September is here. Shorter days. Cooler nights. Guns going off if you’re an early riser like me. Fall is here. What is working for you?
I’m hoping a topwater bite will fire up. Compared to last year frogs, buzzbaits, and topwater have been rather muted. Last year those bites were strong and got even better in the Fall. I just haven’t witnessed baitfish at the surface much at all this year on Sullivan.
Next week definitely still looks more summer-like. I think what has been working in August will continue to work in September for the foreseeable future.
I’ve been focusing more on muskie fishing recently. I may switch back to bass fishing next week if the forecast is accurate. I’m seeing several days in the mid 80’s.
Guns going off, how about dead ducks almost hitting you lol.
There is a bit of cool down but the weather will heatup next week again.
Out fishing topwaters for the last two weeks. We can usually get a good topwater bite this time of year but alot of places have more current and less vegetation than normal because of all the rain. Now I have to start being careful where I park between the hunters and the combines. I have had better luck with swimbaits the last couple weeks.
It was a rough weekend for me the bass were very scattered got most on Neko in 20 FOW. The snot rockets are nuts I lost 12 Pig and jigs this weekend. The temps were 70 degrees on the lakes.
The snot rockets are nuts
Lol not again 
Minnows. Caught probably 75 this weekend on sucker minnows.
But I thought bass were so dumb that live bait wasn’t needed? 
Very true but when they outfish every other bass guy on the lake 10-1 then I will use what works best.
Constantly ripping on bass fishing for being easy and dumb year and year out, but then puffing out your chest with your live bait walleye tactics to catch bass gets pretty old. Go back to the <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>walleye thread and stay there.
Signed,
IDO Bass anglers
Who pooped in your Cheerios this morning?
Bass Pundit asked the question. I simply answered.
Haters will always hate I guess.
Didn’t realize you were the president of the IDO bass association.
Certainly there’s others here that utitlize live minnows to “target” bass, but they don’t constantly rag on bass fishing in general along the way. That’s the difference. You do. And you do it regularly.
Then you show up here barking about how many of those dumb bass you caught with minnows. All of the sudden its just conveniently very easy and effective.
That’s the exact sort of rhetoric I’m talking about. Pretending not to know what I’m referring to isn’t gonna work either.
Certainly you would know this is a fall pattern. Mr VP of the bass world. Obviously you don’t really get sarcasm much but that is not surprising either.
Carry on boys sorry for trying to tell you what worked for me this past weekend.
The kids in the boat really enjoyed it.
Sorry your feelings were so hurt Gim. 
But hey at least I contributed to the actual bass question. Unlike yourself.
I had very little luck with soft plastics this weekend. I tried finesse baits, and usually guaranteed baits like tubes, and basically the only thing that cared were pike. I switched to small cranks and did a little better. This weekend I’m going to try and really push those small cranks and maybe even try some micro cranks for the smallmouth.
Hey Bass Pundit. How was the river this weekend, I saw Tuma did awesome.
My tournament season has been a huge disappointment. I drew a club rookie for my boater and neither of us had enough experience on Gull/CW to fall back on. We both came up two fish short of a limit and the fish we landed were little guys. My boater had at least two to three times the number of blowups my frog got. A number of really good experienced fishermen struggled even worse than we did, so I can’t complain too much. I had the bites to get a limit, just had some bad luck on a couple of good hooksets. If I would have drawn Tuma I probably would have been in contention for third place. Smitty who got 2nd, was only a half-pound shy of Tuma. Both bags fit inside the clubs all time Top 5. Both guys did that twice this season. Tuma did at the first tournament of the year on Osakis, and Smitty did it at the previous tournament when I was his Co on Pelican. Barring a really good at Farm Island at the end of the month, witnessing Smitty almost get 25lbs in the boat is going to be my season highlight because I just didn’t make the right calls this year on what and where to throw.
All I know is them dumbass bass make a damn good fish sammich. Mr VP of the bass world, wannabe chief meteorologist. Man of many hats.
My tournament season has been a huge disappointment. I drew a club rookie for my boater and neither of us had enough experience on Gull/CW to fall back on. We both came up two fish short of a limit and the fish we landed were little guys. My boater had at least two to three times the number of blowups my frog got. A number of really good experienced fishermen struggled even worse than we did, so I can’t complain too much. I had the bites to get a limit, just had some bad luck on a couple of good hooksets. If I would have drawn Tuma I probably would have been in contention for third place. Smitty who got 2nd, was only a half-pound shy of Tuma. Both bags fit inside the clubs all time Top 5. Both guys did that twice this season. Tuma did at the first tournament of the year on Osakis, and Smitty did it at the previous tournament when I was his Co on Pelican. Barring a really good at Farm Island at the end of the month, witnessing Smitty almost get 25lbs in the boat is going to be my season highlight because I just didn’t make the right calls this year on what and where to throw.
