The temperatures were mild this week and while I was out fishing, I could just feel autumn in the air with every gust of wind. At times this week I would get a quick whiff of that autumn air, and the faint smell of memories long past would resurface in my mind, memories of fishing that haven’t been long forgotten. I remembered my time out west at the San Luis reservoir in early fall, camping, catching stripers out of an old Bass Tracker and the smell of our smoldering campfire on a chilly autumn morning. There was the marsh in Louisiana in the early fall and catching specked trout by the dozens as they made their way back into the maze of canals, surrounding the end of the line for the mighty Mississippi. A popping cork, a jig head and a pound of fresh shrimp is all you needed for a fish fry Cajun style. If you got 2lbs of fresh shrimp, you could take one pound back home to have with your fried trout dinner. I remember walking out onto the big wood deck at our fish camp and watching the sunrise over the Louisiana marsh with my first cup of coffee early in the morning. I remember cool fall mornings more recently, running and gunning topwater stripers on Lake Lanier with Lisa and having a blast watching the fish blow up on Lisa’s bait. It was a good week for looking back at autumn memories and making a few more.

If I had to rate my week of fishing, this week I’d have to give it about 3 and a half stars. It had its ups and downs, at times it was a challenge, but I still found a few fish in the process. This week I was torn between topwater and the spinnerbait bite. What made it even worse was that you had to lead with one or the other when approaching a location and I couldn’t get a lot of success with using both. If I used the topwater for a few casts to start with, they wouldn’t react to a subsequent spinnerbait offering. If I started with the spinnerbait, they wouldn’t touch a subsequent topwater bait. It was either one or the other, and generally speaking, it was usually the first offering that had the most success. Both baits gave me a thrill, so it wasn’t hard to choose one or the other. The biggest problem I had this week was bait supply due to some unforeseen breakoffs which I don’t normally deal with. With each breakoff, the lure is usually gone, and I was down to bare bones this week with my riser, Ima and spinnerbait supply. I don’t think the breakoffs was a problem with line, but it was a problem with the user not changing out leaders and a few feet of braid periodically. I’m making a lot of casts in a days’ time and that first 10-15 feet of line gets the worst eyelet rub and wears out faster. The fluorocarbon leader gets nicks and abrasions from time and also needs to be replaced often. The problem is that sometimes I’m a procrastinator and I tend to blow these things off until I break off a 4+ pound fish and then I decide to freshen my line.

There were 3 baits on my deck this week and thanks to my buddy Jeff Nail returning from the farm, I got a re-stock on the water mid-week. The mid-week restock of risers and Ima ko’s from Lip Thrashin Lures were pretty instrumental in my topwater endeavors. That little chrome riser has been deadly for me and for good reason. A lot of the bass are chasing threadfin in the creek right now and the smaller baits tend to rule. Don’t get me wrong, the bigger baits have been producing some giant fish, especially the fish that are feeding on herring. I’ve caught some bass this week that harked up some big herring so either bait size can be successful. The cool part about Chuck Trasher’s little chrome Riser bait is that it tends to mimic a small threadfin on the surface, and it moves fast enough on the retrieve to cause a reaction strike around these wolfpacks of bass. The key to the riser retrieve is to go fast enough to keep it on the surface, but slow enough to maintain the waggling action of the bait caused by the blade on the front. Keep in mind that the heavier you go with your leader, the less action the bait will have. I used a Tatsu 10lb flouro leader and that size still gave the bait decent action although I wouldn’t recommend going any higher. Long casts are also key to using this bait. A bass or group of bass may follow the bait for 100+ feet before deciding to react to it. The longer the bait is in the water, the better chance you have of finding a fish or a fish finding your bait. I started with the little chrome riser on Monday, but I lost the last one I had to a breakoff. I dug around in the boat and found a clear riser, which I had never used before, I had only used chrome up to this point, but I tied it on and went to work. Here’s a picture of the clear riser I was using.

The clear riser picked up right where the little chrome riser left off and I was back in business catching bass over brush and on points. It was short lived though as the new clear riser broke off early in the morning on Tuesday. I was out of risers.

