Posted: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 10:32 AM - 9,510 Readers

By: Mike Leggett

LAKE TRAVIS — A quarter-ounce of lead and steel and white plastic skirt, flicked sidearm with a north wind to guide it, landed quietly at the base of the limestone cliff.

Before the reel handle made a single full turn, while the spinner bait's skirt was still fluttering in a simulated death spiral, there was a flash of green from beneath, and a 2-pound largemouth bass blasted through the surface with the lure in his mouth and somersaulted back into the water.

My old friend Jim Cox struck back and sank the hook into the fish's bony lip. The fight was over almost as fast as it started, and we added another perfect eating fish to our ice chest.

Cox, grinning his semi-evil, "I told you so" grin, said just that as he dropped the fish onto the ice.

"I told you so," in a commanding kind of voice. "When the weather cools off and the little northers start pushing the wind from that direction, these fish in this lake get on these cliffs. You can always catch them on spinner baits."

We caught both largemouths and Guadalupe spotted bass that day.

Now, a spinner bait on cool days in October and November wasn't news to me. But fishing them over 100 feet of water along the rock walls was news. The where was the deal, not the what.

That fishing trip had to be more than 15 years ago, and Cox has long since passed away.

However, that little tidbit of fishing knowledge might be the difference in success or failure on a Lake Travis fishing trip right now. Or maybe it's spinner baits over the vegetation in Lake Bastrop or around the brush piles in Granger Lake. Or spinner baits dragged through the thorns and scrub on the Texas side of Falcon International Reservoir.

Wherever you choose to fish right now in Texas, you can be sure that the bass have moved into shallow water that has been cooled by the changing weather. Until the big chills arrive in December, virtually every lake has at least some prime spinner bait water.

Last week, I fished in East Texas with my lifelong friend Killis LaGrone. Now retired, LaGrone is a serious bass fisherman who will travel to Falcon or Lake Fork or Toledo Bend in search of big bass.

"A spinner bait is my confidence bait all the time," LaGrone said as he fought a chunky, two-pound largemouth. "But it's really my bait this time of year. Those bass start moving to shallower water to feed and a spinner bait imitates what they're feeding on." That would be mostly bluegills and, in some lakes right now, shad. LaGrone changes colors on his spinners to match the dominant food fish.

This week he was using a dark green with a little yellow thrown in, basically imitating bluegills on the lake he was fishing. He caught a fish on the second cast and an even larger one just two casts later. We fished on an ultra clear, bluebird day, post-cold front and rain, with a north wind lashing the lake's surface. But the fish still were biting.

Cool, even cold nights and warm days keep largemouths moving upward, into shallower water where they can be reached with relatively shallow running spinners. And those Indian summer periods of muggy, warmer days in November often mean a changing barometer, which puts largemouth bass into serious feeding mode.

Now that there is more water in Lake Travis, the bass will be moving toward that typical fall/winter pattern. You can catch them on long shallow points before the sun comes up but the best fishing is later in the day when the wind is blowing bait fish against cliffs on the southern shore of the lake, along the old Colorado River channel.

The bass will gang up for the aquatic buffet and the catch is on.

mleggett@statesman.com

*  Story Contributed by: Mike Leggett