Yeah River is a crazy system, I have done awesome and I have done crap on the river. My season is actually doing good this year I am sitting in 2nd for co-angler. Some how we picked Esquagamah for are last stop, I have no idea how that tiny lake will be in the late fall.
For river smallies it’s been whatever you want to throw at the bank they hit except spinner baits. With water levels dropping this last few weeks they are moving off the banks to. Shoreline logs, over hanging grass, small points or anything else that looks like structure will do. Lost track of how many 18″ and bigger Smallmouth we boated last weekend. Did have to push through one beaver dam to get to them but it was well worth it.
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Studs Mike-pretty out there and hopefully the horseflys are gone too.
Flys have been almost non existent. Skeeters on the other hand are still hanging on a little. I’ll check again this weekend and report back. Now sucker minnows are a little tough to come by around the north side of Mille lacs. Good thing they are not really needed right now but I do like to have them with especially if I’m third person in the boat doing clean up on those banks.
Checked one of my deeper spots while fishing up north this weekend and the smallmouth were loaded on it. Best estimate is there was 100 of them on a spot that was 40 yards x 40 yards – and probably not even that big. Most all of the fish are good ones…3+ pounds. The spot is 16-17 feet deep and breaks right into the deep basin. These fish were tightly grouped up and actively feeding on juvenile Cisco.
Watching 40 smallmouth rise up off the bottom and chase schools of Cisco’s at the surface was pretty amazing. I appreciate FFS for allowing me to witness such behavior. Just fascinating stuff.
The other thing that is amazing about these smallmouth is how quickly they learn to avoid a lure once one or two fish in the school get caught. A presentation change would result in either no fish or a couple more fish before the rest of the school got wise. The schools would rise up and follow these lures but would not eat them once a couple of fish had been caught.
After working the school over pretty good with a number of different presentations – and the fish quickly learning not to eat them – I took the time to rig up a special new bait. Since the fish were chasing balls of juvenile Cisco, I rigged up a Stealth Rig picked-up from Tacklewarehouse a couple weeks ago. With the fish having been completely shut down for a half an hour, that Stealth Rig got bit on four of the first five cast. Upon first seeing it, 30 to 40 fish rose up quickly from the bottom to chase it. They got wise to this lure pretty quickly as well but I think I caught another seven or eight before they learned to avoid this bait like all the rest. Still, it was unquestionably the MVP of the morning and quite an eye-opening experience.
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I can’t believe any fish would bit such a mangled mess of plastic, wire, and metal. Unreal
I can’t believe any fish would bit such a mangled mess of plastic, wire, and metal. Unreal
No kidding, though it looks better when in the water being retrieved.
A-rigs…not my first choice when targeting bass, though
I’ve been in the boat more than once in which it was THE deal. No other presentation even came close. Like most presentations, their success is situational.
Note the missing plastic on some of the ‘dummy’ jigs. They got ripped off by hungry competing bass. Here in MN we are only allowed one hook on A-rigs, so the dummies get attacked mercilessly.
Been off the Water for bass for a few weeks now. Going to get out tomorrow morning. I have no idea what to expect. Been hearing that water temps are still rather warm for this time of the year so guessing the normal fall biter pattern’s have not really kicked in yet. Will most likely start in the normal late summer spots and adjust from there if needed. It may be a good time to find a good panfish bite till the fall Walleye and Bass bite heats up.
Been out a few times lately for short couple hour trips. Finding a TON of bass on docks. Also had good success strolling on points throwing up shallow and strolling over the tops of the weeds and bringing out over the deeper water. Trying to figure out the MN mullet, and I’m guessing it should only get better this as the water cools.
What’s the Minnesota mullet?
What’s the Minnesota mullet?
A big oversized hair jig.
I was out yesterday (muskie fishing) and still observed water temps of 74-75 degrees. That’s nearly 5 degrees warmer than it was the first week of August and around Labor Day. 
Doesn’t surprise me one bit that fish are still in summer patterns like under docks, etc.
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