Drop Shot

[Roaring River Veteran]

I have been reading everyone talking about the drop shot on the Rock and I am curious. I do not have a boat but I fish with friends. I always fish in the back of the boat so I won't be able to see the electronics, but I am curious what I should be doing. I have tied up a drop shot and my friend tells me he is marking fish at 30 feet. I drop my rig to that depth now what?????????????? jig ? hold still? reel in? jump up and down? tell me please. Will the fish hit it hard or just suck it in? what am I feeling for?

Help

I should have stuck with trout fishing.

Thanks in advance.

RRV

[denjac]

In the search box type in drop shot.. Tons of stuff wrote about it. Dont worry about not being able to the see the graph from the back of the boat. I personally drop below the hanging fish unless your in the trees. I like it one or two cranks off the bottom. many will disagree with that but it works better for me.

[CaptainJoe]

RRV,

I will try to cover the various bait actions and bites that I have experienced and work for me.

First, bait actions:

1. Nightcrawlers - do not move the rod at all. Keep the rod and bait perfectly still. Let the nighcrawler provide the bait action.

2. Soft plastics - a. make the bait quiver. b. shake the bait. c. move the bait slow and/or fast up and down a few inches.

3. Spoons, Ice Jigs, Fish Heads - a short jerk of the rod upwards about 1 to 2 feet and then let the lure drop on slack line.

If you do not get bit after one minute, move the bait up or down two feet and wait another minute. No takers, move the bait up or down four feet. Six feet, eight feet, and so on....... It helps if your friend keeps calling out depths to you as the fish move on his graph and try to "stay with the fish" on those occasions. If your friend is graphing fish at two depths, drop to the deepest of the two depths. The bigger fish hang in the deeper of the two depths to catch the leftovers from the fish above. However, if you want to just catch fish, drop to the shallower fish. These maybe small fish, but are usually more agressive and active. These are great fish to practice your techniques.

Second, various bites. First of all, hold the rod at 9 o'clock or perpendicular to the water. This will give you the best feel for the bite since the line will be 90 degrees to the rod tip and will easily move the rod tip more than any other angle. This is very important!!!! Watch the rod tip....it will give you the first indication for most bites.

1. Hitting bait on way down. If the fish are active, they will hit the bait on the fall. To detect these bites, make sure the line falls on slack line and watch the line as it falls. If the line stops falling, close the bail and set the hook! On one of my guide trips, a client caught 9 keepers in one hour watching the fish hit his bait on the fall. If bluegills or sunfish are ambushing your bait on the way down, try increasing the weight of the sinker to fall faster through the little fish.

2. Rod tip slowly or violently moves towards the water. This is the easiest bite to detect. However, you must be watching your rod tip to detect this bite, because if you wait until you feel the bite, your bait is usually gone, especially with nightcrawlers. To me, a slow pull occurs when fish are inactive and/or other fish are not in the direct vicinity. A violent pull occurs when fish are active and/or other fish are competing for the bait. Set the hook!

3. Bait feels heavy or you lose the feel of the sinker. This usually happens most while using soft plastics or hard baits, because you are giving action to the soft plastic/hard bait and while providing that action, you can feel the soft plastic/hard bait get heavier or mushy. Set the hook!

4. Reel In Fish. This bite occurs when reeling in to check your bait. Most people just reel in fast so they can check their bait, re-bait if necessary, and get the line back into the water. Pay attention to your rod and line as you reel in. Keep the rod at 9 o'clock and reel in slowly the first couple of times. Try reeling in a little faster the next few times. In other words, do not lose concentration and just reel in. Reeling in is a "presentation" and does produce fish.

