Fishing With Kenny | How to Compete with Mother Nature

article by  KENNY COVINGTON

Bass fishing in the fall of the year can prove to be quite a challenge.  Fish can be in inches of water to the deepest part of the lake making the possibilities to locate and catch bass both troublesome and rewarding.  I remember as a kid hearing the old timers say, “find the bait and you will find the bass” and while I still believe this to be true, I have also learned that there is such a thing as “too much bait.”

Several years ago, I was practicing for a tournament on Old Hickory Lake in Tennessee, and to say the fishing was tough would be quite an understatement.  I won a check by catching a total of five bass in three tournament days of competition.  Brutal is the word that comes to mind as I write this!  On the second day of practice I ran to the back of a major tributary and as I went under a bridge to the back portion, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  As far as I could see in this 100-acre area, the bass were schooling everywhere!  

As I took my boat off plane and I started idling to the area I saw the most activity, it seemed like the more fish I saw.  I kept trying to convince myself the fish I was seeing blowing up on baitfish were either white bass or stripers.  There was no way there could be this many bass schooling in an area this big.  But they were!

For the next three hours, I tried everything I could think of to catch these fish.  They were schooling so heavily, I could hear the bass hitting the bottom of my boat, chasing shad as I sat and tried to find another bait to tie on.  I knew if I could find the right lure or technique, I would win this tournament, and it wouldn’t even be close.  For the record, I didn’t win, and I drove back home after the tournament thinking what might have been.

Looking back, the biggest issue I faced in that scenario was the over abundance of shad in this area.  When you are throwing artificial lures trying to convince another living creature to bypass something they know is real, you are faced with a difficult task.  Matching the hatch makes no sense because what is the difference between a three-inch threadfin shad to a 200 Series Bandit crankbait?  Not that much.  It’s hard to compete with the food chain Mother Nature has put in place to take care of her creatures.  But, if I had that situation again, here is what I would do.

The first thing I believe to be important is speed.  The retrieve of your bait must be such that it attracts the attention of the bass.  If you are doing a slow steady or medium paced cadence, you are doing nothing the fish aren’t already seeing.  Speed may kill but it also catches!  Rat L Traps, Spinnerbaits, even some topwaters, move them faster than you think necessary.  

Another tip for this type of deal is to use heavier baits than you would normally use.  If you are throwing a ¼ ounce Rat L Trap, you can’t really get the needed speed as you would if you would move up to a ¾ once version.  Remember, you aren’t trying to match the hatch, you are trying to draw a reaction strike from a fish that is already full after heavily feeding.  How many times have you caught a bass, and you will see a crawfish pincher in the back of his throat or the tail fins of a bream or large shad?  They aren’t hungry when they hit your lure but something you did made that fish determine that he could eat it, and that’s what he tried to do.

The next thing I do, as I just mentioned, is use larger baits, preferably ones I can move at a quicker pace.  Bass are greedy creatures by nature and no matter how full they might be, they are always on the prowl for even more to eat.  I love throwing the Heddon Super Spook, the larger Whopper Plopper, bigger buzzbaits, and 8-inch swim baits.  These lures I can present in ways most anglers don’t apply, so I am showing finicky, full, non-aggressive bass something to stir up their interest.

Fall is also the time of year where if I am using a flipping/pitching technique, I will use heavier jigs, jigging spoons and Texas rigs to draw the same kind of strike when I am fishing horizontally.  On the Ouachita River, here in our backyard, I wish I had a dollar for every bass I had caught on a ¾ jigging spoon fishing sandbars.  The fast rate of fall, regardless of your lure of choice, is the key.  Speed catches!

Another thing to remember, if you are fishing an area and not having any luck but you know fish are there, try using lure colors that contradict what the bass are feeding on.  I have caught more bass in the fall on a chartreuse or Firetiger colored crankbait than I have a shad pattern.  It’s just something a little bit different.

My last tip for this month’s BayouLife article: When you are out on the water, and you just can’t seem to get anything going, tie on a ½ chrome/blue Rat L Trap and just cover water.  At some point, you should run into an area with active fish and put a few of them in the boat.  The fall time of the year can be feast or famine, but sometimes it is simply a matter of doing the right amount of tweaking of your lure or technique to be successful.

Well, it looks like we have run out of space and time again.  Now that we have started hunting season, please be careful in the woods and on the water!  Take care, catch one for me, and I will see you next month!