Recently I wrote a brief article entitled Late Summer/Early Fall Transition Period that you can read by clicking on the Tips Archive tab of our web site www.tennesseebassguides.com. In this article I tried to give you a good understanding of how water temperature relates to triggering the fall transition process. It might help you to read that article first before finishing this one. The "Fall Transition" of Largemouth, Smallmouth and Spotted Bass just doesn't happen overnight. It's not like you turn a switch on or off and magically it's happened. Rather, the length of this process is almost totally dependent on mother nature. How quickly the water temperature changes is the key to this process. And during this change you will find bass holding in different patterns in different parts of the lake.

Under normal conditions the upper regions of the lake will be the first to experience that "Right Drop In Water Temperature" that will propel bass into their Fall patterns. And depending on how large the lake is, bass in the middle portion of the lake might still be holding in "Late Summer Patterns" while bass further toward to lower end may not even be at that stage yet. Faced with these multiple patterns and changing water temperatures one of the best search baits I know of that can help you probe various water depths and help you cover as much water as possible is a crankbait. In the paragraphs below I want to share with you several different baits that I use and why I use them. My hope is that this information will help you crank your way to success this fall.

Deep Crankbaits

Let's start with the deepest pattern fish and work our way on up. These would be the bass that more than likely would be in the lower region on up to mid lake during the late summer/early fall period. The water temperature that these bass are holding in would still be more or less the warmest portion in the lake. These fish may be holding on points that gradually get deeper as they extend out into the lake, or ledges that offers semi shallow water on it's crest then suddenly drops off into deep water at the main channel. Depending on your type of lake they may be holding along old flooded river channel bends that still have stumps and rock. Many times these ledges will also have allot of sand and slit. But the one factor that always has to be there to make it a productive place is "Structure". My favorite crankbait to probe structure for these deep water bass is a Luhr-Jensen Hot Lips in one of three sizes. www.luhrjensen.com In the picture to the left the top bait is the 3/4 model, the middle bait is the 1/2 model and the bottom bait is the 1/4 size. On 10lb test the 3/4 model will run 18-24 feet deep, the 1/2 model will run 15-18 feet deep and the 1/4 model will run 12-16 feet deep. I like the way these baits "Dive" straight down immediately. Much of this can be attributed to the Deep Dive Tri-Lobe Power Lip and it's computerized thin wall construction. These baits offer fantastic vibration and track incredibly straight. To get the most from these baits I use two different All Pro APX series rods. www.allpro.com The first is model number APX80HCA. This is a heavy action 8 foot casting rod with a forgiving tip that is absolutely fantastic for throwing big deep diving crankbaits like the 3/4 and 1/2 Hot Lips. If you have ever thrown a big deep bait like these on a rod that wasn't suited for this technique you are well aware of how tired your arms and wrists can get. Having the right rod makes a tremendous difference. The second is the APXCS7MHCA. This is a 7 foot medium heavy casting crankin rod that is ideal for the 1/4 model Hot Lips. All APX rods have unmatched sensitivity that is transmitted through the graphic rings on the handle that will allow you to feel every piece of structure that you pull these Hot Lips over. This is an important ingredient that I can't emphasize enough. You need to be able to feel the Hot Lips beating and banging it's way through-around and on the structure you are fishing looking for a reaction strike. When you catch a bass work that area completely, many times there will be several holding on the same piece of structure. Using my electronics I always like to start on the shallow part of the point or ledge and work my way out to the deeper water varying my retrieve as I work my way along. Color selection is something that you will have to experiment with. I always lean toward a shad colored bait when I can, but other colors can be just as deadly. Lure Jensen makes the three Hot Lips models in over 40 colors that can help you match your water color needs.

bass strikes a lure

There are several reasons that a bass strikes a lure. These include instinct reaction, agitation, defense of territory, or because they are hungry or think that they are hungry. I have often been asked by be- ginner anglers which of these are the most important. That's easy since striking in protection of territory is pretty much limited to defending a nest it therefore represents only a small window of time in the life of a female bass.
On the other hand, instinct reaction and feeding are really interlocked as they are in most predators. Because it is my strong belief that these are the reasons that I catch most of my fish, I have spent a considerable amount of time studying what they eat and likewise the color and patterns of those creatures.
If I were to ask what you consider the most important type of food for bass, I should get an answer from a from a fisherman that returns the answer with a question. Or I should say questions of where? what time of year? and even some specific points like what time of day? and at what depth? Not to mention factors that add other complications such as - what is the size of the lake?

