Fall Feeding Begins
Jorge Hildago with an October walleye he caught while fishing a mid-lake drop-off of Lake Hopatcong.
Multiple Species Awaken
By the third week of September, Lake Hopatcong and Spruce Run Reservoir are not fully turned over, which will amount to the cool, oxygenated water of fishing in the fall replacing the anoxic, summer dead zone of the depths, but the turnover is coming. We mark fish on the sonar graph as deep as 33 feet on the big lake, while during August fish don’t go deeper than about 18 feet. In other lakes and reservoirs also, walleye, hybrid stripers, trout, both species of bass, pickerel, and muskies begin their fall feeding this month. Steelheads begin to swim up the Salmon River by the end of September or in October, too, feeding heavily on salmon spawn. Freshwater concerns. Certainly, saltwater is on the move, too.
Caught in November on the Salmon River in New York, this steelhead measuring 31 inches and weighing nine pounds, three ounces, was one of many feeding in the river at that time. That’s my son, Matt, and I.
A September trout caught from shore in September.
In Round Valley Reservoir, that can be especially visible. By the middle of September, the surface temp will probably dip to 70 degrees, when rainbow trout show up for shore-bound anglers fishing marshmallow/mealworm combinations in 10-foot depths. And yet, sometimes you can see pods of trout swimming by. Not only the ones that rise and leap out in deeper water. Rainbows sometimes get caught in water as shallow as a foot or two on flies resembling scuds—small shrimp-like crustaceans—or on streamers. Meanwhile, largemouth bass begin to take chase after fish forage, becoming much more susceptible to lures like spinnerbaits than they were all summer, while smallmouths might prefer jerkbaits in rivers, crankbaits among lake and reservoir rocks.
Late September last year, I caught the third walleye Dow’s Boat Rentals has weighed for me at 5 pounds, 15 ounces. That’s happened over the course of more than a decade, so you can imagine how easy it was for me to overestimate that most recent weight, wanting to break past that limit. Probably the “four-pounder” I caught and released the same day weighed a little less than estimated, too, but not by much. I also caught a hybrid striped bass I measured at 17 ½ inches, and my friend Oliver Round lost a smallmouth bass. We saw it leap and estimated that it would have measured about 18 inches long. Live-lining herring, we often hook smallmouths during the fall, and we often catch largemouths on plastics fished close to rocks and weeds in relative shallows.
Even Vertical Jigging Gets Underway Early On
I never forget when I was introduced to vertical jigging on Lake Hopatcong in September, because I believed that didn’t get underway until the middle of October or later. But my friend Joe Landolfi insisted that doing it begins early in the fall, and he caught a 21-inch walleye from 15 feet of water on a Gotcha Jigger. I remember marking fish as deep as 30 feet that day. We didn’t do well otherwise, but a year later—same time of year—I hooked a hybrid that had to weigh five or six pounds on a live herring fished about 20 feet down. Joe caught a three-and-a-half-pound hybrid later the same evening on an unweighted live herring. We fished only a couple of hours, when I took the clue from another boat that a lot of good-sized fish were getting caught.
The almost horizontal light of early morning rises pretty quickly. It’s best to be out before sunup.
Finessing Hybrids
September goes against the grain of late October deep water fishing, when the turnover is nearly complete, because a lot of the live-lining involves no weight added to the line. And like late September, early October can be productive in the same way. On October 3, 2023—a beautiful day in the 70s—I caught a 4.8-pound hybrid striper and a few under two pounds, while my friend Kevin Murphy caught a 7.73-pounder and another just about two pounds. We also caught a lot of smallmouths, largemouths, and a nice-sized crappie. The hybrids came on unweighted herring live-lined, besides Kevin’s big one and some of my little ones caught on herring weighted with small split shot, but a deep drop-off several hundred yards from shore was essential to finding those hybrids. Some of them marked as shallow as eight feet under the surface, over bottom 38 feet down, and although most of them swam in depths of 31 to 33 feet, I quickly learned that avoiding heavy ¾-ounce slip sinkers was a good idea. In late October and early November, I set herring at the bottom edge of drop offs in water anywhere from 33 to 45 feet deep. But when I put a herring down deep weighted by a heavy sinker while fishing with Kevin, I reeled that fish back up stone-cold dead.
A 4.8-pound hybrid striped bass I caught from Lake Hopatcong on October 3, 2023. It had died by the time Kevin Murphy got the photo.
I figured a herring would have enough gumption to stay above the anoxic water if it could. It might go just deep enough when weighted with a little split shot, and indeed, I did something right for Kevin to have caught that 27-incher. An amazing fish. When it came to the net, I thought it might weigh eight or nine pounds. We’ve had other successful early fall outings, too.
In 2023, the weather conditions nearly calm, if it were windy, we could have anchored and tried to do the same, but nothing favors control as windless conditions do. I remember we didn’t anchor, allowing a very slight drift that covered a little ground. It was a banner outing, even though we didn’t catch dozens of hybrids as you hear about happening from time to time.
Topographic Map and Portable Sonar are Important
You can catch a few big hybrids and walleyes without experience on lakes and reservoirs having them, if you use a topographic map and a graph unit. Dow’s is no longer renting boats on Hopatcong, but in September it may still be possible to rent from Lake’s End Marina, although from what I understand, they stop renting small boats early in the fall. (Buying the bait at Dow’s is probably still possible.) I’ve used a portable graph unit for decades—essential to have. So is a map until you’re sure where the drop-offs are.
When you find one of those drop-offs, you often find a lot of fish marking on the graph. Those fish will make you wonder why you’re not catching dozens, and rest assured they’re not carp or catfish. Apply patience and catch some. Just because they’re there, doesn’t mean they’ll take everything offered. We often catch two or three early, but Kevin caught his big one, and I caught some of mine, in the afternoon. Friends and I do miss plenty of hits on the herring, in addition to the fish we catch, but the reluctance of so many that get marked down there remains a mystery to us. I’ve seen otherwise, when Marty Roberts anchored his boat over 29 feet of water on October 12, 2012 and proceeded to catch hybrids nonstop. Joe Landolfi witnessed the action, too, but he didn’t want to stick around, because they were only two- and three-pounders. We got a call on Joe’s mobile device when Marty started catching five-pounders from the same spot, but by the time we got back there, the bite was done!
This article’s original was published in New Jersey Federated Sportsmen’s News.