5. Fish Chum. This is the bite that you never see or feel. This usually occurs with nightcrawlers because you do not move the bait. The rod tip does not move or feel heavy. You reel up your line and the nightcrawler is gone. I am convinced that these are the biggest fish in the school. They suspend right in front of your bait, slowly suck it in, eat the worm, and spit out the hook without you feeling a thing. If this happens a few times, I will thread the worm onto the hook instead of the normal one thread through the worm's collar. This usually works because it is more difficult for the fish to take the worm off of the hook and after eating a couple of my worms, they are usually a little more aggressive on second or third worms.

Setting the hook. I do not set the hook the traditional way. First of all, I use Size 2 Gamakatsu Finesse Wide Gap hooks. They are very sharp and the wide gap ensures a top-of-the-mouth stick almost every time. To set the hook, just raise your rod tip quickly from the 9 o'clock starting position to 12 o'clock. Don't jerk the rod up, just raise it quickly. As your raise the rod tip up, start reeling. Keep a tight line. If you lower the rod tip to fight the fish, make sure that your are reeling in as you lower the rod tip to ensure a tight line.

I concur with denjac on searching this forum for stuff on the drop shot. Look for the various posts I have made about using braid (Fireline Crystal or Spiderwire Ultracast Invisi-braid translucent with a hybrid florocarbon leader) while drop shotting. I believe that this line combination will yield the best advantage while watching a line drop and detecting bites on the fall and feeling all of the bites, above. My clients all use braid and I am convinced that they would not have felt the bites that they did without the braid.

It takes time, but practice and time on the water will start producing better catches.

Good luck,

[Roaring River Veteran]

Thanks guys. We are going fishing this evening after the water flees get off the water. I'll be trying the drop shot. I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks again

RRV.

[LarryC]

CaptainJoe, what size hook are you using with crawlers?

[CaptainJoe]

I use a Size 2 Gamakatsu Finesse Wide Gap hook. I use these hooks for nightcrawlers and soft plactic baits. I either nose hook or wacky hook soft plastics. If the bite slows down using one presentation, I will switch to the other presentation.

I edited my post above to also reflect the hook information.

[focused fishing]

Good post Joe!

I would add one thing, there are a couple of things you can do to determine how deep you are dropping your bait:

If the angler in the front of the boat tells you how deep the fish count how long he is dropping his before stopping it, then do the same.

If you ar using a 3/ 8 or 1/2 oz. weight your rig will drop approx. 2' per second, simpl count down to the depth that the fish are holding at.

This has helped many a co-angler in the back of my boat.

EP

[CaptainJoe]

Thanks, Eric!

Totally agree with the countdown method.

But, because I am using braid and it does not sink as fast as florocarbon, I do it a little different. I have my clients use 7' rods. I have them point their rod tip to the water, open the bail, and then raise the rod tip to about 11 o'clock (approximately 7'). Now, all we do is a little math (for example, to get to 42' - 42/7 = 6 raisings of the rod tip) and we can get to the desired depth. I stess to them to watch the line as it is falling to look for the bite on the drop.

See ya on the water,

[Roaring River Veteran]

Well sorry it took me so long to get back, but I fished the drop shot from 7 till dark without a bite. fish were holding at 26 to 32 feet. my partner wasn't dropshotting so He told me the depth of the bottom and the depth of the fish. I let my lure drop to the bottom and counted it down. it was dropping at 2 feet per sec. I then counted down to the correct depth after that. I was fishing a gulp watermelon worm for the most part. but to no avail. After dark I went to a texas rigged 10" worm and caught 2 keepers and several in the 14.5" range.

Thanks for the info

RRV

[CaptainJoe]

RRV,

I am sorry you did not connect with the fish.....but remember the last line in my above post.....

"It takes time, but practice and time on the water will start producing better catches."

It will not happen overnight. It takes practice. Three things could have happened:

1. The fish were not active enough to feed.

2. The colors you were using were not attractive to the fish.

3. At the depth you reported, the fish may have been whites and they do no feed readily on soft plastics as do the other species.....too bad electronics cannot identify the fish species.

Notice that I did not blame you......it is always the fishes fault, right?

Good luck and don't give up!