Smallmouth Bass Fishing in October
Smallmouth bass fishing was the favorite pastime fifty- sixty years ago in the little town of Edinburg where I grew up. Since the North Fork of the Shenandoah River wrapped around Edinburg in part of the famous Seven Bends of the Shenandoah River, access to the river was easy.
After church on Sundays and often after work several days each week, the men would remove several dozen minnows from their minnow boxes, place them in their minnow buckets and then head to the river.
The bragging rights were claimed by the fisherman who caught the largest smallmouth bass and everyone knew who was ahead in the race each year.
This is the time of the year many fishermen would take their vacations to go fishing because the largest bass were almost always caught in October. Their favorite live baits were hog suckers, madtoms, and darter minnows.
Many times these fishermen kept their favorite smallmouth bass fishing holes a secret but this information leaked out. It was easy to see where they parked their cars or one could see their john boats on the river.
The insight I gained from these memories as a youngster is that October is a good time to catch large smallmouth bass on the North Fork of the Shenandoah River.
(Pictured is my grandfather, William Murray, with a smallmouth bass he caught on the North Fork of the Shenandoah River many years ago.)
For legal access on the North Fork and the South Fork of the Shenandoah River stop by the fly shop in Edinburg, VA and I will show you access on our master map. You can also see many of these access spots in my book Virginia Blue Ribbon Streams, which covers smallmouth bass streams and trout streams throughout the state.