The 5 Best Fish Species To Target During The Fall

The cooler weather and water of autumn bring with it a smorgasbord of new and exciting fishing opportunities. Some fish move into shallower water and feed heavily, trying to pack on the calories before winter, while others become extremely aggressive and will strike out at almost anything as they move into streams and rivers to spawn.

While this creates a plethora of prospects for fall anglers, if you’re really looking to bend your rod or fill your freezer with some hot autumn fishing action, there are five particular species you should target.

While a lot of autumn trout anglers spend their time chucking big streamers and lures for pre-spawn brown trout, the diminutive brookie should never be overlooked. Brook trout generally don’t grow as large as other trout species, yet they make up for their lack of size with pure ferocity. Like browns, brook trout are autumn spawners, which cause the fish to act more like piranhas than trout. They’ll often hurl themselves at baits as soon as they hit the water, leading to 50+ fish days for savvy brook trout anglers.

You can find autumn brook trout in rivers and small streams, as well as any lakes and ponds with inflowing water. In rivers, target fall brookies in and around deeper pools and pockets of slower water that are directly downstream from any shallow, gravel-bottomed area where they’re likely to spawn. In lakes and ponds, you’ll find them stacked up like cordwood around the mouths of inflowing creeks or streams as they prepare to swim upstream. It should be noted that you’ll want to try and avoid targeting any brook trout that you see actively spawning if you want good fall brook trout fishing in the future.

As far as baits, lures, and flies for autumn brook trout go, the flashier the better. With aggression at an all-time high, fall brookies will lash out at baits that attract attention, such as minnows, nightcrawlers, and big aquatic insects like hellgrammites. You can also have a lot of luck using flashy inline spinners as well as dry flies like the Stimulator and Royal Wulff and brightly colored nymphs like the Copper John and Lightening Bug.

For the most part, walleye fishing is considered a spring and summer activity, but true walleye junkies know that autumn is where it’s at. During the fall, walleye in lakes and large rivers move out of their deep water summer haunts and into the shallows to feed like pigs in an acorn patch. This makes autumn a perfect time to fill either the live well in your boat or even a stringer on shore with a limit of fat walleye so long as you fish in the right spots with the right techniques.

Fall walleye can be found at a variety of depths, but your best bet for success is to concentrate on areas between five and 15 feet deep. In lakes and reservoirs, look for shallow rocky flats and any remaining weed beds, concentrating your efforts in transition zones along drop-offs and the edges of the weeds during the day and right up along the shallows at night.

If you’re fishing in a river, look for walleyes in slower pools of slackwater and right in the heart of dense structure, such as log jams and boulder piles. Fish the edges of these spots where slower water meets the main current, and you’re almost certain to hook up with a hungry hog.

As autumn walleye are always on the hunt for baitfish, your baits and lures should match the hatch. Large minnows rigged through the lips on a light jig are an autumnal favorite. They can be slowly bounced along the bottom or dropped right in the center of schooling fish. The best fall walleye lures can be worked slowly and deliberately along the bottom to imitate a wounded or dying baitfish. Suspending jerkbaits like the Husky Jerk or X-Rap are ideal for this sort of work, as are soft plastics like the Super Fluke and Turbo Shad.

If I had to choose the perfect species for a fall fish fry, it would have to be the yellow perch. These tiger-striped cousins of the walleye are considered to be some of the best-eating fish in freshwater, and during the autumn, schooled-up perch can be caught in droves. They move into shallow water, gathering in massive hunting packs that patrol the shallows for their next meal. It might take a bit of searching to find the fish, but once you do, the fishing can be lights-out.

Look for fall perch in five to eight feet of water along the top edges of drop-offs into deeper water. The best way to find these zones is by utilizing side-imaging sonar, targeting areas with rocky or sandy bottoms or rock piles along muddy bottoms that the perch will stage around as they hunt and feed.

