There’s one good thing about September. Only the first part of it is as bad as August. That’s the way a lot of bass fisherman feel, and I’m one of them.
The first part of September is tough, really tough. The end of September can be fairly good — when fish start moving back in the creeks and biting a little — but on the whole, it’s a tough month. Fish are moving around terribly; they’re spread out and hard to catch.
The first part of September, I don’t know — it’s usually a good time to go up in the river section of a lake and try to scratch out a few shallow fish. You’re fishing for five bites a day and hoping you get ’em. It’s still summer, most of the fish in the lake are still deep, and they’re starting to migrate — that really makes them hard to catch.
Depending on where you’re fishing in North Carolina, you might find some bass schooling — especially if you’re fishing a lake that’s got herring. I’ve actually caught ’em at main-lake bluff banks or steep banks.
There are some guys who catch bass junk fishing — getting one here and there on different stuff.
But you can usually look forward to things getting better later in the month because baitfish will start to move back into creeks, and bass will follow them.
They’ll start to get on long points, road beds, creek-channel breaks — and brush is good. September is one time brush is good; bass like to get around wood in the fall. The first BASS tournament I won, at Buggs Island in late September, some of my fish came off brush piles.
The first part of the month, you’re probably going to need something like a Rapala DT-16 to get down to them, but by the end of September, they’ve usually moved to where they’re 12-feet deep. Then you can catch ’em on a DT-14 or a DT-10.
Brush is good, brush and rock.
The later in September it gets, the better rock gets. As far as colors go, chartreuses are hard to beat, but your bone/black and the old carp colors are also real good.
When fish start to move back into creeks, I really study my depth-finder, and not just to find the creek-channel beds and drops I like to fish.
One thing I pay attention to is where the baitfish are. I like to see how deep the shad are, because that will tell you most of the time how deep the bass are going to be.
If you see a ball of bait in 10 to 12 feet of water, more than likely, that’s the depth the bass are holding. You just have to find good drops and brush at those depths.
At some lakes, certain creeks get the reputation of being the better fall creeks — usually, it’s creeks at the upper end of the lake. But you can’t say, “I’m going to go in there and fish.”
Don’t get stuck in one creek if the fish aren’t biting in there, and that can happen. A lot of times at my home lake, High Rock, they may really be biting in Flat Swamp Creek and not hitting a lick in Abbotts Creek.
You’ve got to keep moving and fishing creeks until you find fish that are active and feeding.
If I go into a creek and don’t find fish in three or four hours, I go to another creek. When I’m preparing for a tournament, I’ll spend parts of practice days at different creeks until I find fish. When I do, I can concentrate on where those fish are going to be and how to best catch them.
And when that’s all done, I can look forward to October, when fishing really gets better.
I promise.
David Fritts is a 51-year-old pro bass fisherman from Lexington. He won the 1993 Bassmasters Classic champion, the 1997 FLW Tour Championship and the 1994 Bass Angler of the Year title. He is sponsored by Ranger boats, Evinrude outboards, Rapala, Zoom, VMC, American RodSmiths, Bass Pro Shops and Chevrolet.
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