As our days start to shorten and our temperatures drop, bass are tuning in to their instinct to feed. Right now they're trying to soak up as much food as they can in order to survive "winter" (which is almost a joke here in Texas). In order to prey on their meals bass need two things really- energy and a good hiding spot.
First, and I'm going to revert to a little empiricism here. Sunlight = energy, everyone remembers the cycle of sunlight to poop, and how basically all sources of energy on Earth are sourced back to sunlight. Well, a bass is this simple also (though it obviously gets energy from food as well), but just like humans would prefer to be in the sunlight on a cold day (if we have to be outside at all, at least it's a little warmer in the sun), so do bass. In essence, they prefer the warmer areas of the river, especially earlier in the day when they have an opportunity from a long night. In the shallow, limestone-surfaced foothills of the Balcones Escarpment, these bass will often swim into 6"-1' of water to warm up. Bonus points if the there is a sneaky little spot to lay-in-wait for prey to pass by.
Which brings me to the second point- bass like a good place to hide. I've harped on this before and really stress that targeting the small hiding spots in skinny water that a bass could possibly fit in, are the keys to massive strikes and larger bass.
So stick with me here... imagine waking up on a cool Saturday morning in early "fall" in Central Texas. Cloud cover keeps the sun from breaking through immediately upon rising, and the first chill of the cooler days-to-come lingers in the river bottoms... what would you do? I knew you'd say that...
I grabbed my rods and kayak and quickly headed to the Guadalupe River for the few hours I had before my afternoon plans. Lurker and I slid in the water at Gruene and the sun had just fully broken through the clouds as I rigged up a baby brush hog. Lurker proceeds to float in front of me, casting the bank and pulls out 3 juvenile largemouth before I even feel a tug. I'm not a patient person, unless I'm fishing- I knew my time would come. As we float down casting the bank, I start to focus in on accurate casts (something else I harp on, for good reason!). If a cast isn't just right I might even turn around, paddle up and re-cast it. I'm that adamant. In this case, it helped. As we paddle to the first set of rapids, I linger off to the side and focus on the sun-baked eddies to the sides of rapids, in water that's less than 1' deep, full sunlight, all solid beds of limestone. I see some grass hanging over the edge of the water, its blades tipping in. It was a tough skip to get it under with a T-rigged 1/16oz BBH, but she fell perfectly, just inside the grass. Through the crystalline waters I see a bass lurch forward and suck up my lure. I pause for a split second... and *wham* set my hook and the fight was on. The beast bolted out of the grass across the limestone bed. The water was so skinny, and this pig so feisty, she skirted across water merely inches deep, her dorsal and tail slicing out of the water like the freshwater shark she was impersonating. She took me to the current and begin to fight it upstream, a worthless endeavor as my Penn drag keeps her at bay, allowing me to slowly man her back to the kayak. By now Lurker has paddled over to watch and help boat the bass.
I'm trying to teach Lurker to bass fish with confidence and to pinpoint big bass, this lesson couldn't have been more succinct- accurate casts to well-positioned ambush points in an area where bass SHOULD be at that moment. High fives were passed, pictures taken and the fish was released back to the waters in which she came, hopefully with the mindset to tug on my line again one day.
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