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Some of my best fishing successes have happened when the witches and goblins were prowling the sidewalks and ringing doorbells to beg for candy.
"Trick or treat" certainly applies to my years of fishing as I've applied my tried-and-true autumn tricks to enjoy the treats of October fishing.
Regardless of the species for which you are casting this Halloween season, your odds for hooking up are tilted generously in your favor.
My biggest smallmouth ever - 6 pounds on the nose - bit my jig on Oct. 31 a few years ago. I've boated numerous big largemouths and walleyes as October surrenders to November, and Lake Erie's steelhead aficionados bank on improving fishing once cold fronts blow across the lake to bring frosty mornings and chilly rain.
As our local reservoirs' water temperatures dip below 60 degrees, most of our game fish gain monstrous appetites for the abundant shad and perch that serve as the forage base. Shad typically move shallow in the fall and ball up in ghostly schools in creeks, while yellow perch haunt the shallow weed beds in search of insect larvae, crustaceans and small baitfish.
There's no trick to lure selection. I leave the dock with three basic set-ups: crankbaits, bladed jigs and quarter- to half-ounce jigs. On some waters, I add a fourth rod rigged with a topwater plug.
My Halloween crankbaits range from 3- to 4-foot-running square bills to 6- to 8-foot-diving Bombers, DT6s and Strike King Series 3s. They work great on rocky rip-rap banks, long points and off-shore humps. Square bills are especially effective at covering the shallow cover, including stump rows, old road beds and laydowns extending from the bank out over 3 to 4 feet of water.
Bladed jigs are three-season performers for me, but I switch gears a bit in the fall. While I prefer black-and-blue combinations in the spring and summer, I switch to white (sometimes with a flash of chartreuse) in the fall to better mimic shad. I also switch from boot-tail swimbaits to Yamamoto Zakos for extra action trailing the skirt.
Before bladed jigs came along, I would have always had a rod rigged with a white and chartreuse spinnerbait featuring tandem willowleaf blades. They did - and still do - a great job imitating fleeing baitfish to trigger strike reactions.
Crankbaits and vibrating jigs are perfect choices for efficiently covering a lot of water to locate the places where bass are hunting. They also are great for ensuring I don't miss solitary fish cruising out from the shoreline cover.
In areas where stumps and laydowns provide snaggy, witch-finger ambush points, I pitch jigs to the nooks and crannies. I dress them with crawfish-style plastics. Black and blue is my first choice, with green pumpkin a close second.
Mosquito, Pymatuning, the Ohio River, Lake Erie's Ashtabula and Conneaut harbors and Berlin are my Halloween favorites. While I typically target bass, I also have hooked up with big walleyes on many occasions, as the 'eyes are attracted by the same food species as largemouths and smallmouths.
I like Halloween bass for sport and walleyes for the table - perfect treats as we count down toward our break to wait for spring to bring another season of open-water fishing.
Jack Wollitz fishes whenever he can get his boat on the water. He writes weekly for Trib and Vindy readers. Contact him at jackbbaass@gmail.com.