Lets look at the cooling effects of the fall weather on our Florida lakes, fish, and cover. As the cooler nights start to drop the water temperature of the lakes the fish will start to stage for spawning. In certain lake primaly south Florida the fish will actually start spawning. Lake Okeechobee is a prime example of one of these South Florida lakes where fish start spawning in late October early November. When I moved to Florida in 1975 I was told the fish spawned in November on Lake Okeechobee and I told the man he was crazy. Well boy was I ever wrong. The fish on lakes like those that make up the Northern Saint Johns River system the fish don't move so quickly to the beds. These differences lead me to believe this behavior is a response to prior years or maybe spawning at the time of the year that fish was born, weather permitting. Remember water temperature is the trigger. These are some of those things that happen that I can not give you an answer as to why it happens I can just tell you it does. This abnormal behavior of spawning is one of those behaviors that prove we cannot put bass into a box of predictable behaviors.

The behaviors we can rely on we draw as a standard but with any living creature there are always variables that are not readily predictable. It is these variables that test our ability to adapt to the conditions of that day and time.

Let's lay out the standard to a normal fall pattern nationwide. There are still a great number of variables that will influence the individual lakes fall patterns. Up land reservoirs, low land reservoirs, mountain lakes, river systems all have their own particular patterns that are unique to themselves and within these lake types a whole other set will come to light. Basic fall movements center around the thread fin shad migrations. As a rule the shad will migrate up the creeks and deep coves in the fall the same as they do in the spring. Some of the shad will move back as far as they can swim. As we have discussed before the bass will be right behind any shad movement. With the colder night, the water continues to cool triggering all of the shad to move to the deeper areas of the channels. As the shad swim back towards the lake large numbers will start dying. They flutter toward the bottom giving the bass a feast. This feast helps them fatten for the winter. About the middle of all this comes the dreaded fall turnover. This is where the top layer of the lake is colder than the bottom and the two switch positions. This stirs the lake changing the whole patterns. It will also send most of the shad with the bass in tow to the main river channels. This starts the winter patterns and we will discuss them in a latter lesson.

Back to our Florida lakes. We have few creek channels or deep channels into coves for the shad to make these migrations. Some of the shad will gather in the river sections of our lakes but don't look for the huge schools you find up north. The shad will gather in the deep areas and so will some of the fish. There will be fish schooling on these shad in these deeper areas. This will show us again that the fish will group into different groups.

God Bless, good fishing
Capt. John Leech
www.bassfishingguideflorida.com