Another bait that has been a lot of fun for me this week is the Mini Me spinnerbait. I had 3 spinnerbaits in the boat last week and I was down to 1 this week. My favorite is the 3/4 ounce in the shad pattern pictured below but I only used the 1/2 ounce this week. I guess the moral of the story is that either will work because I caught fish with both. The only difference was the sink rate, so I gave the 1/2 ounce a 15 count, vice the 10 count I’ve been giving the 3/4 ounce.

I’m a sucker for that topwater bite but I gotta admit that the spinnerbait bite for me is a very close second to the topwater explosions in the fall. There were times this week that I put the topwater rod down and just threw the spinnerbait. Almost every time I picked it up this week, I found success. I got to the point of using the FFS to locate this fish but then I’d turn the transducer away from the fish and make my cast. I really liked the surprise of the rod loading up with a big bass on the spinnerbait and not using FFS added to the surprise. I caught fish every day I was out this week on Ryan Coleman’s SpotSticker Mini Me and it’s always been my “go to” spinnerbait in the spring and fall, especially with these windy days. You gotta be throwing a spinnerbait on windy days, that’s all there is to it! Same areas that I’m throwing the topwater produced with the spinnerbait, over brush. One exception is that I caught some fish up shallow on the spinnerbait this week as there is a growing population of shallower fish to target, especially early in the mornings. For me this week the topwater didn’t really get good till the day progressed and the spinnerbait was a good bait to use early before the topwater started. The little Mini Me came in a close second to the riser this week in terms of fish and excitement and I really don’t know which thrilled me the most, the feel of a fish slamming the spinnerbait and the rod suddenly doubling over or watching the surface explode engulfing the little riser.

The third bait I used this week was for the herring eaters and it was another one of Chuck Thrasher’s Lip Thrashin creations, the chrome Ima Skimmer knock off. When I ran out of risers, I picked up my Ima ko and went threw it around. The best retrieve I found for the Ima was fast, just like the name says, Skimmer. I was skimming it and killing it on the surface and forcing the fish to chase it down and killing it sometimes triggered the reaction. It worked well, especially in the wind this week and some of the blowups I got were incredible. Jeff Nail and I were out on the 11th, and we found a school of bass and stripers that were mixed in and I used the Ima ko for both bass and stripers. On one cast I’d bring in a striper and a bass on the very next cast. The Ima ko was a great backup bait for my lack of riser’s this week. Here’s a picture of my favorite Ima.

I gotta thank Jeff Nail for my “on the water” re-stock this week and Chuck Thrasher for a big restock for following weeks. I also gotta thank Ryan Coleman and SpotSticker baits for the awesome spinnerbaits and keeping me going throwing them in the spring and fall!

Water temps have broken into the mid to upper 70’s now and after this stint of bad weather passes, we should be in for more great autumn fishing next week. The lake is over 3 feet down and still falling. We desperately need some rain, mainly because I don’t want to move my dock again. The best 3 baits this week was the Riser, the Mini Me and the Ima ko in that order. You can find these at Lip Thrashin Lures and SpotSticker Baits. Here’s a few of my memorable fish from the week.

I’ve never been a big fan of the wind, but when it comes to fishing, they always say that “the wind is your friend”. A lot of folks don’t know this but the fighter jets on an aircraft carrier relied on the wind to help with taking off from the ship. On an aircraft carrier, just before morning flight operations start, the big carrier turns into the wind and puts the hammer down. Things go from relatively calm to controlled chaos in a matter of minutes when the carrier gets up to speed. Once the big carrier hits top speed, headlong into the wind, the rescue helicopters take off and get into position. By this time the jets are all starting up and getting flexed for morning operations and a constant 30 mph wind is blowing across the deck from bow to stern. You learn very quickly to lean into the wind and get used to it because it happened during every launch. The best part about the wind was that it blew the jet exhaust away from the bow of the carrier where I worked. Those poor guys that worked around the mid to back section of the carrier had to breath jet exhaust all day. It would constantly burn your eyes, and it couldn’t have been healthy to breath all day but up in the front of the carrier, the air was fresh and clean from the wind. This week I felt a few of those old 30 mph winds out on the lake.

