Fall Bass Fishing and the Shad Migration Explained

Autumn is the simplest season in bass fishing to explain and the hardest to be patient with. The rule is one sentence: find the bait, and the bass are there.

Do that and autumn produces some of the fastest fishing of the year. Ignore it and you will spend a beautiful October day casting at empty banks.

What actually happens

Through summer, shad and other open-water baitfish are spread across the main lake, and bass are largely tied to structure.

As water cools, that breaks down. Baitfish begin moving out of the main lake and into the creek arms and coves — shallower water that is often slightly warmer and richer in food. They push progressively further back as autumn goes on.

Bass follow them the entire way. Not to structure they happen to like, not to depth that suits them, but to wherever the bait is. Autumn is the time of year when location is most directly determined by food.

Finding the bait

Before you make a cast, look and listen.

• Surface activity. Flickering, dimpling or bait spraying out of the water.
• Birds. The best free sonar there is. Gulls, terns and herons concentrated on one creek arm almost always means bait is there. Birds diving repeatedly means bait is being pushed up from below, which means predators.
• Sonar. Clouds and balls of bait on the screen, usually with arches underneath or beside them.
• Water colour and smell. A concentration of shad can visibly change the water and, at close range, can be smelled.

Check several creeks. Not every creek loads up, and the difference between a loaded one and an empty one is total. Spend the first hour finding the right arm rather than fishing the first one you come to.

Where in the creek

The migration is progressive, so where in the creek you fish depends on how far into autumn you are:

Early autumn — bait is around the mouth of the creek and the first main points inside it. Fish points, channel edges and the outside grass lines.

Mid autumn — bait has pushed to the middle of the creek arm. Fish secondary points, flats, laydowns and any shallow cover along the migration route.

Late autumn — bait is in the very back, often in surprisingly shallow and stained water. Fish the backs of pockets, inflows and the shallowest cover you can find.

Then, as water continues to drop toward winter, it reverses: bait and bass pull back out toward deeper wintering areas and the fishing changes into a cold-water game.

Cover water, do not pick spots apart

This is the big tactical difference from summer.

Summer bass sit on structure and stay there. Autumn bass are roaming with the bait, so the spot that produced four fish this morning may hold nothing this afternoon — the school moved two hundred yards.

That means moving baits and a lot of casting:

Lipless crankbaits. The autumn staple. Cast across flats and grass, reel steadily, and rip it free when it fouls. The rip is often what triggers the strike.

Spinnerbaits. For wind, colour and shallow cover. A spinnerbait’s flash imitates a small group of baitfish rather than a single one, which suits a season built around schools.

Squarebill crankbaits. For shallow wood and rock. Deflection is the trigger.

Topwater. When bass push bait to the surface, a walking bait dropped into the commotion is the fastest way to take advantage. See topwater bass fishing for the retrieve.

Save the jig and the Texas rig for the moment you locate a concentration and want to work it thoroughly.

Matching the bait

Autumn is one of the times when matching the forage genuinely matters, because bass are locked onto a specific food source in large numbers.

Get a look at the bait. If the shad are two inches long, a five-inch swimbait is the wrong profile. Autumn baitfish are frequently small, and downsizing to match is often the adjustment that turns follows into bites.

Colour matters less than profile and size, but natural shad patterns — white, pearl, silver, chrome — are the obvious starting point in clear water, with more contrast in stain.

Why autumn gets called inconsistent

Because it is, in the specific sense that fish do not stay put. Anglers used to summer structure fishing go back to yesterday’s spot, find nothing, and conclude the lake has shut down.

The fish have not shut down. They have moved, with the bait, and they are almost certainly feeding hard somewhere within a few hundred yards.

Relocate the bait. That is the whole job in autumn.