After a fantastic season on the Bassmaster Elite Series, where he won the Bassmaster Classic and finished the year 5th in the points race, Justin Hamner is back home in Alabama with an off-season of fishing ahead of him. Unfortunately, early fall fishing can be a little challenging, especially when the bass are zeroed in on tiny baitfish. Hamner has learned a few tricks to get them to bite, including downsizing to extremely small baits and covering ground, which works for him every fall.
A Tiny Topwater that Matches the Hatch
This fly-fishing term "match the hatch" has also been a staple in bass fishing, and it's never more true than in late summer and early fall when the bass are focused on tiny, young-of-the-year shad and other baitfish. According to Hamner, throwing smaller baits is the simplest way to get the attention of those bass.
"Through summer and as soon as fall hits and you get the first drop in water temperature, you'll start seeing a bunch of schooling activity," he said. "The big difference this time of year is how keyed the bass get on smaller baitfish. They ignore bigger lures and often won't touch them; it can be really frustrating."
One lure that Hamner relies on is a Yo-Zuri 3DR-X Series Pencil, a 3-inch and ¼-ounce downsized walking topwater. Even though it's lightweight, Hamner still fishes it on baitcast gear.
"When they are eating small baitfish, that little topwater really shines," he said. "It has great castability, where most little bitty baits like that are hard to cast and still has a great walking action. It still casts surprisingly well because of the profile and how it's weighted."
Hamner will fish it on a 7-foot medium rod, 7.1:1 reel, and 30-pound Yo-Zuri SuperBraid and fishes it all the likely places.
"I keep it moving and fish around main lake flats and sometimes in the pockets, wherever they can get on baitfish and school all day," he said. "The fish will usually show themselves on the surface, and once you start to figure out if it's the backs of pockets, a certain distance back in a creek, or a specific type of cover, you can run that across the whole lake to find more areas."
For colors, he prefers translucent colors like prism ghost shad. "The clear, prism colors make the bait look even smaller and help to match those tiny shad," he added.
A Little Lipless and Looking Ahead
Another go-to for Hamner, when faced with this situation, is a small, lipless, 3/8-ounce Yo-Zuri Rattl'n Vibe that measures just over two inches long. He'll mix this with his topwater baits, especially if he's not seeing any surface activity.
"I like to work that bait across the flats when I know there's bait around and the bass are not actively feeding on the surface," he said. "It's a great bait that you can use to cover water until you find an active group of them. I always play with my retrieves, but it's always pretty fast, and I'll switch it up between a straight retrieve and a 'yo-yo' style retrieve."
He opts for the same rod he uses for the small topwater but bumps it up to a faster 8.3:1 reel and fishes the bait on 14-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon line. It's a good counter punch to work with in tandem with his topwater, which is something he fishes in many of the same places.
"I'll fish it everywhere from a foot deep down to 8 or 10 feet," he said. "I like to fish it on main river flats on some lakes, sand bars, and stuff like that. It's great because you can fish fast and cover a lot of water in a day while you search for fish."
This small baitfish phenomenon can be tricky to fool a bass, but Hamner said it's possible to have success and that the real feeding frenzy will come when the water continues to drop.
"The small baitfish thing happens all over the country in September and October and will be a thing until we get those first super cold nights later in the fall," he said. "Once that happens, the jerkbait bite will switch back on when we get that first real big cold snap. Then, I'll be back to throwing the Yo-Zuri 3DB Deep jerkbait."
Fishing for bass that are focused on eating miniature baitfish is a challenging proposition since everything they are looking at is a fraction of the size of standard bass lures. By downsizing and covering water, you can turn this tricky time of year into a great time to go fishing.
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