The calendar says fall and the grass says summer. When the water is still in the mid-70s, the fish have not moved yet, and chasing the fall pattern is how you end up fishing empty water.
The temperature moves the fish, not the date
Bass leaving the grass for points and rock is a temperature event, not a calendar event. It happens when the water drops far enough that the fish no longer need the cover of the mat. Until then the vegetation is the best habitat in the lake and there is no reason for them to leave it. A water temperature in the mid-70s in late October means you are fishing summer structure in October, and the fish will treat it that way.
Where they hold inside the mat
- Along the edge of the grass, where it drops off. Fish holding in heavy vegetation stay on the transition because they can watch open water for food and still have cover a foot away.
- Not the middle. The middle is where the pressure is, but it is also where you lose your rig.
- Deeper than you expect. A mat shades the bottom and holds heat less than open water, so fish using it as cover sit lower than fish in the open at the same temperature.
What to throw at them
Over the top wins here. Anything you can put over the grass and work on the surface or just under it will out-produce anything you have to bury in it, because a weight that sinks to the bottom in 14 feet of vegetation is a fish finder ornament and nothing else.
That means flipping, or a surface presentation worked slowly, or a rig that hangs in the top of the column. A Texas rig dropped into that mat is a rig you will lose, and the only reason to drop one is if the fish are feeding hard on the bottom along the transition. The rig itself is covered in Texas rig setup: the hook gap decides more than the bait color.
For soft plastics the logic is the same: put it where the fish are feeding, not where you can weight it. The 32-piece worm set covers the two shapes worth carrying here - a paddle tail to work the edge of the mat, and a stick bait to hold still on the transition.
Read the screen before you read the calendar
A down-scan image of a grass mat gives you three things: the mat itself, the bottom under it, and the fish. Marks along the edge of the mat are fish on the transition. Marks sitting under the mat are fish using it as cover, and those are the ones you will not find on the points.
The number on the screen is the second thing to look at. Before deciding the season has turned, check the temperature at depth: put the transducer over open bottom and read it. If the deeper water is several degrees cooler than the surface, the fish have already started to leave the mat even though the surface still reads warm. The spread between surface and bottom temperature tells you the transition has started weeks before the surface thermometer does.
The one thing to start tracking
Write down the surface temperature and the bottom temperature on every trip for the next three outings. The day the spread between them opens up is the day you stop fishing the grass and start fishing the points, and it arrives earlier every year. That is the one signal worth watching.