It’s a time I look forward to each year.

That period of time during the fall and early winter when some of the year’s biggest bass show up.

If you hit things right you’re likely to have your best day of the season.

The common theory is that larger bass feed heavily during the fall, stoking up for the long cold months of inactivity soon to come. It makes for catchy attention-getters on the fall covers of the outdoor magazines, ones like “Cash in on the Fall Bass Bonanza.”

Such a line of thinking makes sense, and I buy into it to a degree. But big bass must feed heavily during the summer too; their high metabolism in the warm water demands it. However fishing and boating pressure is high during the summer. Food fish tend to be plentiful, the water is often clear, days long and bright, and bass more finicky.

Exactly how these elements affect a bass’s feeding activities is relative to the type of environment it inhabits. But in general, I feel autumn’s shortening days, cooling water temperatures and more limited food sources compact the bigger bass’s foraging opportunities, making them more vulnerable to an angler’s efforts.

Regardless of the reasons, there’s no argument that the fall provides excellent fishing for bigger bass — both smallmouth and largemouth — in reservoirs, lakes and rivers.

Why that happens is just fodder for anglers to ponder over, an enjoyable byproduct.

The annual transition that sees fewer small bass and more big ones being caught begins, in my experience, as the water temperature drops down into the high 50s.

By the time it reaches the upper 40s nearly all the bass I catch are in the 15 to 20 inch range. Below 40 degrees bass can still be caught though presentations typically must be ultra slow.

Translated into calender terms, typically things get going around mid October. November is often the best month.

In years when the cool down is gradual, good fishing extends into December, even Jaunary is some instances.

To the best of my recollection the only month during which I haven’t caught an open water bass might be February, though many years ago my friend Dave Keith and I had several trips on the Ohio River where we caught smallmouth bass during the dead of winter (while targeting walleyes); some of these might have been in February.

A comparatively warm November afternoon on Yellow Creek Lake provided me with my biggest ever largemouth bass. An extensive shallow flat, one loaded with cattails, gave way to a secondary creek channel in depths of around 15 feet. The place had been exceptional that spring, providing many largemouths in excess of 20 inches, including a 6.5 pound, 22 incher taken in early April. I’d kept that fish to have mounted. That November afternoon a 24 incher inhaled a spinnerbait bumped along the edge of the cattails.

My spring fish hadn’t even been completed yet by the taxidermist, so I released the big largemouth, one that likely went over seven pounds.

Over the years Keystone Lake has produced a lot of big bass, both largemouth and smallmouth, well into the fall.

Unlike Yellow Creek I’ve never experienced consistent action on Keystone early in the year, as in shortly after ice out.

But during the fall I’ve taken plenty of big bass well into December. Nearly all of these fish have come from Keystone’s deep weeds, some of which often stay green throughout the winter.

My biggest smallmouth from an inland natural lake (as opposed to one of the Great Lakes) was a November fish from Conneaut Lake that when 5.5 pounds. Darl Black, Dave Lehman and I were fishing live minnows under Darl’s direction, a tactic that has been productive for him over the years.

But on this day the bass ignored the dace and creek chubs I’d trapped earlier in the week.

The big brown bass took a green pumpkin tube jig off the edge of green weeds.

Fall fishing for river smallmouth bass can be particularly productive since fish concentrate in protective “wintering holes.”

Two of my biggest river smallies came a few days after Christmas, ones caught within minutes, 20 plus inchers that pulled the scale to nearly five pounds each.

One the Susquehanna, a wintering hole near Fort Hunter provided great smallmouth fishing during a January day.

With the calendar about to flip to October, the “fall bonanza” is about to start.

Jeff Knapp is a fishing columnist for the Butler Eagle