As the water cools, perch will tend to switch their diets from smaller baitfish and minnows to more invertebrates and other bottom-dwelling forage like crayfish, sculpins, scuds, chironomids, and worms. Accordingly, your best technique for catching autumn perch is by using baits and lures that can get down and dirty.

Jigging with a small 1/16 oz jig head tipped with chunks of worm or maggots that can be bounced right on the bottom is an incredibly effective fall perch technique. You can also have a lot of luck fishing with a drop-shot rig setup with a small #8 hook and a soft plastic insect or crayfish.

However, my absolute favorite technique for fall perch is a simple hook baited with a live worm or dead minnow and a single split shot attached to the line two to three inches above the hook that can be left to soak or dragged along the bottom.

There’s probably no better time of year to land the giant pike of your dreams than in the autumn. As water temps drop, these voracious super predators will move away from their deep water haunts and begin to hunt in the shallows like ravenous lions. Unlike the spring, when post-spawn pike can be a big sluggish and require smaller baits and a bit of finesse, fall pike are more than willing to chase down and kill the largest prey they can find, so you can have a lot of luck by thinking big.

Look for fall pike along the edges of remaining weed beds, along deep-water drop-offs, and off the tips of islands and points. Concentrate your fishing efforts in five to 15 feet of water, paying extra attention to the inside curving edges of drop-offs and flats, as these spots will usually hold concentrations of baitfish and subsequently the big pike that are searching for them. As the fish are constantly on patrol, you’ll want to cast as far as you can or troll along these points to cover as much water as possible using lures, baits, and flies that attract a lot of attention.

The easiest and most classic way to catch autumn pike is with a big, live sucker or even a panfish (where legal) hooked through the back and suspended beneath a large bobber. You can also have luck casting or trolling large jerkbaits like a 9-inch Shallow Czar or a bucktail spinner like the Mepps Agila. Fly anglers can get in on the action with big streamers like Rainy’s El Chupacabra and Jared’s Outlaw.

Whether you’re catching them on the Great Lakes or on the West Coast, there’s nothing that fights as hard as an autumn chinook salmon. During the fall, the fish migrate up rivers to spawn and are at the peak of their strength, making hooking one feel like you just lassoed a passing train. Whether it’s on conventional gear or a fly rod, these monstrous salmonids will push your gear and your will to the breaking point and leave little wonder as to why chinooks are known as kings.

Chinooks are generally easy to find during the fall. Usually weighing between 15 and 50 pounds and shaped like torpedoes, the big salmon tend to stand out in the rivers and streams as they migrate upstream during their autumn spawning runs. If they aren’t making themselves obvious by tearing through the water like aquatic silver warheads, you can find them resting in deeper pools along the edges of the main current or stacked up at the tailouts of rapids or churning riffles as they prepare to make a run. Like other Pacific salmon, chinooks don’t feed when they enter the river, but you can still catch them by playing on their aggression and fishing with lures and flies that really piss them off.

Chinooks are territorial and hardwired to aggressively bite loose salmon eggs to protect their own nests (redds) from competitors. Accordingly, the easiest way to catch them is by drifting both natural and artificial eggs or egg flies along the bottom of the river. You can also trigger them to strike on large, flashy lures like spoons and even crankbaits that you backtroll in the current. Fly anglers can also catch a bite by swinging gaudy streamers like Intruders on either traditional fly rods or Spey fishing gear.

Part of the appeal of autumn fishing is that it’s a last hurrah. With winter’s freeze-up on the horizon, autumn’s cavalcade of fishing opportunities offers a last chance to be out on the open water during the most beautiful time of year. The frosty morning chill in the air, fluttering leaves on the wind, and calls of passing waterfowl remind you of what’s about to come.

For the moment, you can still sit calmly in the boat or hip deep in the cold water and enjoy the feel of a fishing rod in your hand, feeling the pull at the end of your line, a reminder that while winter may be coming, it’s not here yet.