What Happened to the Fall Feed?

I’m going fishing in Virginia for a couple of days later this week and the high temperatures are supposed to come close to 80 both days. The low temperature one of the two days won’t dip below 60.

It’s November.

I’m packing shorts.

I remember that back in the 90s we used to fish a tournament on the Potomac the first weekend of October each year. Almost every time I wore multiple layers. At least once I wore my long underwear.

I’m not sure why we no longer seem to have a Fall. At some point in the next month a storm or front will roll in, it’ll drop into the 30s, get gray, and we won’t come out of it until the spring. There are usually a few days in January or February when we get temps in the 60s or higher, but they are false positives. Shortly thereafter we might get snow. 

And I’m sad that we don’t get fall anymore because the spring – most anglers’ favorite time to fish – goes by way too quickly. Blink and you miss three waves of spawning bass. Skip a week for a family event or a graduation and you might not get to fish on the best day of the year.

Fall promises to be the late-in-the-year counterbalance to that experience. But while I’ve had some great fall days over the years I’ve never experienced that true fall bite. I’ve never gone to the last channel bank in a major tributary and fired a Rat-L-Trap again and again and again, catching one fish after another until my thumbs bled. Part of that is that I fish mostly on tidal rivers rather than reservoirs. But even on places like Buggs Island or Lake Gaston I’ve never had that banner day the books and magazines promised us.

Am I the only one? Or has that textbook bite overpromised and underdelivered?

It’s not stopping me from fishing this fall – I’m really hoping for a good buzzbait bite as the water temps remain in the 50s for a while – but I feel like I’ve missed out in some way.