This weekend we set our clocks back to Eastern Standard Time.
The days are getting noticeably shorter, leaves are falling, clogging tree-canopied streams, and there’s a chill in the air.
In a few weeks it will be dark by 6 o’clock, putting a damper on after-work fishing trips. If you’re contemplating one last outing on your favorite creek or river, do it now.
Fall fishing on Kentucky waterways is so invigorating and relaxing. There’s a backdrop of red and golden autumn leaves, banks draped with colorful grasses and the last wildflowers of the season. Anglers can sometimes see white-tailed deer, squirrels and wild turkeys moving through shoreline woods.
Pull off on a shoal or sandbar and take it all the sights. Eat a snack, drink a cup of coffee and make a few casts.
A good option for a fall trip is the Kentucky River, which flows through the heart of the state for 255 miles. Access points are an easy drive from almost everywhere in central Kentucky.
For information on access points — boat ramps and areas where canoes and fishing kayaks can be carried down to the water, visit the Kentucky River Authority website. Click on boat ramps for the details on more than 50 access points from the river headwaters to its confluence with the Ohio River.
At its best in the fall, during low water, anglers can catch an astounding array of fish — from catfish and black bass (largemouth, spotted and smallmouth), to white bass, hybrid striped bass, drum, crappie, sauger, and muskie.
Areas below dams are a magnet for fish in the fall. Higher oxygen levels in the water and swarms of shad and other baitfish attract catfish, black bass, sauger and hybrid striped bass.
Catfish angler in big boats anchor and fish nightcrawlers, minnows and cut bait on the bottom in eddies below rocks, at the base of the dam. Another productive strategy is to anchor off the river channel and fish on the bottom in the channel or the flat above the break. Catfish numbers in the lower pools of the Kentucky River are impressive, with the creel including channel catfish and flatheads, with some blue catfish.
Anglers have many cover types to fish, from sand and mud flats, to gravel bars, undercut banks, stumps (root wads), submerged timber, vertical rock palisades, and miles of chunk rock banks.
Bass anglers should target creek mouths, wood cover on gravel banks, rock walls and outside bends of channels, where current flows through stands of water willow. Deep-diving crankbaits fish slowly, in contact with the bottom, are a good lure choice. Another option is to pitch small plastic baits to wood cover.
When fishing below dams, concentrate on areas with current, where bass are waiting in ambush. Cast upstream and let your lure drift to the fish.
Probing deep cover below dams, such as channel holes below locks and the deep sides of rock humps, with jigs or walleye live bait rigs, will catch sauger and walleye. The chances are also good for hooking into a catfish or freshwater drum.
Sauger are abundant in the Ohio River and its major tributaries, including the Kentucky River. Beginning in the fall they migrate to dams, and spend the winter in the tailwaters. Sauger can also be caught off gravel bars and creek mouths.
Walleye are present in low numbers due to past stockings and escapement from reservoirs in the headwaters.
Arising from three forks that join near Beattyville, Ky., in Lee County, on the eastern boundary of Daniel Boone National Forest, the Kentucky River flows past small towns, rural communities, and bottomland farms as it makes its way to the Ohio River at Carrollton. Impounded by 14 locks and dams, the Kentucky River is more like a series of lakes, with minimal current at normal pool, and quiet backwaters in tree-shaded tributary streams.
The river flows through four geographic regions of the state, from the Cumberland Plateau to the Outer Bluegrass, draining an area of nearly 7,000 square miles.
It is impossible to navigate the entire length of the river in anything but a canoe, kayak or boat small enough to be portaged around the dams.
The locks in the upper river have been welded shut since the 1980s, and some of the locks in the lower river are only open seasonally, so anglers must trailer their boats between pools.
Kentucky’s small streams and rivers have what anglers want in a recreational fishing experience. The offer tremendous and often untapped fishing opportunities.
While the leaves are still on the trees and colored up, make time to go fishing and take in all of autumn’s glory.
Art Lander Jr. is outdoors editor for KyForward. He is a native Kentuckian, a graduate of Western Kentucky University and a life-long hunter, angler, gardener and nature enthusiast. He has worked as a newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and author and is a former staff writer for Kentucky Afield Magazine, editor of the annual Kentucky Hunting & Trapping Guide and Kentucky Spring Hunting Guide, and co-writer of the Kentucky Afield Outdoors newspaper column.