This is my favorite time of year as a fisherman! The bass have one thing on their mind... eating! That being said shad are the key right now. You sometimes have to cover lots of water until you find the bait. If you are in an area and don't hear or see the bait actively running around, move. When you come across heavy concentrations of bait, fish that area hard. This does not mean you have to fish directly in the bait, the bass will be near, set up on ambush points like grass edges, points or offshore roadbeds and humps. Crankbaits like the 6th Sense Snatch 70(lipless) and Crush 50x (sq. bill) are great tools to attack these fish in shallower areas. For the deeper schools, locate the bait and bigger fish with your electronics and once found, the Mpack flutter spoon and carolina rigs have been catching fish. A lot of fish even offshore are still relatively shallow. Points and pond dams between 10 and 15 ft have been best. An alternate pattern to catch a bigger average size on the shallow fish is to fish the pond weed or alligator weed grass edges around points with a 3/8oz Mpack flipping jig in the natural craw color with a green pumpkin havoc pit boss for a trailer. I like to trim down the skirt to just below the hook and trim the pit boss to where the arms start just below the skirt. This makes for a smaller profile that imitates the young of the year crawfish who have recently come out of their holes and are slower moving and basically candy to bass. Just recently we got a couple bites on some big swimbaits as well, hopefully that pattern continues to improve. I hope this helps on your next Lake Fork trip!

I have some good weekend dates available for the end of November and into December, this is the best time to catch big fish at Fork in my opinion. If I can help in any way, let me know!

Excellent report Mr. Lawson. Thanks for sharing.

Well done Billy.