Look Alive, Slow Down for Fall Fishing

I get the is my inbox from Rapala. It’s worthy of blogging here.

Most anglers don’t have as much experience fishing the colder water of autumn as they do the summer months. Let’s make this your best fall ever, with some proven tactics.

First, a general thought that can help a lot: keep your baits lively, but slow them down as water temps drop. It’s not enough to just “slow things down” if you kill the life of your baits. It’s important to choose lures that have good action at slower speeds.

Quick, but Slow
Just as in ‘summer’ fishing, quickly searching a lot of possible spots is a huge key to success. You have to find the fish before you can catch ‘em. Trolling and casting Rapalas remains an ideal strategy.

Original Floating Rapalas, Shad Raps, Tail Dancers, and Trolls-To Minnows are excellent fall choices, because they come to life at slow speeds. The Jointed Shad Rap is a sleeper fall bait that has phenomenal slow-speed action.

For casting, the DT Family, X-Raps, and MaxRap are perfect.

Whether trolling or casting, how you present the bait is a big deal. For example, in the warm water of midsummer, a hard-cutting aggressive presentation, with lots of wild sharp twitches, can be the ticket when fishing an X-Rap.

But you have to slow down that same bait, in most cases, to do well in fall.

Rather than slash-and-dash, think pull-and-pause as the water cools.

In cold water, between twitches or pulls, give the X-Rap time to roll upright and suspend. Allow the lure to come to rest and appear alive but vulnerable. Sometimes, the longer the pause, the better.

Take this same approach with every lure. Keep it looking alive, but easy to grab.

Triggering with Soft Baits
Another deadly fall tactic is to fish Trigger X soft baits in likely areas.

Fall fish are famous for concentrating in defined areas. When you find a good bunch of fish, it’s a situation tailor made for introducing Ultrabite pheromones!

In colder water, subtle baits like the Trigger X Spadetail Worm and Flutter Worm are often the ticket. In heavy cover, try rigging them weedless on a VMC Dominator Shaky jig head. Where snags are less likely, try the Trigger X Tube rigged with an exposed hook on a VMC Dominator Half Moon jig head.

Whatever you do, don’t give up on fishing before you give the fall a good go!