By Chad La Chance

Quick, when you throw a party at your house, where does everyone hang out? When you go out on a date, where do you go before the movie?  Or, where is usually the most consistently crowded place at the mall? If you’re like most people, your answers would likely be the kitchen, the restaurant, and the food court respectively. And the obvious common denominator is food.

It’s no secret that food, water, and shelter are the building blocks of survival in the natural world and the analogy above references that concept as it relates to humans. That’s great and all, but this is a fishing column…what gives?

Well, in a nutshell, fall gives; as in gives fishermen fits a lot of the time. There’s an old adage about fish putting on the “feedbag” in preparation for winter, and they do, so they should be easy to catch, right? Yeppers, and they are…if you can find them.

Looking back at the building blocks of survival, fish obviously aren’t concerned with drinking water, but food and shelter are muy importante. Normally, anglers – at least lake and reservoir anglers – focus on structure and/or cover most of time when looking for fish, and structure/cover is effectively the shelter block in our analogy. Find good structure, you find fish. This works well because most of the time fish too are concerned with shelter most, and feed only when the need arises.

In the fall, that goes out the window. Fish will now focus harder on the food block as a sense of urgency for the coming winter drives them to feed more and more…and take more risks to do so. This means they’ll often release from their security blanket structure where you’ve been catching them all summer in favor of roaming around following or seeking out food.

Since I seem to be stuck on analogies in this column, consider that the places holding the most fish all summer are where there is a “restaurant” (bait) adjacent to a lot of “housing” (structure/cover). People tend to gravitate to those areas the same way fish do. Well, in fall, local restaurants often evolve into more of a “food truck” concept and the patrons follow them around. Unless you know where the food truck will open that day, you can be in for some slow fishing. That previously bustling restaurant row will now look like blighted real estate.

Ok, enough with the analogies…what do I mean in plain English? Once the water starts to cool in western reservoirs, fish the baitfish, not the structure.

Before I go any farther, somebody will correctly point out that they catch fish all fall on their favorite structural elements like points, flats, or drop off’s. I won’t argue that, except to say that their magical spots are just that simply because they hold bait – not sportfish – in the fall.

For instance, there’s a long tapering point on the lake I guide on that breaks off into the very deep water of the main lake basin.  It holds fish to some degree all the time. In the spring, they’re heading into/out of the cove around the spawn and stop over at the point. In summer, they have access to food in the form of baitfish that were spawned in the same cove and then make they’re way across the point heading to the basin, allowing bass and walleye to station on the structure filling both their major needs. In the fall, clouds of pelagic baitfish (read: shad and emerald shiners) suspend over and around the long point, so bass and walleyes can put on the proverbial feedbag without ever leaving home. They always have deep water and shallow access immediately at hand, and plenty of food to boot. These types of spots are rare to say the least.

What normally happens is that shad/shiners/smelt/anchovies/etc. form “” or dense schools in open water. Sportfish are overcome by the need to feed up, so they take to the open water to grocery shop. Can you say “suspended fish”?

Catching suspended fish is not as hard as it’s made out to be…it’s locating them that’s hard. After all, when fish are using the restaurant, they have a known address, but food trucks do not.

How do we locate them? We use Lowrance HDS side imaging to locate open water bait schools from the boat. Generally well start looking around deep structure, channel swings, and major points. Later in the year (maybe late October) we’ll focus really the most major structure in the lake. Another great way to locate baitfish is using birds. Seagulls and white pelicans often give suspended bait locations away. Look for birds actively feeding, not those roosted up on the lake. The most fun yet often frustrating way to locate open water bait is to hit the lake at first or last light when it’s glass calm. This is when you want to go all blue heron on them, sitting very still and observing for any signs of surface activity. It might be very slight dimpling, “nervous water”, or full on “boiling” as baitfish are plundered by sportfish – a site often tied to white bass, wipers, or stripers, but that can occur from black bass, walleyes, and even trout. Usually, it’s a mix of all the above in the West.

Once located, we fish suspended bait most often with topwaters, very shallow diving jerkbaits or crankbaits, lipless crankbaits, or flutter spoons. This selection will work for all the species I just noted above.

A couple of keys to success include being stealthy if the lake is calm, always being observant to which direction the surface activity or bait seem to be moving and then stationing ahead of it, and then the ability to make very long and accurate casts. For this final point, get some NanoFil line…trust me on this.

The last key thing is to mix up between presentations when you’re not getting bit – IF you’re sure you’re around the baitfish.  No amount of fancy tackle will get you bit if the baitfish, and therefore the sportfish, have moved off.

The real mother lode occurs when the roaming bait comes in contact with a good piece of structure, ala my home lake’s point. Then the sportfish are comfortable and will binge feed. Most commonly this will happen on major main lake points or humps, but bluff ends and channel swings against the bank can be great, too.

So there you have it. When you’re consistent summer fishing starts to wane, fire up the motor and go on the hunt. Find the bait and you’ll find the fish  – all kinds of fish – whether there’s structure around or not.