Video Blog: Fall Muddin' Fun (Jim & Greg Do Late-Fall Bass, Part III)

Jim Edlund, NAFC Online Editor 5 comments NAFC Staff Blogs

Nov 16

Last week both Web Guy Greg and I wrote about a recent late fall bass trip that was, in many ways, a comedy of errors.

Last week’s blogs left off with an outboard that had burst into flames and subsequent MacGyver-style repairs. It wasn’t like we had much of a choice—we could either fix the venerable Seahorse or go home and submit to our wives’ encyclopedic honey-do lists.

No retreat. No surrender.

So, motoring up the Rum River in Huff’s Millennium Falcon we smiled the sh*&-eating grins of any n’er-do-wells who’ve escaped almost certain injury. I think Greg will agree at that moment we both felt a little bit like Steve McQueen’s character in the closing scenes of Papillon.

And like some kind of deranged and bass-obsessed Admiral Farragut-meets-Han Solo, Greg motored the boat ahead, his steely eyes scanning for something in the distance.

I’d once seen this same glazed-over look in the jaundiced hard-boils of a Jamaican fishing guide who almost got me killed. (More on that in a future blog.)

And it scared me.

Greg motored ahead, past what I thought was primo smallie habitat: laydowns, bowling ball-sized rocks and sand-to-rock transitions with wood.

And then we were there.

You don't see this everyday ...

Actually, it looked more like this:

The kind of place I've motored past hundreds of times to get to "better" smallie water ...

Greg’s countenance returned and he told me he’d fished this particular spot a year earlier with local bass pros Josh Douglas and Rich Lindgren and he knew the score, which involved tubes (no big surprise there, but here’s the kicker) fished in mud.

Mud? And smallies?

While I’ve fished my share of smallies, I’ve seldom strayed far from classic rock, gravel and other textbook smallie locations to catch the majority of my fish.

True, I’ve pulled bronzebacks from woody and weedy haunts, but I’ve never dialed in a mud bite. Never even thought of fishing the mud for smallies … that is, until Greg demonstrated how these river donkeys relate to it in late fall.

And it makes sense.

Now, rather than me blathering on and on about how mud retains heat and attracts forage, simply watch the video Greg produced to see the pattern in action. My only regret? No engine fire footage!