In the fall, many outdoorsmen find that it is time to hunt, but if you, like Dan Gapen, knew where to fish and didn’t have to test too many spots, an angler could do well.

Water temperature had dropped below 60 degrees and the heavy run of river chubs would be in migration. Anne and I headed for Rocking Chair Pool above Battle Rapids on the Upper Mississippi River, five miles downstream from Monticello, Minnesota.

The previous day, I’d fished the culvert running through my property and caught fifteen, 5- to 7-inch redtail chubs. As usual, doughballs about 1/8 of an inch in diameter had been used to catch my bait. All 15 redtails had stayed alive overnight in my screen live box, which rested in the creek before my cabin.

Redtail chubs, if your sports shop has them, are deadly on staging fall smallmouths. If you can’t find redtails, silver river chubs will do. Don’t bother buying and using sucker minnows. They don’t work at this time of year!

With our boat in tow, we drove to the Dog Kennel landing. Here, we’d head a mile upstream to anchor at Rocking Chair’s upstream end. The 6-foot-deep flat down from us should have its usual herd of 18- to 21-inch smallies.

Hooking up a redtail chub is done by embedding the point of a 3/0 Eagle Claw short shank hook up through the minnow’s lower jaw, on up through the upper jaw and out one of the minnow’s nostrils. Yes, the hook shows, but that doesn’t dissuade smallies from striking. I guess the scent of these redtail minnows is so enticing that bass don’t care if a metal hook is showing.

Anchored, Anne was first to rig a 1-1/2-ounce Bait Walker Sinker, a 28-inch drop-back line and a 6-inch redtail. She cast her bait 35 feet downstream from us.

No sooner than her redtail hit the water and you counted to five, then something slammed the offering. A moment after the strike, a 19-inch bass exploded above surface, dragging the orange Bait Walker behind it.

Dropping what I was doing, I waited to place a landing net under Anne’s smallie, which weighed in at a couple ounces under 5 pounds. The smallmouth bass were here!

My presentation had hardly reached bottom before it, too was struck—this bass an 18-incher. Both fish were released. The action would continue until we were down to our last two chubs. We’d saved the largest redtails till the last. One of these was nearly 8 inches long.

It should be noted that fall bass always strike a chub minnow directly on its heads. This necessitates that you set the hook immediately when the bait is struck. There’s no wait time for the bass to mouth the chub, turn it and swallow, as is done during hot summer months. Fall smallmouth bass are definitely more aggressive with their attack on food. By the way, when water temps drop below 50 degrees, the smallmouth feeding nearly shuts down completely.

The last two 7-inch-plus chubs caught two of the largest bass of our day—both in excess of 6 pounds. In all, we boated and released 18 trophy smallmouths that day on 15 redtails, then 3 on artificials when the minnows were gone.

For more fall fishing tips from the pros who know, read the fall issues of MidWest Outdoors, available by subscribing on our website.