I love to deer hunt in November, and there are times I really love other deer hunters — like when I’m bass fishing. When you go to the lake this month, the bass will probably be biting, and even better, the lake won’t be crowded — because most of the fishermen are out hunting.
The fishing can be really, really good all the way until it starts to get really, really cold — and that usually doesn’t happen in North Carolina for a while.
You know, when I was thinking about writing this column, I realized November is a month I might not really want to let everybody know about.
But hey, here goes.
If you think about the weather in November, it’s a dead ringer for your best spring fishing. Water temperatures are usually in the 60s, and that usually means excellent fishing. In fact, fishing in the fall will be good as the temperature drops all the way through the 50s. It doesn’t really slow down until it gets below 50 and the bass move out into deep water.
When November arrives, bass have spent most of the fall in the backs of creeks where they’ve followed the baitfish. As long as cold weather doesn’t show up early, that’s where you’re likely to find them — from halfway back to the back of creeks.
What I like to do — and it’s one of my favorite patterns to fish all year long — is to locate stumps that are right on the edges of creek channels and fish them with crankbaits.
Some of the stumps, you can see; some you have to find with your depth-finder.
Several of my favorite trips ever have been catching fish off stumps you could just barely see below the surface.
Brush piles also can be good in November, but most of the time, I’m looking for stumps.
You can catch fish off single stumps, or off places where there are three or four stumps together. A lot of times, it’ll be a place where there’s just one big stump.
I like to start out by going along a channel and fishing all the stumps I can find. It’s one fish here and one fish there. You’ll get quality fish, better-and-average fish, but you’re looking at getting six or seven good bites a day.
If I’m in the back of a creek, I’ll come out to where the flat starts and I’ll look for stumps along the edge of the channel as I work my way out. That’s one of my favorite ways to fish.
At West Point Lake in Georgia, I caught some of the biggest fish I’ve ever caught doing just that in the fall — fishing stumps along the edge of the creek channel.
It’s great to be able to sit in 12 to 14 feet of water and throw up on the flats. It’s a great time to fish a shallow-running crankbait like a DT-6 or even a DT-10 if they’re a little deeper, and one bait a lot of fishermen forget about that’s a great bait in November is a Shad Rap.
Everybody thinks it’s just a springtime bait, but it’s a tremendous bait in the fall.
Even though I’m fishing relatively shallow water, I still want to use my longer American Rodsmith cranking rods because I can use a line that’s a little heavier if I need to and it will still cast well. Normally, I use 10-pound-test cranking line, but if I know I’m going to be fishing some heavy brush or stumps, I can go up to 12-pound.
If I locate stumps I think are holding fish, I’ll work them from a lot of different angles. I’ll sit deep and cast shallow and work the bait out that way, or I’ll move to where I can parallel the stumps. Or you can move your boat up a little and cast out to the stumps and work them that way.
There will be something that causes a fish to hold at one particular stump or at a certain place around a stump that you can’t normally figure out. There may be a fish at a stump that has 10 feet of water beside it, and the next stump there’s 8 feet of water and no fish.
If we get some colder weather in November, fish will start to move back into deep water, and they’ll start to move out of the creeks — or at least toward the main body of the lake. It’s all different, depending on the lake.
At some lakes, they’ll start to move out of creeks but they can still be shallow. At other lakes, they’ll move straight out to deep water and out of the creek, and in some other lakes, it seems like they just sort of filter out the same way they’ve filtered in. When that kind of thing happens, I like to get at the end of flats close to deep water or at secondary points.
Most of the time when I’m fishing crankbaits in the fall, I’ll stick with basic shad colors, unless the water is a little bit stained. I think chartreuse with a black back can be a very effective plug.
If you’re out there, that is.
Go ahead and deer hunt. You don’t want to be out messing with fish when the rut is approaching.
Wink, wink.
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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