This post was guest written by Pro Angler Cody Kelley. Follow Cody on Facebook and Instagram here!

All summer you have been hammering the bass out deep in brush piles and structure. Now, it’s time for finding fall bass. Unfortunately, it sometimes seems that the fish will disappear literally overnight towards the end of summer and beginning of fall. Check out these 3 dynamite places to find bass after the fall transition in your favorite reservoir!

Last Flats

This is probably the most commonly keyed on area for fall fishing, but for good reason. This is simply the area in the very back of a creek that creates a ‘flat’ shallow area. As the bait fish move to the back of the creeks, fall bass won’t be far behind. You can undoubtedly catch a few by fan casting the flat hoping to connect with some schoolers, but there is definitely a better way.

Look for any type of wood or hard structure laying on the flat. Something as small as one stick up in a few feet of water can be enough to hold a bass. If you’re lucky enough to fish somewhere with a good crappie fishing population, you will probably have crappie stake beds. Those can be awesome. Heck, I’ve even caught fish off old T-posts before!!

Flat Side Boat Docks

Some bodies of water don’t lend themselves to fishing the flats in the backs of pockets. Some lakes in mountainous regions (like the Ouachita’s and Ozark’s) can lay out like one large river all the way through. In these areas, we still want to target structure on flats, but have to change it up a bit. If you look at the map from Navionics, you will see some shallow flat pockets on the left side, havens for fall bass. All of those shallow boat docks can be money once the bass go shallow on the main lake.

Channel Y’s

Some lakes are still different than previously mentioned. When fall fishing lakes out east, like Hartwell and Clarks Hill, the fish will often use the deep channels of the creeks to run bait back and forth. Think of these channels like small bass highways. To increase your chances of connecting, you want to fish the intersection of the creeks to catch bass coming and going. Often, I like to sit on the shallow secondary point casting out deeper to fall bass.

What To Throw

This is the easy part of fall fishing. You really only need to remember one thing. The fall bass are feeding on small fast moving shad. That being said, we really have all kinds of options to target the fish. Here are 4 of my favorites:

• War Eagle ¼ oz Double Willow Spinnerbait (Mouse is my personal favorite)
• ½ oz Strike King Red Eye Shad
• Crock-O-Gator ¼ oz head knocker buzzbait
• Keitech 2.8 swimbaits on ¼ oz head (killer in the creek Y’s)

The fall can be some of the most exciting fishing of the year. Hit the areas with some of the mentioned baits and I am sure you will have success hammering the fall bass!