Have fun on the water this fall
BY JEFF GUSTAFSON
The fall season is always kind of depressing for anglers across the Lake of the Woods area because it means that another open water season is coming to an end. Fortunately, the fish in our lakes know that another long winter is coming as well, so they want to eat and stockpile as much energy as they can before freeze. If you like to catch fish, fall is the prime time to be out there for most species of fish. On Lake of the Woods, lake trout are the only species with a closed fishing season (closes after Sept. 30) —all other species in the lake are fair game. outh nd smallm aitfish a hool of b Gustafson. y imic a sc lb m e s h g S ri : Umbrella like them. Photo lly bass rea
CRAPPIE:
Find them with electronics While crappie don’t get all that big, maybe up to a couple of pounds, they are a popular species for anglers to target because you can find them in large schools, so there’s lots of action, and they are really good to eat. You can use your electronics to find fish and trick them into biting, which is an aspect of crappie fishing that a lot of anglers enjoy, myself included. It’s fun watching the fish react to your bait and then figuring out how to get them to bite. When it comes to finding crappies in the fall, they will be in deeper water, 20-40 feet, depending on the depth of the basins where they live. They’ll get out on the deeper mud flats in the bays that they live in, mostly eating invertebrates that rise from the bottom. The reason electronics are so effective for finding crappies is because they are typically found in larger groups that show up pretty good on screen. Rather that pulling into an area that you know has a population of crappies, you’re farther ahead to spend some time idling around to find exactly where they are, then drop your jigs down on top of them. Jigs tipped with small plastics or minnows are tough to beat. r kids are fun fo Crappies ey can provide th because ction. fa plenty o
SMALLMOUTH BASS:
Humps and points
While smallmouths disperse along the shoreline throughout the lake during the summer months, in the fall, they start to congregate on spots where they will spend the winter as a large group. Smallmouths essentially go dormant through the winter months, so they feed heavily during the last couple months of open water to conserve energy to get them through the winter. The places where they like to group up are points, humps, and even flats in the main lake basins, where they have access to deep water and baitfish like cisco and smelt that they feed on. Throughout the summer, crayfish are the main focus of their diet but that changes in the fall when more of these baitfish show up in the same depth range as bass, typically 15-35 feet. Knowing that, you should choose slender baitfish imitating baits like a jerkshad style soft plastic on a jig head, swimbaits, spoons and umbrella rigs with a variety of swimbaits attached. In Ontario, we are allowed to use four hooks on one line, so on most umbrella rigs that have five arms, cut the hook off one of the top baits. Smallmouths will also show up on your electronics really well on these spots, so save some time by finding the fish while idling before actually starting to fish.
Lake of the Woods District Stewardship Association
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