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Fall Frenzy (Guest Article)
by Mark Earley

Growing up as a football coache's son and being a coach and player myself, I never got to experience the wonders of fishing for smallmouth during the fall. When my father retired, and I quit coaching, it was time for us to enter the world of "fall smallmouth fishing".

Numerous attempts in September on the upper Allegheny only brought frustration and skepticism. We could only muster a few bass and continued to wonder if the football sized smallies were only a myth. As luck would have it, we experienced an "Indian Summer" in October. I talked my father into one last shot at fall fishing. We drove up to Kennerdale and because of the lack of confidence, we talked more about football than fishing.

Soon after we launched the boat, we realized that this might just be another dead end trip. Right about that time, we heard what we thought was a young boy in the shallow water playing with his Labrador. We then realized that the sound we heard was much closer than the boy and the dog. Dad looked at me and I looked at him and at the same time we said "frenzy." We quickly moved the boat over to the area and fired our Tiny Torpedos in the area. The fish went wild. They are very competitive at that time so once one fish was caught, the others quit. We decided to take the boat back up and float again. Same result; big smallmouth, but only one. We did this over and over again. Each time we would catch a big smallmouth, but the others would quit trying once one was caught. The fish had all congregated in the area in one spot and were competing for food. If we would not have continued to go back up and float through over and over again we would have only caught one fish.

My father and I figured that that was a once in a lifetime trip. We thought that it would never happen again. I am happy to say that we had even a better day during a "fall frenzy" catching 30 bass that averaged 18 inches over a two day span (I even hooked two at a time on a Zara Spook three times). The same competitive nature occurred with us catching only one at a time. We used what we learned before and just kept pounding the frenzy over and over again.

Needless to say, there is often more conversation about smallmouths than football these days around my father's house. We can only hope that we will experience at least one more "frenzy" together.