Trip after trip, and the later we got into September, the smallmouth bite steadily improved.

Days of hot fishing lasted into weeks. The pre-turnover bite peaked when I hosted a young couple from Tennessee, with both breaking personal records and catching fish surpassing 5 pounds. The great fishing continued with other anglers until my last trip the next week. Then I was to have a day off at last, as these are good days for me to go scout and check out other lakes and see whether the same hot bites can be replicated at them. 

That idea was short-lived; customer Joe Novak called me, wanting to play hooky from work that day. He saw my boat’s fishing was on fire that week and only wanted to schedule a date on the condition that his trip could be that way.

Desperate times call for a 10-hour round trip to fish for 8 hours. That day in late September 2019 ended up being the best smallmouth fishing he’s ever had.

As you know, fishing doesn’t ever come with any guarantees. But when patterns like this one are so obvious and hungry smallmouths are everywhere, they can make a guide look good.

For several days, the boat was fishing and drifting through depths of 5 to 8 feet, over huge, several-acre expanses of sand with the occasional spot-on-the-spot area containing additional structure and habitats. New waves of smallmouths were moving in and out, daily. We zigged and zagged with the wind, in controlled drifts. Casting an array of fast-moving, baitfish-imitating search baits, with 3.8-inch paddletails owning the score sheet.

If you know how to study lake maps, and heavily rely on C-Map Reveal or Navionics as I do, you’ll be able to identify these spots immediately. Viewing the lake overhead on Google satellite reaffirms it, too, as they’ll also stick out like sore thumbs; you could, in fact, see the structures and habitats scattered atop these flats—especially on the clearest lakes. Not every lake you’ll go to has obvious flats, however, but some have more of them than others.

The more I fish flats, and fish the specific lakes featuring them, I am further convinced that this fall pattern happens simultaneously and works everywhere. It’s a seasonal thing, and the smallmouths using them all behave similarly during September and October.

The appeal of flats

Some of the best lake regions of smallmouth fisheries don’t look like much but attract fish in droves once the timing is right. In September and October, that timing depends on water temperature and baitfish migrations. Things get good once water temperatures hit the middle-60s and are best into the upper 50s.

Flats are defined by their flat terrain, with very little incline and depth differences. They come in all shapes and sizes. Most are usually only several yards wide, while on some large inland lakes, flats can be the sizes of football fields. On the largest lakes and Great Lakes, they can run miles long or be several acres in size.

Consider Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay, which contains over 30,000 islands and has a shoreline of 1,000-plus miles that is loaded with reefs, shoals, and beaches. Or Beaver Island on the northeast corner of Lake Michigan, which is an archipelago of islands and flats. Or how about Lake Superior’s Chequamegon Bay out of Ashland, Wisc., whose eastern half is nothing but a massive, shallow, fertile sand flat containing logs (some natural, most artificial) and wood dating back to the ancient logging days. The amount of secondary habitat and spot-on-the-spot areas located atop these world-famous flats—and holding smallmouths—is overwhelming. Anglers fishing at these destinations must prioritize these additional habitats atop the flats because that’s where the smallmouths concentrate.

Identifying flats that provide smallmouths with a depth change, and immediate access into the lake’s main basin, should be the start of any fall smallmouth hunt, no matter where you go. Smallmouths will use them extensively for traveling and feeding, and the fish are always mobile and never stationary. And once the lake turns over, which on my lakes happens by mid-October, smallies will slide further into deeper water and won’t be wintering too far away from the flat.

A great flat has structure, vegetation, and nearby depth. The flats of my waters all have one thing in common—a firm, hard bottom component. It can be a hard, flat bottom featuring scattered areas of rock and gravel—some of which can be rock piles and boulder fields surrounded by sand. Otherwise, most of the flat will be firm, golden sand, with also a moderate scattering of low-lying submergent vegetation; common to my waters is brown cabbage, pondweed, water celery, and coontail. A combination of these additional habitats is prone to attract a very diverse forage base to these locations.

The flat’s potential can be explored from your desktop computer or mobile device. I use the desktop apps on Navionics and C-Map Reveal. Both display structure and contour lines in detail—aided by shaded relief, custom shading functions, and Genesis Social Maps (a crowd-sourced high-definition customized map). I like using both programs with my Lowrance HDS Lives and Pro, as on some lakes, one chart could display better and in greater detail over the other, and vice versa. Note that not all flats will be visible on maps or charted. These will be small, isolated flats located nearshore.