"When you start planning a strategy for fishing for bass, run a check list in your mind and try to envision what you think should be on the menu for the bass you are going to try to catch."

Okay so lets cheat a bit and seek a most likely answer that will get us the highest likelihood of being right, the highest percent of the time. The answer would be shad. Think about a natural hunting instinct among predators. Many prefer to hunt in packs, on a prey that is abundant and more likely to concentrate in large, easily preyed upon groups. Now this is not to say that a school of shad is without its own defense. To begin with there are a lot of them in a school and an attacking group of bass will, like a group of attacking lions, pick off some of the prey and the rest will survive by sheer numbers and in the case of shad, their speed.
Not all shad are the same though. On the Lake 'O The Pines this winter I was working an area with large schools of shad which showed up in deep water on my depth finder. It didn't take long to figure out why I had trouble getting hits on my jigging spoon. I was following masses of gizzard shad. These fish rapidly grow past the size that any but the largest bass will try to tackle. Obviously I needed to find areas with their cousins, the threadfin shad.
These are the shad that tend to grow slowly and are a main table fare for bass. This is particularly so during the periods of the year when baitfish establish reproducible patterns and in the summer when the schooling of shad may occur at various depths is usually only limited by a lack of oxygen in certain parts of the lake. In the summer, this absence of shad below a given depth may be due to the stratification of the lake into certain depths below which there is an oxygen deficiency. If the surface of the lake is relatively calm during the day, shad will often school on the surface even over deep water. This instinct for shad to "run" on the top is a very useful observation in shallower parts of the lake since they are telling you that if there is enough oxygen for them, there's enough for bass in the same area.
Of course it would seem that all you have to do in the summer, or when the shad are bunched in deep water in the winter, is to use a shad type bait or spoon and you are in business. If it was only that simple. In the real world you can count on assured action if the bass truly are on shad, but likewise they often shift onto another food source and go off of the shad. This can be best typified by the fact that an area of aggressively feeding bass will give constant action all afternoon then suddenly shut down at dark. I have spent many an hour trying to force a bunch of the "old faithful" into continuing to hit cranks in the areas I know they are still located, but with the only difference being that the sun has set. They can be caught, but usually I have to switch to soft plastics. This has to mean that the school is no longer feeding as a school on shad, but loners will, if forced, occasionally hit a topwater bait.
Are shad the most useful table fare in providing forage that enables the bass population to increase in size and numbers? From the standpoint of several commercial fish farmers I have been told that Koi carp are very excellent forage for producing rapid growth as well as providing a population of bass which are in excellent condition and reach reproductive maturation rapidly.
So how many folks think of carp in a lake as a good forage? Actually you might rationalize that for a lot of the year, there are probably are few carp in the wild that are the right size for bass to forage. On the other hand there are, during the spring post-spawn periods, a lot of newly hatched carp and not by accident the bass will fall for a gold or bronze-colored crank during this period.
When thinking of the forage that bass select, you need to keep in mind that these fish are opportunistic feeders. Simply put if there are a lot of a particular type of bait in the right size and easily available, they are likely to feed on them even if this is only for a short period where there is such abundance.
When selecting lures, recognize that a lake with threadfin shad will always have some bass feeding on them. But others will definitely take advantage of periods of abundance of other things. An example, which is really brought home by the tendency of bass to work over crayfish during the spring shift to shallow water. This tracks just ahead of the spawn period of the bass, but the bass are shifting in and out of the areas in pre-spawn staging and will often be caught in much shallower water than you might expect by the water temperature.
There are a whole group of critters that crawl, or swim, along the lake bottom. These include the crayfish, but also tadpoles as well as various reptiles and amphibians. Soft plastic baits as well as the jig-n-pig type plugs represent lures that are interpreted as food in this domain. Likewise a slow-falling, soft plastic plug has an action like a wounded shad or bream. More often than not fish that are caught on these lures are fish that may not actually be in a school, but are on a pattern which places numbers of them in the same type of structure and/or depth at the same time.

