Bass'n in October?
 

Everyone knows the trout season closes on Sept 30, while the Bass season is open year round except for a couple weeks in June.

So, how do I legally fish for small mouths in October with a fly rod? How do you angle for bass without attract'n a F&G officer?

Bass in October
 

Pick up a spinning rod or a baitcasting rod. You are asking for trouble with a flyrod in your hand. As the water cools a bass is less likely to come up for topwaters or flies. You are better off fishing a spinnerbait or a suspending jerkbait as fast as you can over 12-20' of water. As October starts to fade away and water temps fall below 50*, move out to humps and dropoffs and fish blade baits like silver buddies and hedon sonars and a drop shot. Drop them almost vertically down to 20'+ and shake and pop off the bottom. The hit almost always comes as the bait if falling back down.

Just wear your Hamburgular badge from McDonald's, trust me, no one will go near you......

You are wrong on the dates FLL. If you're talking Winnie it's ice out to ice in for rainbows, brookies and browns. Now Lake Trout (Touge) ends Oct 15th and LL salmon ends 9/30. Bass is til ice in. It's different for rivers and streams. I was out fishing today for salmon but contending with mucho bass boats.

FLL is not wrong...
 

Seeker,

Winni is designates as a "Lake Trout and Salmon Water". See pages 22/23 of the NH Fresh Water Fishing Digest linked below:

http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/Fish..._Digest_07.pdf

It states "October 1 to December 31 - Closed to all trout, salmon, and whitefish".

Have you gotten lucky not getting caught in the past? :D

hilltopper

Hi All,

I had two questions on the original post.

1. I didn't think there was a break in the bass season for a couple of weeks in June - what page in the digest does it say that?

2. I also didn't think that fishing for a particular species was tied to a particular piece of equipement - i.e. flyrod == trout. I have a bass boat and a fly rod and only fish for bass - granted I don't use the fly rod much but didn't think it was illegal. This time of year I use a sinking tip line and a wieghted woolly bugger on the fly rod.

Thanks for any help

Frankly, I don't know much about this and base it on even less, but I thought fish'n bass was 'off season' for the two weeks in June when the bass are spawning, whatever that means (?).

Somewhere, I picked up that information, probably from this forum.

Nope
 

It is not illegal but it is illegal to catch and keep, you need to release during that time.

1. Look at pages 18/19 and 48. There's a month long catch and release only period from mid May to mid June for bass, but you can still fish for them. I don't fish for bass myself, but isn't there some type of ethics argument regarding taking bass off their beds?

2. I agree with your statement. If you were fishing for trout/salmon in October 1) a fly rod wouldn't be the most effective piece of equipment and 2) you'd be fishing at different depths. Bottom line, if a Warden stops you and you don't have any trout/salmon on board there's no way they can accuse you of fishing for trout/salmon with your flyrod. My 2 cents...

You're correct, I think CRS kicked in there for awhile. I was thinking the general rules. I always obey all the rules.:rolleye2:

True picking the buck bass off the beds wouldn't be ethical or challenging, but non-spawning fish (mostly the females) are near by and fair game I would think. The females should have dropped their eggs in the nest by then - else why would the male be gaurding it.

agree, but....
 

....... almost every bass boat that comes into our cove in the Spring focuses on drop casts on the nests. Each of those fish on the half dozen or so nests gets caught many, many times over.