Bait for fishing grass lake in late fall

[Eddie101]

Which bait(s) would you throw into a grass lake in late fall? Someone suggested a lipless crankbait, but I'm not so sure about that. I'm thinking maybe a jr sized frog, a jig perhaps, and maybe a small spoon w/trailer. After that, I'm lost. What say you?

[roadwarrior]

Red Eye Shad

 

[FishTank]

Depending on how deep the water is and how tall the grass is....  A shallow running crankbait, fished slow over the grass. 

[Mike L]

My first choice through and around grass is a Magnum Speed Worm regardless of the season. 
 

 

 

Mike

[Eddie101]

1 hour ago, roadwarrior said:

Red Eye Shad

 

Uh, please be more specific. Color, size, and where can I buy one? Siebert, perhaps? They always have the cool stuff. 

22 minutes ago, Mike L said:

My first choice through and around grass is a Magnum Speed Worm regardless of the season. 
 

 

 

Mike

Sounds good! W/Tungsten shakey head or weightless perhaps? 

1 hour ago, FishTank said:

Depending on how deep the water is and how tall the grass is....  A shallow running crankbait, fished slow over the grass. 

About 5-10 ft deep, and the lilly pads/grass are few inches above the water. Does that change anything? 

[Mike L]

12 minutes ago, Eddie101 said:

Sounds good! W/Tungsten shakey head or weightless perhaps? 

80% of the time I swim with 3/16 pegged tungsten weight. 
 

When using the standard size,

(in mostly shallower water)

I use the same weight but unpegged swimming and pitching. 
 

 

 

Mike

[Eddie101]

3 minutes ago, Mike L said:

80% of the time I swim with 3/16 pegged tungsten weight. 
 

When using the standard size,

(in mostly shallower water)

I use the same weight but unpegged swimming and pitching. 
 

 

 

Mike

Ok, this is new one on me. You don't drag it, but swim it a la swimbait(Keitech)? Tex rigged, I presume? 

[roadwarrior]

25 minutes ago, Eddie101 said:

Uh, please be more specific. Color, size, and where can I buy one? Siebert, perhaps? They always have the cool stuff. 

Olive Shad, 1/2 oz. almost any bait shop or online (Tackle Warehouse)

[Mike L]

No reason to drag it, I want that tail moving the way it was designed to do   not being hindered by the bottom. 

Yes always t rigged, especially moving through vegetation. 
 

 

 

 

Mike

[ww2farmer]

All's I fish are grass lakes. Well...they have rock, boat docks and wood in them too, but grass is the predominate cover.

 

The deepest grass will stay green and healthy until well after I quit fishing in a few weeks, and usually even after ice up if the water is clear, the ice is good clear "black ice", and we don't get a ton of snow on the ice to block sun light.

 

Late fall to me (and the bass here) is when the water drops into the low 50s to mid 40's...below that it's early winter.

 

Assuming your asking about largemouth in late fall (smallmouth are a whole other topic), they get quite fickle in late fall BUT predictable. There's going to be a few around shallow hard cover in grass lakes, like docks, wood, rock, etc....but since by now the bulk of the shallow grass (less than 6 feet) has died or is turning brown and dying back seemingly by leaps and bounds every day, they are not using it much. If you want to beat the bank in a grass lake in late fall, hard cover is the way to go....jigs, t-rigs, spinnerbaits, squarebills....all the stuff you would use year round is still in play. But your going to grind for bites up there. It's one here, one there...there's not going to be bunches of them up there like there are spring through mid fall. The reward is, however, they are often big fish. Some of my biggest largemouth of the fall are caught in the dirt on hard cover in cooler water. 

 

The other half to this equation is the healthy deep grass. Coontail seems to hold them BETTER than milfoil during this time, but there will be places where milfoil is still holding them, you just have to fish both and see what's going on that given day. The BEST spots will be....the best spots they were in all summer. If you have miles and miles of green healthy deep grass in the fall, just like the summer, they will be in the areas with rock/bottom changes/points, turns/bends/etc...in the grass.

 

The "myth" of northern largemouth being more aggressive in cold water than their Florida strain cousins gets turned on it's ear a little here. Your going to work to catch them when they get out on that deep grass late. Partly because they are a little more lethargic (not nearly as bad a Florida's) but mainly because that deep grass is also a haven for the entire eco-system. Bait is abundant and, and the windows to catch them  grow smaller each passing week we get closer to winter. This is NOT the time to try to power fish them....if I want to power fish this time of year, I go chasing smallmouth or looking for the big loaner largemouth on the bank. These deeper grass largemouth in my 25 years of chasing them in late fall require a little more finesse. Sure there might be really really tight windows where they get aggressive but they are few and far between and can't be counted on. Now is the time I turn to a heavy (to make sure I get it into the grass) BUT extremely compact offering. You'll rarely tempt the bigger ones to leave the comfort of the grass for dainty stuff on light line, so your weightless senkos, ned rigs, light drop shots, and other finesse stuff that works spring - mid fall is not the best bet. I'll use a the lightest t-rig I can get through the grass with (sometimes 1/4 oz, sometimes 3/8's, but often 1/2 oz.). They really really seem to pump the breaks on me trying to bomb in there with a 3/4 or 1 oz weighted offering, so I don't bother. If I have to wiggle and jiggle a 1/2 oz weighted bait to get in there, then so be it, it gets more bites. Your going to want to put the baits away with big flappy arms/legs/claws...this is the time for NO action, and the more compact the better. Something along the lines of a beaver style bait, a tube, a compact craw with no obnoxious claw action, and even a senko style bait on a weighted t-rig are king this time of year. IF they are biting plastics good OR if you are just looking for a few big bites, a compact 1/2 oz flipping jig with a dead action trailer is a good 1-2 punch to t-rig. I use the t-rig to find them, and the jig to get a big one.  Starting with a jig has always been risky business for me...there's days they seemingly DON'T want it yet you'll get plenty of bites on soft plastics. Some will say the opposite and tell you to just  lock a jig in your hand and get to work, I'm just telling you what's worked for me for a long time.

