No excuses for anglers in astronomical autumn

Orlan Love, The Gazette

With astronomical autumn starting Wednesday, legitimate excuses for not going fishing all but disappear.

During the summer, when fishing opportunities seem infinite, it's OK to occasionally cite east winds, strong winds, cold fronts, algae blooms or fluctuating water levels as justification for saying, well, they won't bite anyway, I might as well mow the lawn and wait for a better chance.

But now, with time no longer on your side, none of those excuses hold water.

While you tarry, the days will shorten, the water will cool, the bass will grow sluggish, your returns will diminish and, before you know it, your next opportunity to catch a smallmouth bass will be in the spring.

Tuesday's 25 mph southeast wind would have discouraged me in July or August. Not only would the fish probably not bite, but if they did, they would bite so feebly that I could not detect it with the huge windblown bow in my line hampering my ability to 'feel” my lure.

In mid-September, however, overcoming that shortcoming with a change in tactics seemed worth a try.

Strong winds especially affect my favorite presentation, a light tungsten jig tipped with a simple twister-tail grub, which I adopted during the low flows of the drought of 2012.

Until then, my go-to lure for interior river smallmouth was the Cotton Cordell Big O crankbait - a lure with which I was once so enamored that I stockpiled more than 100 units just in case the manufacturer ever quit making them.

Those lures have languished in a drawer since I discovered the virtues of the tungsten jig, which (in combination with no-stretch line and a graphite rod) makes fish contact feel like you've just touched an electric fence. Besides craving that feeling, I appreciate the ease of releasing a fish ensnared by a single hook rather than a pair of treble hooks.

Given Tuesday's wind, I brought the little Big O out of retirement - mainly because its swimming motion kept my line tight and me in direct contact with it - and the fish acted like they had really missed it.

Once I'd gauged the wind's effects on my ability to cast the quarter-ounce crayfish imitation, I could regularly land it within a foot of the limestone-clad riverbank. Within three or four turns of the reel handle, almost as if the fish had signed up on a waiting list, something unseen would impede the lure's movement, and another outraged smallmouth bass would go airborne.

In the two hours before daylight fully faded, I caught and released 31 of them, and I would have certainly caught more if it hadn't taken so long to extract all those hooks without hurting the fish or myself.

l Comments: (319) 934-3172; orlan.love@thegazette.com