Just curious on patterns and techniques that guys use to locate and catch fall smallies. I live in northern michigan. Just moved here and trying to get a jump on my learning curve for fall fishing. I live in the Alpena area and have quite a diverse area to fish. Looking forward to your replies.
I know alot of guys throw blade baits up there in the fall
I love blade baits as well. Silver Buddy is my favorite but I also throw Hopkins Spoons. Typically in early October they start hitting top water baits again. I love Chug Bugs and Devil's Horse's. On the flats I will throw a 3.75" swim bait.
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You're in my favorite spot in Michigan for monster smallies, and fall is the best time. I love Hubbard lake but Grand, Long, and Thunder Bay are all top notch. My favorite fall techniques are a tube, umbrella rig, and a swing head jig with a rage craw.
Spooks on bluff walls.
Fall is awesome, when I lived in Southern Michigan I would rarely say that. Fall brings something out of the brown fish. I typically do best pretty deep. It starts with a swimbait and heavy tube bite for me until it gets into the 40's then you have to switch to a blade. I do a lot of graphing deep structure until I find them.
Inland lakes have a great A-rig, spinnerbait, crankbait moving bite in early fall.
A-rigs, Coffee tubes, and 3-4" swimbaits.
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I'll throw a Spook far too much when I could probably be getting bit more reliably on something else during the fall because seeing them blow up on it is just so damn much fun. They'll eat it down to 50 at least, and I once caught one in 48 degree water that was busting shad on the Upper Miss. Past that, I love throwing jerkbaits for them that time of year...they'll just hit that thing like it slept with their mother and bragged about it to the whole town. Echoing a lot of the above, wobble heads (Biffle Bug / hard head style), football jigs, Carolina rigs, cranks, tubes, and wacky worms (Neko rigged for deeper fish) all work really well. That Neko rig is a sneaky effective thing to tempt them after a front when they're being lethargic. Dyeing the tip of a tail orange always works well. Of course smallmouth will always hit a drop shot.
I've not had the consistent success that others have had with the blade baits...I'd love to have someone show me the ropes on that type of bite at some point because I know the damn things work. Just tough for me to throw with no confidence.
It seems you really need to cover water in the early to mid fall until they start bunching up later in the fall when the water temp hits the mid to low 40s. That's not to say they don't school during the earlier fall, I just think they really roam a lot so you have to move to find them. Find perch or balls of shiners/shad/whatever baitfish they key on in your fishery, find the smallmouth. Once the water cools down to that mid to low 40s range, hopefully you've got them located on the sharp breaks as they usually will stay there as long as you can fish for them, and keep coming back to the same spots year after year at that. Otherwise it's a lot of searching and a lot of not catching until you find that pile of them. Compounding that difficulty is that, because they can get lethargic, I think it can be easy to fish past them if you don't know they're there.
For what it's worth, my experience is that smallmouth are generally more active than largemouth in colder water...until they aren't. There's a point in the mid to high 30s where it seems like they're just done and you have to have a bait just sitting in their face for ages to get them to bite, while a largemouth will still be somewhat active in those type of temps. I've caught quite a few largemouth through the ice, for example, while smallmouth tend to be nearly impossible to catch through the ice. Not completely impossible - if you land on a pile of them you can catch them - but they're sure not roaming around or looking to eat.
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surprised nobody mentioned flukes.. smallies in fall love flukes
Good call. Always forget to mention those but I have one rigged up quite often during the fall! I throw them a lot pre- and post-spawn for large and smallmouth as well.Originally Posted by kandkkustomzhydrographics
2011 Skeeter ZX225
225 Yamaha HPDI Series 2
Minn Kota Ultrex 112 52"
Console: HDS 16 Carbon
Bow: HDS 12 Carbon, Solix 12 G2, Mega 360, Garmin 106 SV, LVS 34
Cant wait to try some of those techniques. Thanks guys
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