[GetFishorDieTryin]

Hard to beat a Chatterbait.  You can rip it like a lipless and get the reaction bite or you can fish it slow and steady with pauses.  In the fall I like the smaller profile of the TW Custom CB.  I trim the skirt and use a 3 or 3.5" trailer to keep the length down, the longest trailer ill use this time of year is a Zako.  Ive been beating them down for the past 2 days.

[ww2farmer]

I forgot to mention the third sub category of largemouth that exist in the late fall in grass lakes.

 

I talked about the big, hard cover, shallow loners, I talked about the ones buried up in deep coontail and milfoil feasting on bait. But there's also, what I like to call the "mud bellies". A fair amount of them will get completely out of the grass and lay belly to bottom on mud. Yes MUD. It holds heat, and more importantly, it holds hordes of bloodworms that bait suck out of the mud to forage on. These fish are the ones more prone to biting your ned rigs, Shakey head, little jigs, etc. Look for mud flats outside grass beds, and if there's random rocks and stuff on it, all the better. You will not see a single bass on your sonar, as they sit so close to the bottom they're undetectable. But know how to find soft vs hard bottom on your graph, and then the tell tail sign of bait hovering off the bottom. I don't bother with rock and hard bottom outside the grass for largemouth in the late fall. These areas get loaded up with smallmouth and I can confidently say that they chase off, harass, and just in general be non-welcoming to the vast majority of their green cousins on their turf. You'll catch a few green ones mixed in that somehow either have fooled the smallmouth into thinking they are one of them, or they can put up with a lot of bullying by the brown menace.

[roadwarrior]

Wow!  That's a great tip and an observation I would have never considered.

Thank you!

 

[Eddie101]

14 hours ago, Mike L said:

No reason to drag it, I want that tail moving the way it was designed to do   not being hindered by the bottom. 

Yes always t rigged, especially moving through vegetation. 
 

 

 

 

Mike

Have you tried Missile Quiver baits? If so, are they similar to speed worm or different?

[Mike L]

5 minutes ago, Eddie101 said:

Have you tried Missile Quiver baits? If so, are they similar to speed worm or different?

Nope 

Sorry, never heard of them. 
 

 

 

Mike

[Eddie101]

5 minutes ago, Mike L said:

Nope 

Sorry, never heard of them. 
 

 

 

Mike

This is it. I was asking because I already have a pack of this brand, and I'm too dang lazy/cheap to order a pack of UV speed worm  

[Mike L]

To me, the only thing that somewhat compares to the speed worm is the Rage Cut R. 
They have a flange at the end of the tail that gives an action similar to the cut in the tail of the speed worm. 

What you show is just a flat tail. 
Ive used others with that design which will give it a wiggle, but nothing like the Cut R or speed worm. 
Those are the only 2 that I’ll throw

 

 

 

Mike

[TnRiver46]

Frog! People catch them in early December with frog in grass around here 

[Eddie101]

3 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

Frog! People catch them in early December with frog in grass around here 

Eh? 

[TnRiver46]

7 minutes ago, Eddie101 said:

Eh? 

I’m not in Canada 

 

they just had a bass master Elite on chickamauga, a grass lake in fall. Guess what the winner was throwing? 

[Eddie101]

3 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

I’m not in Canada 

 

they just had a bass master Elite on chickamauga, a grass lake in fall. Guess what the winner was throwing? 

Hard to believe but I guess anything is possible. What was the water temp like?

[TnRiver46]

52 minutes ago, Eddie101 said:

Hard to believe but I guess anything is possible. What was the water temp like?

68 

[Bankbeater]

1/8 ounce jig and craw, or a t-rigged plastic with a light weight on it.  They will sink a little bit into the grass, but not very far.  I will work them back with short hops so that they will clear the grass and then settle back down into it.

 

[Eddie101]

On 10/26/2020 at 8:13 PM, roadwarrior said:

Olive Shad, 1/2 oz. almost any bait shop or online (Tackle Warehouse)

Doesn’t it get snagged easily? How fast/slow do you reel it in? The last time I tried that trick, I was getting a yard of grass after each cast. It was frustrating, and called it a day. What test line do you suggest?

[roadwarrior]

30 lb braid