One thing I’ve talked about on live classes is the contextual idea of bass migration in the fall.

We often say that bass “transition “ here or there during this time of year. Be careful with this. On many lakes this simply isn’t happening. It’s a great idea on paper but most bass simply stay close to where they spawn ALL YEAR.

Spotted bass stay close to the main lake all year.

Most creek bass will stay in close proximity to the creek ALL YEAR.

Smallmouth can be more mobile in some fisheries but they often thrive in open water near the main river or lake.

This does not mean smallmouth can’t be caught in creeks and spots won’t be caught way up a river.

What it means is the BULK OF THE BASS STAY VERY VERY CLOSE TO WHERE THEY WERE BORN. There’s not much of a transition. The bass simply become easier to catch during the fall because:

1. Feeding windows become longer

2. Baitfish are in available in predictable areas

3. More bass use predictable locations as ambush during this time (the true transition)

The transition doesn’t often look like this big migration miles and miles away. The transition is actually very subtle move. Those moves make bass a little more susceptible to being caught for most lakes.

Fish a highly pressured lake or river?

The best way to outfish the competition is learning boat control. Maintain more distance between you and the targets and also use the trolling motor as little as possible. Slow down!!! Multiple cast to the same areas.

The live class this week gave some insight into how wind affects different fisheries

THIS IS A VERY SURFACE LEVEL STATEMENT …

While this sounds great in theory its practicality is NOT realistic. There’s plankton every where in every lake. EVERY WHERE‼️

The wind does effect plankton however it’s much different than “blowing it around”. The wind affects light penetration and it also mixes surfaces water affecting where nutrients are available to plankton.

The wind works more as “agitation” than shifting the location of plankton in most lakes. However this can be exaggerated on large bodies of water with current. The ocean, the Great Lakes and very large expansive bodies of water can see some movement of forage due to wind events.

For us as fishermen the important part to know is context . The vast majority of us should realize if there’s no bait there to begin with wind won’t change anything at all. Baitfish can swim against ALL WIND CURRENTS IN MOST LAKES. The wind makes the water column darker and sometimes that leads to more activity because of the light refraction.