This week, Monday came in like a lion. The weatherman predicted strong east winds all week and he wasn’t lying. When I walked out the back door at 4am the east wind was whipping the trees around in all directions. I thought about my options in the creek with a strong east wind and I hoped the wind wasn’t too strong for topwater offerings. Late last week I had a blast with the Z-dog walking bait, and I figured I’d just keep rolling with the Z-dog to start my week. I hit the creek at 8am on Monday morning and it was everything I expected. That east wind was coming right down the creek, and it was getting it. There are places in the creek that are somewhat sheltered from the wind and that’s where I concentrated my efforts. The best bite in the creek had been coming from the mouth of the creek but I still wanted to check some areas towards the back of the creek to see if the population of bass have increased. I’m still targeting brush on points and brush on humps in 20-30 feet of water. A lot of the fish that I’m seeing are hanging around, either near, over the top or inside the brush piles and luring them up with topwater this time of year can be a chore. I figured that the topwater would be better because of the wind and I also wanted to try some plopper or choppo action in the wind to help get the fishes attention as well as some larger profile topwater stuff.

I started with the Z-dog over brush piles, and I had limited success. I caught some smaller fish during the course of Monday morning, but the bigger fish were lacking and not as interested in the Z-dog as late last week. I think that the Z-dog wasn’t as visible to the fish in the bigger waves and a lot of the fish I was seeing on LiveScope showed limited interest in the topwater. It got me to thinking that there had to be a better way to catch these more lethargic, suspended fish around the brush. The spybait had a very low success rate and the underspin just wasn’t producing the committed fish for me, so I started thinking about my old “friend in the wind”, the Mini Me spinnerbait by SpotSticker Baits. It may have been last fall, but I remember a very windy day that the topwater just wasn’t cutting it, so I tied on a Mini Me and smashed the bass over brush Spot Locking upwind and bringing the spinnerbait over the top of brush. The wind is all it took to get the bass to react. Ryan Coleman, the owner of SpotSticker sent me a few of his spinnerbaits last year and I had a blast with them. There was one in particular that outshined them all, on sunny or cloudy days and it quickly became my favorite, especially on windblown points when the bass are chasing shad.

One bright spot to Monday’s trip was a Very nice largemouth I caught on the Z-dog but the cast to catch ratio with the Z-dog was depleting and my poor old surgically repaired shoulder was taking a beating from making empty casts. I was thinking there had to be something better.

On Tuesday I had physical therapy in the morning, so I didn’t get out till lunchtime, and I was greeted with the same east wind as the day before. I had dug around in my boat on Tuesday and found my favorite spinnerbait to add to my arsenal of baits. In my digging, I also found a little bag of Lip Thrashin chrome risers and I tied one on right away. It didn’t take long till the little riser produced a nice 3lb fish and I really thought I was onto something with topwater and the riser, but I went on a little dry spell, so I went with a bigger profile and tied on the old faithful Ima ko. It didn’t take long till I had a few blowups and a couple of fish on the Ima, but I was still making a lot of casts that were coming up empty. Most of the fish that I saw on LiveScope just didn’t want to come up all the way to the surface again. They would religiously follow the bait back to the boat, scattering as they came, but refused to rise to the bait. Every once in a while, one would commit but the success rate was one in 15-20 casts with topwater. I caught a few nice fish on Tuesday but never threw the spinnerbait, just sticking with running and gunning topwater stuff.

Wednesday morning I hit it early and found that topwater was on life support early, so I went to the spinnerbait on a windblown rocky point. On my first cast with the spinnerbait, I was targeting a group of fish just beyond a brushpile with LiveScope and I made a cast just past the group. It was a small wolfpack and I ran the spinnerbait right through them. The cool thing about a spinnerbait is that when the fish hit that thing, It’s brutal. The bigger fish attack that spinnerbait with extreme prejudice and they can jerk a rod right out of your hand. That constant load that the blades of the spinnerbait make can be somewhat hypnotic, and if you’re not expecting it can startle me. In this case, I felt the lure unload for a brief second and then the rod just doubled over. I pulled and reeled down on the fish and I knew it was a good one. The problem was that the fish went straight into the brush that was between the boat and the fish. It was a good fish and the more I tried to coax the fish out of the brush, the more tangled the fish because so eventually the line broke and my only spinnerbait in that pattern was gone.

