Fishing tip of the week

Fishing Tip of the Week

Thursday, 29 August 2024 08:18

Schooling Fish
by Mike Gerry

If you have never experienced a school of bass chasing and attacking bait fish in the fall, then you have missed a lot of fun. They attack with a vengeance and react to just about any bait you can reach them with on a long cast. One pattern you can generally bet the farm that will occur in the fall is the schooling bass. If you want to have a ton of fun and don’t care about size chasing schooling bass can be the pattern you might be looking for.
With the fall time of the year comes schooling bass, their chasing feeding and getting their bellies full.

Your job once you find them is fishing them in the correct manner and getting the bass to bite your hook. The key here is to remember that fall fishing is all about reaction.
Whatever you do your bait must cause a reaction bite. The first key is to position your boat so you can make long casts beyond the schooling fish; you want your bait to be moving through the bait not hitting them on the head.

There are a couple of baits I like to fish in schooling bass, as it is an ideal time to throw top water baits like pop-r’s or spooks or even a rattle bait. You can launch them out with good distance. You can twitch them or burn them over and through schooling fish. These presentations are very much reaction type movements and in most cases will cause bites as you move through the schooling bass. The next key to catching the schooling fish is rigging and if you’re inexperienced, rigging can be one of the most important decisions you will make.

Make sure your reel is rigged with none stretch line, like a fluorocarbon line with at least 15 lb. test as it will eliminate the need for a perfect hook set, and when you do set the hook use a sweeping hook set as it will eliminate the upward pull that can pull it out of the fish’s mouth. The bass generally hit the bait hard enough that they hook themselves. Next make sure you have a reel that will move the bait fast enough, so a 6:3 to 1 is great, be persistent. Work at it hard and you will have a blast.

Captain Mike