The manner in which fish bite, such as this bluegill caught recently by Jeff Knapp, often give evidence as to which species is on the hook. Jeff Knapp/Special to the Eagle

It’s interesting how different species of fish bite.

Often the strike provides evidence as to the kind of fish that produced it, particularly gratifying when success is realized and your prediction confirmed. Even when we miss a bite we’re often supplied with information as to what the culprit might have been.

A couple trips late last week to a nearby lake brought this to mind. I was targeting crappies, which tend to gather under submerged wood cover during the fall, namely fish-attracting cribs and tree portions that have become jammed in the lake bottom over the years.

I was vertically jigging a small blade bait — a metal vibrating lure — over the branches of such a sunken tree when the line suddenly went limp, like someone had cut my line. I reeled in quickly to recover the slack and then set the hook into a nice sized crappie.

Crappies tend to feed up. In this case the fish ascended from deeper in the water column and intercepted the lure, pushing it upward. Thus the sudden and total loss of contact with the lure that had been hovering 20 feet below the boat.

During the same series of trips I’d come upon big schools of fish hanging around a submerged crib, ones that lit up the screen of the sonar unit. While I’d taken a couple crappies from the spot it seemed I should have done better, given the number of fish that were obviously present.

And the hits were odd, little ticks on a blade bait or light titter-tatter nips on a tiny jig. Finally, a fish ate a blade bait with enough gusto to get hooked and I brought a fat bluegill in, one large enough to cover my hand.

Over the course of those two days I had similar experiences, spots that were thick with fish but only produced big bluegills and many missed non-aggressive bites. Dropping my Marcum underwater camera into the depths verified that indeed, nearly all the fish were bluegills.

The type of lure being used also plays into how a fish bite is experienced.

For instance, when largemouth bass eat a skirted bass jig it’s usually transmitted as a distinct tap, even a strong thump occasionally. Plastic worms are often intercepted on the initial fall, particularly when casting to a specific target like a weed edge or edge of a shoreline laydown tree. The strike is often noticed as the line taking off in an unnatural direction, or not sinking to the bottom in the time span when it should have.

A top producer of walleyes is a jig-type bait when the water is cold, late fall through early spring. The strike is normally felt as a sharp tap, then weight on the line. The fish will hold onto the bait for quite a while. Delaying the hookset for a couple seconds generally equates to a greater hookup ratio. Also, stronger taps usually mean bigger walleyes.

River smallmouth bass also succumb to jig-style baits during the late fall — tube jigs, Ned rigs, hair jigs, Galida’s Grubz. But the bites tend to be mushy when the water temperature is on the cold side of 50 degrees. Like you’ve pulled the jig into a gob of leaves. Smallmouth bass and walleyes share the same general location during the late fall. When the bite includes a strong tap, it’s usually a walleye that caused it.

When fishing for fall crappies I like to park right on top of cover that’s at least 20 feet deep. But when it’s shallower I prefer to hold off the cover and cast over it with a light jig dressed with a 1.5 to 2-inch soft plastic body or 1-inch Berkley Gulp minnow.

Hits occur as the jig swings or swims over the cover. Rarely do I feel an actual hit but rather the appearance of a subtle weight. Sometimes it’s the jig becoming lodged in a tree branch, but often a head shake gives proof of the targeted crappie.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle