Slipping into Fall for Panfish

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In a perfect world, fall would be extended several months by eliminating the dog days of summer and the midwinter doldrums, resulting in a prolonged period with some of the most consistent and productive fishing of the year. Instead, this prime season passes too quickly. To make the most of this compressed season we offer a few tactics to find and trigger panfish, beginning with perch.

Professional angler Jason Mitchell honed his “perching” on prairie lakes of North Dakota and has expanded his mastery to include the country’s top fisheries. He offers his insights on timing, locating, and catching fish through the fall transition. “Perch look and behave differently from Cascade to Leech Lake and from Devils Lake to Gogebic,” he says. “Our quick-growing prairie perch have small heads and mouths that give way to tall shoulders and blocky bodies. These fish aren’t that old at 12 inches in length. Meanwhile, on slow-growth fisheries, jumbos have long frames, big heads, and a mouth that could suck down a golf ball.

“Leech Lake jumbos, for example, sometimes make a meal out of 4-inch rusty crayfish, pincers and all. Our prairie perch would starve to death if that was their only forage. Accordingly, the personality of perch varies by location and that affects how and where you catch them heading into fall.”

Perch can be tough to pattern during summer, as forage is abundant and jumbos can find an easy meal just about anywhere. With pike and walleyes patrolling shorelines and weededges of most prairie lakes, perch have no safe harbor. Anglers targeting walleyes often stumble on pods of them cruising in basin waters. These encounters happen more frequently heading into August, and serious perch anglers soon take note.

Mitchell: “Anglers talk about perch showing up in numbers as fall approaches. It’s really about the abundant summer forage base getting cropped down as the season progresses. There’s always a segment of the perch population feasting on invertebrates along the hard to soft bottom transitions in deeper water. When the available food sources get scarce, the bite picks up. That usually corresponds with the September to October time frame.”

The bite varies from year to year as the predator-prey ratio fluctuates. On fisheries such as Devils Lake, Mitchell suggests searching the basin in September and finding transitions in bottom composition with your electronics. Focus on the bottom 3 feet of the water column and scan for perch-size marks. If a pod looks too good to be true with too many fish packed tightly, it’s probably white bass instead of perch.

With pods of fish marked, he pulls a ‘crawler harness behind a bottom bouncer. He keeps his presentation small and moves along at a mere .8 to 1 mph with half a ‘crawler on a #6 octopus hook with a single bead as an attractor. Blades don’t spin effectively at that speed and aren’t part of the equation.

Once perch are located, he hits spot-lock on his trolling motor and fishes his presentation vertically. “As the water cools, our tactics often resemble ice tactics,” he says. “We break out the 48-inch Dead Meat ice rods and spinning reels loaded with 6-pound braided line.

“Compact spoons and jigs tipped with a piece of nightcrawler usually get the job done. Keep your presentation subtle—twitch-pause, twitch-pause. Maybe a little lift-fall-pause. Maintain a tight line and stay vertical for light-biting perch. With spot-lock, we can jig in 25 to 35 feet of water, even with a moderate chop on the water.

“When the bite slows, use a higher lift-drop with the spoon to attract perch back under the boat,” Mitchell says. “Some of our top-producing lures include the Clam Blade Spoon, Pinhead Pro, and Drop Jig XL tipped, once again, with a piece of ‘crawler or a minnow head. The perch are in these type of spots until ice up. And this isn’t just true of prairie waters, but perch waters in general. Of course, depths change. On Erie the fish might be 50 feet down.”

Fall Crappies

Illinois guide Reagan Smith fishes lakes Clinton and Springfield, both in central Illinois, each being about 4,000 acres and with an average depth of about 15 feet. During late summer he keeps his customers busy catching limits of white bass on bladebaits, over midlake humps and wind-blown points. All the while, he monitors water temperature.

By late-September, water temperatures usually drop 15°F from a midsummer peak of 85°F. Time to check docks, brushpiles, and bridge pilings near a main creek channel for transitioning crappies. Having an adjoining flat with scattered woodcover makes these areas even better.

These spots attract crappies all fall, but their locational shift isn’t always complete until water temperatures dip into the mid-60°F range. Before that, small waves of fish move in and out of these spots.

The biggest bunches of fish usually hold on large, isolated docks associated with main-lake points. Crappies like access to deep water where they eventually spend winter. Crappies like the shade that docks provide and holding areas shift throughout the day, following the shade. Crappies also tend to face into the wind when feeding.

Smith is a “dock shooter,” using a rod as a slingshot to shoot a 1/16-ounce jig through small gaps between the waterline and the dock, skipping it far beneath this cover where crappies go undisturbed by most anglers. Some of the biggest black crappies hold high in the water column. Accordingly, start working shallow before letting jigs drift deeper.

Smith: “Once the water temperatures hits 64°F, crappies are content to hang under docks with deep water, 12 to 16 feet being best. I use forward-facing sonar to pinpoint docks holding the most or biggest fish. I can also see how far back they are, how high they’re holding, and how they react to various presentations. I note, though, that I caught plenty of crappies before starting to use forward-facing sonar.

 “I use a 6-foot 6-inch ACC Dock Shooter rod to launch 1/16-ounce Charlie Brewer’s Crappie Slider jigs as far back as possible under docks. My line is 6-pound Vicious monofilament in hi-vis yellow for bite detection on a 25-size Pflueger President reel. A nice light package.

“A jig like the Crappie Slider skips well, falls gently, and gives off an attractive tail-kicking action at any speed, which is critical for attracting fish when you’re not using livebait. Three colors suffice—either Baby Bass or Funky Monkey in clear water, and June Bug Chartreuse when things muddy up.”

Autumn Bluegills

For anglers who favor big bluegills, Otter Tail County, Minnesota, guide Jesse Thalmann offers a wealth of information, having spent a decade exploring the more than 1,000 fisheries across the area, some of which produce fish that top the 10-inch mark.

“Mid-September kicks off the fall transition here, with water temperatures dropping into the mid-60°F range,” Thalmann says. “Weeds are dying and bluegills slide away from weededges to spend time in the 12- to 16-foot range, where they actively chase bait.

“Many of our area lakes don’t have 30- to 40-foot basins, so the shift to deeper water is gradual. With forward-facing sonar, I find schools, but side-imaging and 2D down-imaging work, too; it just takes a little more time. Meanwhile, we’re often fancasting as we go.”

Thalmann prefers to fish vertically once he marks fish, with customers pounding bottom with 5-mm tungsten jigs tipped with small leeches or portions of nightcrawler. He uses 4-pound-test mono instead of braid, preferring the slight stretch of mono, which allows bluegills a fraction more time to inhale the jig prior to the bite being transmitted. With braid, anglers tend to set too quickly and then exert too much pressure on the fish as they fight them, leading to pulled hooks on trophy-class fish.

He instructs customers to watch their line as their jig descends through and not slow it down or interrupt its fall until it hits bottom. The biggest bluegills hold tight to the bottom, while smaller ‘gills hang higher. Getting down through the smaller bluegills is the first order of business. If fishing pressure makes bluegills wary and tough to get over to fish vertically, he pulls away from them 40 feet or so and has customer cast to them, again, watching their line as the jig falls.

As the water cools more and the bite gets tougher, Thalmann scales down to smaller, lighter, and more refined hand-tied jigs that resemble zooplankton, like the Zoo Bug by Jeff’s Jigs and Flies. These jigs are meticulously tied with a small tuft of hair toward their head and can be danced slowly to attract attention and then held in place to resemble a vulnerable tasty morsel.

White Bass in the Fall

Rivers and reservoirs provide the setting for cooler-filling catches of aggressive white bass. Professional angler Walt Matan may be best known for his ice-fishing prowess, but he’s a river rat at heart and looks forward to a strong white bass bite on the Wisconsin River flowages each fall.

“By mid-September, the fish are schooling and feeding more aggressively,” Matan says. “If it’s my first fall outing and I don’t have good local intel on the location of fish, I start at the lower third of the flowage and scout locations on windblown shorelines, where the river channel swings close to the bank. Adjacent feeding flats are formed where the river channel makes a big sweeping bend. Find woodcover in these areas and fish will be nearby. White bass are notorious for holding near flooded timber, so this is where I begin side-scanning for fish.”

The fish can be relating to wood in as shallow as 3 feet of water or as deep as 30 feet, which is part of the challenge of finding them. But they’re a schooling fish, and once you figure out location and feeding preferences, they can be caught in huge numbers.

To improve his odds, Matan tries multiple presentations, all while using a 7-foot medium-power fast-action St. Croix Eyecon rod and a spinning reel spooled with 10-pound PowerPro braid. He tips the braid with an 18-inch leader of 14-pound Trilene XT monofilament. Fluorocarbon and finesse aren’t required for these aggressive fish. Heavier tackle also works best near woodcover.

His first option is to pitch a weedless jig tipped with a lively minnow tight to woodcover where fish have been marked on sonar. Keep the bait high in the water column and make fish exit the cover to take the bait. If the fish are aggressive, he forgoes livebait and uses a 2.45-inch white Pulse-R swimbait on a B Fish N Draggin’ Jig. The ultra-thin paddletail of the Pulse-R gives off lots of vibration at a range of speeds and runs snag-free through timber. If wood is snagged, the heavier line and leader material allows the light-wire hook to be straightened and the jig saved.

When white bass get wise to a presentation, switch-up the color, size, fall rate, or action of baits. Matan often uses two jigs in tandem. As schooling fish that slash through pods of minnows and then circle back to feast on any wounded prey, white bass are susceptible to hitting a double jig rig.

These rigs can be tied in several different ways, including with a three-way swivel, a simple overhand dropper loop, or as a donkey rig with a pair of leaders on barrel swivels. The resulting tandem rig has two jigs darting in slightly different directions as the rig is twitched aggressively back to the boat. Schooling white bass follow and slash at these rigs with abandon, and the result can be double hook-ups.

Matan’s favorite jig for this presentation is a 1/16-ounce Flu Flu, which has natural feather construction and a quickly penetrating thin-wire Aberdeen hook. He prefers color patterns that mimic river shiners and suggests anglers take their time after hooking a fish on this rig.

“The longer you allow the lead fish to fight and zip around with a free-swinging Flu Flu jig, the greater your likelihood of hooking up a second white bass drawn to the commotion. Also, by taking your time, other anglers in the boat can cast into the commotion and not only double up but also keep the school fired up and around the boat.”

He also recommends that anglers always have a bladebait rigged, such as a long-bodied B3 Blade Bait or a compact Big Dude Blade. With two treble hooks, these quick-sinking baits aren’t suited for working near wood. But when fish slide deeper into the river channel, the flash and vibration of a blade is tough for white bass to resist. Blades also are ideal for working current seams. And they can be cast great distances and worked quickly across flats to locate and trigger feeding fish.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, especially for panfish anglers dead set on fast action and fine eating after the fact.

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In-Fisherman Field Editor Steve Ryan is an accomplished multispecies angler who has been working with In-Fisherman for at least two decades.

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