the rods on my casting deck. In October I go back to a spinnerbait, a bait I haven’t picked up in several months, and I obviously fish some topwater, so I’ll have a couple of buzzbaits ready to go. Those are normally my two favorite baits this month.
I tend to fish really fast in the fall and cover a lot of water — my foot hardly ever comes off my Minnkota trolling motor — and those are good cover baits. And with bass keying primarily on shad in the fall, they’re good baits in that regard.
What I like to do is head for the upper end of a lake — no matter whether it’s Murray or Wateree or Greenwood. You need just a little bit of stained water — it doesn’t need to be muddy, just off color.
This time of the year, fish are really roaming a lot, and you’ll pick off a fish here and a fish there. You don’t find them bunched up like you do when they’re in prespawn when you’re using a spinnerbait.
When I catch a few fish in the spring, I’m likely to stop and stay in an area for a while, but in the fall, when I catch one or two, I might make another lap around an area, but I don’t slow down or stop. Sometimes, I do this at the back of a big creek at the lower end of a lake.
Beard’s Creek at Lake Murray is a good example. It’s a big, main creek, and I can go in there and fish the back of it like I fish the river section of a lake — doing the same things.
I try to throw at just about any kind of shallow cover I can find, and I really pay attention. When you catch that first fish, you need to ask yourself: “Was it at a stump? A rock pile? A brush pile? A sandy place? A dock?”
You catch one or two bass at the same kind of cover, and you can put a good pattern together, even if you’re really fishing fast.
When I’m spinnerbait fishing in October, there’s a particular bait I really like — a half-ounce Screamin’ Eagle, which is a bait that has the profile of a 1/4-ounce bait.
It’s very compact — a lot of the extra weight is in the shaft. You can fish it a little deeper and you can reel it a little faster, plus, I’ve had better luck in the fall with baits that are more compact.
I’ll use a trailer hook anytime I think I can get away with it, and that’s most of the time. There will be a few times when you’re fishing the kind of cover that will keep you hung up a lot; that’s when I won’t use a trailer hook.
I’ll fish a spinnerbait on a 6 1/2-foot medium-action All-Star rod, with a Pfleuger Supreme baitcasting reel that has a 6.3-to-1 retrieve ratio. I’ll spool it with 17-pound Trilene XT mono.
When I can find stained water, I’ll stick with a spinnerbait most of the day. When I don’t find the off-color water that I really like, I’ll fish a buzzbait most of the time, and you can fish one all day in the fall. Don’t be afraid to fish a buzzbait in the middle of the day during a real sunny day because bass tend to chase baits a lot in the fall.
I’ll use a trailer hook with a buzzbait nearly all of the time, and I’ll experiment with several different kinds until I find what the fish like.
I like to fish an old-fashioned Lunker Lure when I want a bait that doesn’t have a clacker, and I use a few different buzzbaits that have clackers.
I fish a buzzbait with a 7-foot medium-action All-Star rod, the same reel I use for a spinnerbait, but I’ll fish 17-pound Berkley Sensation line, which has less stretch than Trilene XT. It doesn’t have quite the abrasion resistance, but with less stretch, you can get a better hookset.
You can expect to catch enough fish using a spinnerbait or buzzbait to have a really fun day, but there’s another reason for fishing in October that’s just as important.
I like to deer hunt as much as anybody, and October is the month in South Carolina, but you can really learn a lot about the lakes around here if you’ll fish them in the fall.
Typically in South Carolina, our lakes are drawn down some in October. You can cover a lot of ground fishing a spinnerbait or buzzbait, and you can see a lot of the shallow cover that you don’t see in the spring — stumps, rock piles, brush.
I like to make a few notes about the stuff I see and mark down things on my maps. I’ve learned an awful lot at Lake Murray through the years by fishing in the fall, and I’ve caught a lot of fish on the stuff I found when the water was down.
And learning something while you’re catching fish is never a bad thing.
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 .
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