Just a few weeks ago I can remember sitting out on the main lake in the sweltering afternoon heat, just daydreaming about October and the changing of the season, and here we are. With each passing day, I can see the changes out on the lake. The colors of fall have arrived, and we’ve got the next few weeks to enjoy them. October is always a favorite month of mine for a lot of reasons, some sports related and others, a more seasonal nature. Here on Lake Lanier, it’s just about guaranteed that between Nov. 1st and the 15th the leaves will fall off the trees. It happens every year and it seems like every year I start wondering if the leaves will stay on the trees till Thanksgiving, but it never happens. The trees always shed their leaves in early November. That gives us a few short weeks to enjoy natures artistry and fish a lake surrounded by the backdrop of fall colors.

Don’t ask me why, but there’s another lock for fall and the changing of the season, and that is the fall swimbait bite. Just a couple of years ago and almost to the day, I wrote an article in my blog about the October white Sebile bite. At the time I was buying the Sebile’s when I could find them, and I was sanding them down and painting them pearl white. For whatever reason, these bass and stripers really start hammering that color and that swimbait pattern throughout the fall. I put a link to the blog entry below. It’s called Jonsin for a Sebile.

https://castawayblog.com/2021/10/22/jonesin-for-a-sebile/

Another lock for late October to Mid-November is the turnover. Some may say that it’s later in the winter but living on the lake gives me the opportunity to see the changes firsthand and every year it starts the same way. Turnover starts in the back of the creek near my house in September and works its way out of the creek. I can always tell by the condition of the water on the surface. Right now, it’s in a lot of areas in the back half of the creek and I’ve noticed a decline in fish activity in these areas. I’ve also noticed some discoloration in the water in these areas. This week the front third of the creek has a richer, deeper green color to it while the back 2/3 may have a lighter green tint under the surface. That doesn’t mean these areas are void of fish, but the bait may move closer to shallow waters during these turnover periods and the predators tend to follow the bait. Yesterday I saw bass and stripers pushing bluebacks onto shallow rocky areas and pinning them to the rocks. There was wind blowing right into the rocky point and I pulled back to casting distance to the rocky area of the point and put the Minn Kota on Spot Lock up wind. I started fan casting the Lanier Baits hard swimmer in pearl white down wind, around the shallows and every once in a while, the rod would load up. With the wind out of the east yesterday I found 3 points that had wind blowing onto the point and I rotated between those 3 points, spending about a half hour at each point. I used Spot Lock and sat upwind fan casting each time and I caught fish off and on for 4 hours straight on the same 3 points, using the same bait. Here’s a few of my fish from Yesterday.

Another lock for October, especially when we have these fronts that come through, is the spinnerbait bite on windy points. On Monday morning it was post front and the wind was blowing when I walked down to the dock. I can always tell if it’s going to be windy out in the creek by looking and the tree tops around the bay. If there’s a ripple on the water in the bay and the tree tops are moving, the creeks going to be windy. On Monday when I saw that, I tied on my SpotSticker Mini Me and looked for the first windy point I could find. At my first point and it very well may have been my first cast with the Mini Me the bass pictured below just hammered the spinnerbait.

Here’s a link to find the Mini Me spinnerbaits. The 1/2 ounce “Ghost” is a favorite of mine and a great bait for Lanier.

https://spotsticker.com/product-category/spinnerbaits/mini-me/

Another bait I had good luck with on Monday was the Lanier baits chrome hard swimmer. On Monday I couldn’t get the fish to commit to the pearl white hard swimmer so I switched up to the chrome and I found that they would commit to the chrome better than the white. Later in the day I ran into Scott Jackson and he told me he had just the opposite reaction which was kinda funny, but I kept that in mind all week and it was one of the biggest reasons I used the white pearl yesterday. Between the Mini Me and the chrome hard swimmer Monday was a good day. Unfortunately, I got some stomach bug on Monday and I didn’t really get to fish again till yesterday. Here are some of my fish from Monday.

One other bait that recieves honorable mention and that bite is right around the corner, and that’s the shaky head bite. Yesterday morning my first fish came off a shaky head and it was a pretty nice fish. It felt good to fight I feisty 3lber on the shaky head and I’m very excited for the bottom bite to pick up as soon as the turnover is complete. I good way I look at it is that after the turnover occurs the fish start looking down instead of look up for their meals. Jigs and worms are on the horizon. I don’t know the water temps right now because I have no sonar but the fish feel kinda cool to the touch so I’m guessing close to 70 for the water temp and the lake is 6.5 feet below full pool and still dropping.