"You need to keep in mind that these fish are opportunistic feeders."

Speaking of patterns, we most often fish for bass that make up what I consider individual fish. These bass are usually found as groups of two or even as loners. You are often actually pitching to individual stumps, the edge of vegetation, or working other types of patterns. This doesn't mean that just because the bass aren't bunched up and the pattern worked on a given day, it can't produce numbers of fish. These fish are more likely to hit a wider variety of items that enter into their sanctuary. In my opinion these fish are more prone to strike on instinct. If you think about it, if they wanted shad they would be in the schools trying to herd them into the "diner."
If a shad comes into the loner's backyard, it is fair game, but on the other hand shad aren't going to be out of school to begin with. So often these isolated bass will hit a shad-colored lure because there are a large number of minnows in the area - essentially the same color as shad. Minnows will usually linger in the same type of cover that the individual fish seek, while shad are more likely to be in open water in less restricted areas which permit ease of movement for the school.
Bream are another major forage for bass. The first critical time where large numbers of bream are together is in the spawning period of the late spring or early summer. Since this often occurs after bass have spawned, then these concentrations are choice for hungry post-spawn bass. I have never actually seen bass feed on spawning bream schools, but rather watched them patrol the edges of the beds and pick off a wayward sun perch. On the other hand, bream that bunch in deep channels after the first couple of fronts do attract concentrations of bass that will feed on the bream in a manner similar to a tighter pattern of their school activity on shad.
The bream, unlike schools of shad, are going to be next to structure most of the year and therefore in some of the same areas that are where bass spend periods away from schools. Scattered, or individual bass, as mentioned before are often fish which are feeding on other things than shad for most of the year. These same concepts apply to warm water conditions when fishing topwaters. A bream-colored bait may be of little value to schooling bass feeding on shad. On the other hand, scattered bass will hit either a shad color or an array of other colored baits. If you exclude shad when selecting a topwater, then your major color is something mimicking a bream or a number of dark-colored things that may land on the water and try to get away or swim to the bank.
When you start planning a strategy for fishing for bass, run a check list in your mind and try to envision what you think should be on the menu for the bass you are going to try to catch. Of course you will also have to factor in the time of year, depth of the water you want to work, and if you expect to work schools or establish a pattern for working scattered bass.
Tied into this game plan should be use of something similar in color to the forage in the area and what they will be doing (bait action should be replicated by your lure action). Working these factors into your plan will help you catch bass by focusing your efforts where they should be most productive.

Sport fishing (sometimes game fishing)

Sport fishing (sometimes game fishing) describes recreational fishing where the primary reward is the challenge of finding and catching the fish rather than the culinary or financial value of the fish's flesh. The distinction is not completely rigid - in many cases, sport fishers will also eat their catch. The philosophies and tactics used for sport fishing, however, are usually sufficiently different from "food fishing" to make the distinction clear enough.

The most common fish sought after are marlin, tuna, sailfish, shark and mackerel along with other species of fish.

Sport fishing methods vary according to the area being fished, the species being targeted, the personal strategies of the angler, and the resources available, ranging from the aristocratic art of fly fishing, ostensibly invented in Great Britain, to the high-tech methods used to chase marlin and tuna. In virtually every case, however, the fishing is done with hook, line, rod and reel rather than with nets or other aids.

In the past, sport fishers, even if they did not eat their catch, almost always killed them to bring them to shore to be weighed or for preservation as trophies. Fishermans desire to improve the fishery have resulted in many sportfisherman releasing their catch alive, sometimes after fitting them with identifying tags and recording their details so as to aid fisheries research (known as tag and release).

Sport fishing competitions give competitors (individuals if the fishing occurs from land, usually teams where conducted from boats) a specified time and area from which they are to catch fish. Scores are awarded for each fish caught, the points depending on the fish's weight and species, and then, sometimes, divided by the strength of the fishing line used (so catching fish on thinner, weaker line scores additional points). In tag and release competitions, a flat score per fish, divided by the line strength, is awarded for each species caught.