The one thing I look forward to the most in the fall isn’t the beautiful views, eating turkey or watching football, instead I’m a fan of watching fish crush topwater baits.

This year has been a year unlike any other. Not for the obvious reasons, but for the weather. This year everything seems to have been delayed and this fall is no different. It seems fall is late which is actually nice! The lakes are seeing less pressure, a lot of people are starting to hunt and the fish have just started to really feed up.

The one thing about the fall is if you find the dinner you will find the diners. Parts of a lake will seem dead, but you will hit a section or creek that’s full of bait – whether that’s shad, bluebacks or whatever your lake has, that’s where you need to focus your effort.

So, once you found the food and got half the battle over with all you have left to do is figure out what the bass are living on.

First, I check points. It’s the most obvious and easiest place to fish. If that doesn’t work then check the backs of pockets since that’s generally where the shad are headed. If that fails, you start looking for brush or cane piles. Something about these in the fall is like peanut butter and jelly. Use your electronics to find piles with fish relating to them and once you’ve done that there’s only one step left – start catching.

I try to keep my bait selection simple with walking baits or plopper-style baits. I prefer walking-style baits because I can speed it up or slow it down, keep it in place or make it act like a fleeing bait fish. As far as colors go, don’t overthink it. Natural is all you need. If it looks like a shad or blueback just keep throwing it. They don’t get too picky and it’s more about covering water anyway.

So next weekend skip the deer stand, watch football at night and go throw a topwater around. Trust me, you’ll love watching the pure chaos happens!