I tied on a chrome bladed Mini Me spinnerbait and started throwing it but my confidence level for the chrome blade wasn’t as high as the white painted blade so eventually I went back to topwater and found a little Gunfish bite in the afternoon hours. The little chrome Gunfish was my “go to” bait a few weeks back and with the wind this week, I brought it back into the rotation Wednesday afternoon. No real big fish but it did produce some great blowups and a few fish over brush. On Thursday morning I had therapy but before hand I made a trip to the little tackle store on Buford Dam road and I picked up 3 more of my favorite 3/4 ounce Mini Me spinnerbaits, which were the last 3, by the way. I also purchased one smaller chrome Choppo, not the bigger one that we had success with on Hartwell but the smaller version. I knew the choppo would produce something.

After therapy on Thursday, I hit the lake with around noon and immediately went to a big flat in the creek where the wind wasn’t as direct. There was still a chop on the water but it was perfect for the little chrome Choppo so I gave it a hurl. This is no kidding, I pulled on it once, and a big bass just smashed it on the surface. The rod doubled over and, in an instant, the line broke. It broke right at the knot between the braid and flouro leader. I should have known better, I hadn’t used that rig in a while, and I should have checked the knot. At any rate, the Choppo was gone, and I didn’t get it back after waiting around to see if the fish would shake it out. At my second stop of the morning, I pulled out the spinnerbait and started throwing it around the fish that I saw on the LiveScope and almost immediately I hooked a giant. It was an epic battle back to the boat and the big bass just kept making those bulldog runs when close to the boat. I actually got the net under the fish at one point and the fish was able to swim over the top of the net before coming unbuttoned. It was definitely my biggest bass of the year and losing the fish got in my head for a while. I kept hitting brush with the spinnerbait and on just about every stop for the rest of the day, the spinnerbait saw action. Most of the afternoon on Thursday was spent throwing the spinnerbait over and around brush and I was getting some good numbers. I found that if I approached a point or hump, I just used the spinnerbait with nothing else. I found that if I threw the topwater, the fish would scatter with very little success but if I just threw the spinnerbait without topwater, the spinnerbait success was far greater than the topwater success, if that makes sense.

My LIveScope was a big part of my success on Thursday but I found that I really didn’t want to watch the fish birddogging my bait back to the boat so I would turn the transducer away and just wait for the rod to load up. It was actually more fun not knowing exactly what was happening and feel the surprise of the bite rather than watching it unfold in real time with LiveScope. Nonetheless, it was fun with the little Mini Me on Thursday and Then again yesterday I relied on it heavily for my bites. I did catch a few sporadic fish here and there on topwater but I found that the spinnerbait bite was best hitting the undisturbed fish over and around brush in 20-30 feet of water. The spinnerbait really stood out on windblown points also. If the wind was blowing onto or across a point or hump the fish were generally set up on the leeward drop-off of the point or hump. It was like the fish were waiting on the bait to be blown across the point and they were ambushing it on the edge of the drop off. The spinnerbait worked well and every once in a while, a fish would just break ranks and slam it. One of the biggest keys to my success was to give the bait a good 10-15 count when fishing out in those 20-30 foot depths. Most of the fish are suspended around the 15-30 depths and running the spinnerbait at 15 feet is usually right in their wheelhouse. Another tip is to keep your rod tip down when using a spinnerbait. You want the spinnerbait to run as level as possible and by having a rod tip up, the spinnerbait is running at an up angle. I like to keep my rod tip very close to the waterline on my retrieve. Once I connect with a fish, I raise the rod tip to keep the fishes head up. If I see the fish is going to jump, I quickly lower my rod tip. You don’t want these fish to jump and throw that spinnerbait.

I finished my week with nothing but spinnerbait and when tallying the numbers for the week, the spinnerbait produced the best with over 20 fish, the Z-dog came in a close second with at least a dozen. The big chrome Choppo accounted for 6-7 and about the same for a chrome whooper plopper. The gunfish, Ima ko and Riser caught multiple fish this week but the standout was definitely the spinnerbait in the wind. The water temps are sitting at around 80 degrees and slowly falling as well as our lake levels. Here’s some of my memorable fish from this week.