Fall is my favorite time for fishing.

It’s the season when the "Big Three" (speckled trout, redfish, and flounder) are all at their most aggressive, making catching them relatively easy. Every fall, however, I see anglers limiting their catch potential by getting in a rut: get on the bay at the crack of daylight, pull out their binoculars, find birds feeding over reds and specks, approach cautiously, and fish.

Sure, that works, but if you put a little thought into your fall fishing, you can put more and bigger fish in the ice chest. Follow these tips to take your fall fishing to a new level.

By nature, the biggest specimens of speckled trout are lazy. They are old, fat, and seem to have lost their vigor for fighting the young ones for shrimp and menhaden. That means when you run into a school of specks feeding in the fall, the biggest specks will be belly-to-the-bottom.

I have my best luck finding redfish in the fall by seeking them on the outside of speck schools. Many times, the redfish feed on the outside of speck schools.

If I have had my fill of trout or are simply hungry for some tasty redfish fillets, I pull up about 20 yards farther out than you would while trout fishing under the birds, and then make pattern casts around the school with a Rat-L-Trap or a 1/2-ounce gold spoon.

Live baiters can score by free-lining live finger mullet or small blue crab on a circle hook. Anglers rarely use live crab in Texas waters, but it is very popular in Florida and it works here, too. Fiddler crabs will also work wonders, but they are very difficult to catch and I do not know of any bait camps that carry them.

Since the “walking the dog” craze hit the Texas coast in the 1990’s, many anglers forgot about chugging topwater plugs like the Chug Bug and Pop-R. That’s a real shame.

During fall, I have found the bigger trout and redfish often respond to a chugging lure better than a walker. I know I probably just raised the ire of lots of dedicated dog-walkers, but I am writing from experience.

I fish chuggers using two different techniques: popping and ripping. Chugging simply involves slowly popping the lure every few seconds and letting it sit, then lather, rinse, and repeat.

Ripping is far more aggressive. It involves putting the rod tip down and forcefully pulling the lure through the water. This works great when the fish are feeding on top but not responding to typical topwater tactics.

Flounder are the final on the Big 3 list and right now through mid-November is the peak time of year to catch them.

The first step to really enhancing your flounder fishing is to get a spinning rod that is as stiff as you can find. It is hard to find an adequately stern stick without fishing with something you could use for yellowfin tuna. What I do is take a 7-foot medium-heavy action rod and cut the first foot off it. You want the action to be like a pool cue, virtually no give.

Next, rig your reel with a good braided or fusion line like Berkley Fire Line or Spider Wire. Use something with at least a 3:1 ratio, like 6-pound diameter to 20-pound-test. Then, screw the drag down tight.

A flounder has a very bony mouth and the reason most anglers lose them is they never get a good hookset. This rig puts a lot of pressure on the flounder and will dramatically increase the number of fish you bring to the landing net.