Flats

Drifting is the most effective way to fish flats. Aided by boat control—Spot-Locking and positioning—you can cast search baits or drag bottom baits efficiently. You must keep moving and cover water.

Whether drifting over them or positioning the boat along their edges, Navionics Hot Maps Platinum and Lowrance’s C-Map Reveal allow following or revisiting tracks and waypoints from previous drifts and provide guidance on whether to repeat the same drifts again, or where to go next. When one productive drift is completed, we can either drift across new sections and grids of the flat we haven’t yet covered, or revisit the same trail again to re-drift if the smallmouths we ran into haven’t become conditioned. When re-drifting and making the next pass, don’t blow through the area with the big motor, as it will spook fish and send them scattering across the flat.

Flats can keep you occupied for hours. Often, flats are the focus for much of the trip; 20- to 40-fish afternoons can become possible, mixed in with several 3- to 5-pound specimens, while solely drifting through these areas for several hours and bomb casting paddletails with long rods.

My boat favors bombing with spinning gear—using a 7-foot, 3-inch rod such as the St. Croix Legend Tournament Bass Power Versatile (LBTS73MHF). Paired with a 3000 or 4000 size reel spooled with 15-pound Cortland Masterbraid, it launches the swimmer. Personally, I also favor 7-foot, 5-inch casting rods, like my Victory Max Marshal (VTC75MHF) and Legend Tournament Bass Warhorse (LBTC75MHF). Clients are amazed by the casting distances I can achieve with these three setups.

Side imaging is an important feature when pulling up to the area to identify bottom, focus on additional habitats atop the flat, and confirm the presence of perch schools that could be 80 to 120 feet away from the boat. When drifting through depths as shallow as 5 feet or less, it’s difficult to see most young-of-year baitfish on side imaging unless schools are thick and heavy; but it is advantageous for seeing where the patches of grass, troughs, and other bottom-growing plant life is in proximity to the boat’s position. Those grass patches attract perch and are major casting targets. On the Lowrance Active Target 3-in-1 transducer, it’s possible to pick apart large, cruising smallmouths in detail.

When casting expansive flats, playing the wind is an advantage, but not always necessary if the skies aren’t bluebird or the lake flat calm. Wind-blown flats and areas of the lake can hold the most active smallmouths but won’t always guarantee the baitfish ingredient needed, too. Perch presence, along with cloud cover to help create lower-light conditions and disrupt the clear and skinny waters is best. When a few dozen young-of-the years charge boat side at the end of each cast you make, that’s the best indicator of a great lake region you shouldn’t have to leave anytime soon. The wind is your friend and will help spur underwater activity and feeding windows.

As the water temperatures cool, these spots get better. By late September into October, midday hours and afternoons are prioritized due to predictable feeding windows and water temperature peaks.

The more time you spend atop flats, the better you’ll get at learning to approach and dissect them. Everywhere you go, always be on the lookout for spot-on-spot locations atop these expansive structures. Most lake maps and charts will not accurately display these isolated honey-holes, so you will only find them with side imaging, 360 imaging, or simply getting lucky during a drift. Spot-on-the-spot areas like the few we will discuss next can contain the best shallow structure in the lake, making them smallmouth magnets for the next two months.

Sand

If much of the flat is all sand, it’s not a bad thing—if it contains troughs and depth fluctuations.

This time of year, we find many of our biggest fish prowling in pods atop sandbars and sand beaches in depths of 6 feet and less. These shallow sand patterns are driven by cooling weather and reduced sunlight and are most influenced by the comforts of cooling water temperatures and their high oxygen content. Inevitably as September progresses, temperatures cool to 60 and lakes are in pre-turnover stage, you’ll encounter more smallmouths invading the shallows of these lake regions.

On many clear-water fisheries with sandy bottom composition, trophy smallmouths gravitate to these areas where they are most comfortable in cooling waters, and roam. Sand functions as a cold-water heat conductor (a microwave!) to smallmouths in fall just like it does in early spring.

Sand is a major fish attractor on northern lakes. Northern shores with exposure to southern skies tend to be geographically best due to their solar heat absorption. Locating sand is timely and done easily by browsing satellite imagery of your favorite lakes on Google aerial maps. Most lakes throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota, and northern Michigan are displayed in high-definition detail, and their very clear waters visibly show sand shorelines and underwater terrain. DNR maps with bottom recordings can help confirm the presence of sand, too.

Locating sand shorelines by boat is time consuming. Visually, the best indicators of it is natural sand shorelines and beaches, and reeds. Troughs and slight depth differences of as little as 1 to 2 feet are just enough to be bass magnets in the shallows. These are scour holes formed by several years of ice forces and drifts. Smallmouths love to lay in them.

Smallmouths often lie along bottom and wait to torpedo themselves into passer-by schools of perch. With their incognito sandy-bronze color schemes that camouflage into bottom substrate, they are specialized feeders.

Top sand strategies are dragging 3.5-inch Strike King Coffee Tubes. For casting and covering water, a 4-inch Z-Man Diezel Minnow rigged to a 1/4- or 3/8-ounce Finesse EyeZ head is deadly. Under windy conditions, sling 1/2-ounce double-willow spinnerbaits. Red Perch is a bullseye to smallmouths and is a deadly color for all water clarities.

Grass

On fertile fisheries, sand flats often contain plant life. In most cases, they can be isolated weed beds, or deeper weed lines. In other instances, the entire flat could sprout into a weed bar.

Atop the flat, broadleaf cabbage and coontail could grow in isolated clumps. Meanwhile, scattered along bottom and mixed in with sand, elodea and water celery carpets the bottom. Along the flat’s deep edges could be green cabbage. Areas atop and along the edge contain great cover to host prey fish and smallmouths, which are drawn to these areas by midsummer.

Weed patterns are dependable and good, with the edges frequently holding the largest smallmouths in the lake. These fish are less targeted and less found compared to the “structure fish” that most anglers pursue. Several 6-pounders to my name have been captured under these circumstances, with the most notable catch falling for a yellow perch swim jig ripped through deep milfoil and coontail. Most memorable of that catch was that the other smallmouth swimming alongside it was much larger!

When the fish are on, weed patterns like this are capable of out-fishing rock-related and offshore structure strategies by a wide margin. It’s become one of our best big-fish patterns.

The only kicker to it—food must be around. And when it is, lure choices are easy to make. Perch-pattern swimmers and search lures encompassing swimbaits, paddletails, swim jigs and paddletail combos, spinnerbaits, lipless crankbaits, and suspending jerk baits are all successful. A 4-inch Z-Man Diezel Minnow in Pro Yellow Perch captured last September’s biggest smallmouth—a monster 21-incher feeding on perch—under these settings.

Weed line fishing also gets good under cold fronts and gloomy skies, where reaction strikes are common. Lipless crankbaits are outstanding.

Rock piles

Rock piles are legendary locations for producing large numbers of big smallmouths in fall. Smallmouths gravitating to them are not resident fish and are usually there for feeding. They get good near fall turnover time. Depending on depth and proximity to deep water, smallmouths may also utilize rock piles long after turnover.

The rock structures these flats contain are usually isolated rock piles or spines that contain most of the flat’s structure. Boulders, palm-size rock, and gravel atop bedrock is most common. Find these spots, and they’re smallmouth magnets. Meanwhile, some of the largest flats you’ll find may eventually transition into large rock fields instead. Use side imaging and 360 to find and pick them apart.

Unlike sand and grass, the primary food source located atop rock piles is crayfish. As they will be present in moderate numbers, banging craw pattern crankbaits, dragging tube jigs, and crawling football jigs with craw trailers are the boat’s top producers.

I get an incredible sensation from a good fall jig bite, and this is football season, after all. Recently, dragging a 5/16-ounce Jewel Baits Pee Wee Football Jig with a Z-Man Finesse TRD Craw trailer, and 1/4-ounce Beast Coast Sniper Jig, has accounted for several huge smallmouths. Especially at this time of year, bigger can be better, and that holds true at the onset of turnover (around 58 to 59 degrees) when smallmouths make their final push through these areas. My best monster smallmouth concoction is a heavier, 1/2- and 3/4-ounce Gregg Kizewski football jig in camo craw paired with a Bizz Baits Killer Craw. Bomb cast and crawl it up slopes and drag through shallow flats. If a fish is there, it’ll get smoked. This bait, too, has also produced 6-pound caliber smallmouths.

The crayfish bite I describe atop rock piles isn’t always the case, though. On some lakes, smallmouths could be in these areas to also feed on passerby baitfish—which could be smelt and ciscoes.

Three autumns ago, guide customer Jason Norris set the boat’s all-time single trip big fish total, capturing 11 smallmouths at 19 inches or greater and in the process achieving a five-fish sack of more than 25 pounds. What he achieved was that densely fog early morning atop the Ranger’s front deck with a 3.8-inch Strike King Rage Swimmer (Ayu) might never be replicated again. We haven’t run into large feeding groups of smallmouths like that anywhere since.

