5 must-know tricks for landing lunker walleye, brook trout, bass, perch & pike in fall

#3  MEEGS LURES FOR MAMMOTH SMALLMOUTH BASS

Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good. A few years back, I was targeting whitefish adjacent to a lake trout spawning shoal, where ciscoes also spawn a month or so later. A biologist friend who had been tagging the trout alerted me to the fact that schools of whitefish (and likely ciscoes) were gobbling up the trout eggs that didn’t fall safely between the fissures.

Staging out off the edge of the drop-off, the big whitefish stuck out like sore thumbs on my sonar unit as they waited for the cover of darkness to sneak in shallow. Seeing that, I dropped down a special, nose-heavy Meegs jig with the tentacle tail of a crappie tube superglued to its back. That’s the same go-to combo that’s used so successfully on Lake Simcoe during winter to catch thousands of whitefish.

And just as in winter, the key presentation detail is to fish the jig as vertically as possible on a tight line, making the nose tap the bottom while the flapping tail sticks up straight. When you do it right, you can make the jig look like a bobblehead chicken.

After dropping down my Meegs, I slowly tapped the nose into the muck, then felt my line go slack—you rarely feel a strike with this presentation. Having lost contact with the lure, I set the hook. Usually, whitefish will throb doggedly down near bottom, but this one rocketed straight up and out of the water instead. That’s when I saw the copper-coloured side of the fish and realized it was actually a mammoth smallmouth.

Since that lucky day, I’ve used a Meegs to boat countless big bronze bombers, which no doubt mistake the lure for a small cisco eating lake trout eggs for breakfast. With that in mind, I almost exclusively use white and silver jigs, with complementary coloured tube tails glued to their back section. I’ll also often use the back half of an emerald shiner, since it perfectly matches the shape and colour of a cisco, and offers a delectable smell and taste.

For this presentation, avoid using a wimpy rod with a soft tip or parabolic action. Instead, I use a seven-foot, medium-action spinning rod with a fast tip, and team it with a 2500 or 3000 series reel spooled with eight- or 10-pound braid and a three- or four-foot length of similar strength Maxima Clear or fluorocarbon connected via an Alberto knot. And don’t worry, your light braid will never billow, wrap around the rod tip or drift back into the trolling motor when you tie on a heavy and compact Meegs jig, or Jigging Rap-style bait for that matter.

The clock is ticking down, folks. There are only a few minutes left in the game, so it is time to pull out all of the stops.

BONUS TIP: BITE DETECTION

Never expect to feel a bass eat your Meegs jig as you tap it on bottom, making mini clouds of silt to turn on the fish. Instead, the bass will throw slack into your line when it picks up the lure. When that happens and you can no longer feel the weight of the Meegs, instantly set the hook. This is also why you should always keep your rod tip pointed down near the water, and maintain a tight line between the lure and your rod tip.