Magic fall number is 60

When water temperature gets there, watch out

Bass fishing has really gotten into its comeback from the slowdown of August and September as the water is cooling down. If you are a regular reader, you might remember an article a couple of years ago called “National Buzzbait Week” — a coin termed by my friend and next-door neighbor, Steve. He is retired now, but he once told his boss he was going to take off the last week of October because of National Buzzbait Week. You should be excited about that week, but it does, like everything in fishing, depend on the conditions.

As you prepare for the annual event, its good to get on the water ahead of time and do some fishing. You know to have the buzzbait at the ready, but what other baits are good as the leaves really begin to change colors.

I called Jeff Coble, who lives on Kerr Lake and considered one of North Carolina’s best crankbait fishermen, and asked him what to expect. He said fishing is tough until the water temperature gets down around the 60-degree mark — which is about what I thought, but with an interesting twist.

“Before the water cools off to 60 or below,” he said. “if you get a real cloudy, windy day as a front blows through, the fishing can be quite good.” I was thinking that I agreed with him; that’s always been the case, but what he said next surprised me He said he would still be cranking in the 10- to 20-foot range, but only catching them when the water was nasty. I expected him to be fishing shallow on those type of days, but it was just the opposite. If it is post-front and sunny, he said the shad move shallow, and the deep bite suffers.

The bottom line is, Coble fishes opposite of what most people would do in the fall — deep when cloudy, windy and low barometric pressure, and shallow when there is high pressure and sun in the fall. It’s the kind of approach that makes most people successful: doing something different from the crowd.

Looking back at my own fishing, I often wondered why a passing tropical storm would ruin my shallow patterns, even back into September. You would think it would get everything moving in shallow water on days like that — they sure do in the winter and spring. I guess fall is the opposite of the spring.

I am going to be trying this fall to figure out that threshold of water temperature that makes them bite shallow as a front approaches. I am betting it is around 60 degrees as Coble mentioned — which often coincides with National Buzzbait Week.

I’ll see you on the water fishing my typical back of the creeks and stumps when it is sunny, but when it gets nasty I might give the deep water a try — a least for a little while.