If you are lucky, like Jason was, and a mega school moves in, you’ll know it immediately. You’ll catch quality smallmouths on almost every single cast.

Beyond focusing on the obvious structures, don’t neglect transition areas, either. Areas with a noticeable change in composition are just as productive as rock piles themselves.

Edges and ledges

The edges and ledges of flats are just as important as their tops for smallmouths and baitfish. Throughout the various stages of fall and the gradual turnover process, smallmouths want access to deeper water as it is their sanctuary under adverse conditions (cold fronts and turnover). These edges also provide an eventual structural route for them to follow back to wintering sites.

The breaklines along the flat’s edge can hold numbers of smallmouths. These fish can be suspended or bottom oriented, making it possible to catch them under a variety of strategies.

To identify the best edges, pay close attention to the topography of your maps. Areas with the tightest contour lines signify the steepest breaks and drop-offs. On these lakes, the breaks can go from 5 feet down to 40 feet or more in a hurry. Other features to look for are finger bars and secondary or third-tier extensions of the flat. Smallmouths love the additional structure they offer. These areas become important as we approach November.

Also prevalent along edges is the heavy schooling of baitfish. Cast and slow-roll strategies with finesse paddletails, and Damiki rigging (moping) are top artificial options. What I also like to do when running along the deep edges is deployment live bait rigs that I set into my rod holders using 7’ 6” St. Croix Premier MF spinning rods with KastKing 3000 bait-runners spooled with 10-pound mono. We Lindy rig with lively, 4- to 6-inch walleye suckers and redtails lip hooked with Trokar’s TK-3 wide-load circle hooks, on a 10-pound fluorocarbon rig, 15 inches in length, with 1/2-ounce Lindy No-Snagg sinker to always maintain bottom contact. This catches a lot of smallmouths that the artificials won’t.

Food

On southern smallmouth fisheries, flats are invaded by schools of spawning shad, while here in the North, flats play host to migratory schools of juvenile yellow perch as they look for comfort and food.  The migration can provide the season’s best feeding windows.

Coincidentally, a shallow-water migration of baitfish and forage species is occurring simultaneously atop the flats. On many premier, inland smallmouth fisheries, young-of-the-year yellow perch are most abundant and common. In areas of high concentration, dozens of them will often trail lures to boatside. Little do they realize that they are a major reason why big smallmouths are in these locations. Dialing in these perch migrations will help produce the largest smallmouths in the lake.

Wherever you will be fishing this month, recognize that smallmouths are opportunistic feeders, and predators who can creatively use their surroundings and habitats to help them ambush prey. Whether atop the flats or holding tight to its edges, smallmouths lay low and wait to torpedo themselves into passer-by schools of perch. With their incognito, sandy-bronze color schemes that camouflage into bottom substrate, they are specialized feeders atop these locations.

The perch pattern program is nothing but search lures, which has been highlighted already. Often, multiple perch will be the first to follow in your baits. Once their presence is confirmed, spend some extra time in that vicinity. Smallmouths won’t be far behind. Strikes can happen at any moment.

The presence of forage drives all smallmouth movements for feeding. Follow the bait!

Hot spots on every lake

Every flat will have a hot spot. Be mindful that even while drifting atop them, smallmouths can be roaming, dispersed, or come at random.

As your boat drifts across flats for hungry smallmouths, be willing to repeat drifts and always make several passes throughout the day. Fall feeding windows are unfairly short and sweet, but they can happen at any time.

Enter waypoints from everywhere you catch a sizable fish; I at least do this with most of the noteworthy 20-inchers captured. Then you’ll have a reference of those areas on every next pass, and again in future seasons.

What’s nice about flats fishing is that the boat will not cover every square foot of them under different casting angles. This gives you many more opportunities to re-drift and revisit again so that you won’t leave very many smallmouths on the table.

Keeping a track and referencing waypoints ahead of you will keep the boat drifting through high-percentage areas throughout each pass. You can quickly speed through areas of dead water and slow down or Spot-Lock to pick apart its most productive sections.

As you experience more lakes and greater varieties of flats, and see them in all their shapes and sizes, understand that they are all not created equally. If you try to recognize the desirable characteristics atop them and locate their spot-on-the-spot areas, you’ll be catching a lot more smallmouths each fall.