This Week @ Bass Edge

Getting The Drop On Suspended Bass

On this week’s Bass Edge television, host Aaron Martin and Elite Series Touring Pro Pete Ponds demonstrate the effectiveness of drop-shotting for suspended fish. Theirs was a warm Texas day as fish were in their summer pattern, but drop-shotting can be a killer technique whenever fish are suspended in deep water.

For guide Mike Webb, drop-shotting is a go-to strategy for winter fishing on the highland lakes of the Ozarks that he calls home.

“Winter time is one of my favorite times to fish -- from the middle of December through January. The fish are easy to locate at that time. The shad travel the guts of the large, deep creeks. You just idle toward the back looking for the big balls of shad on your graph, or watch for the gulls and loon activity. The shad are migrating from the main lake when the water gets in the 60s, and then when it gets down to 50s they will be halfway back.”

Mike is well known as a guru of the graph, and uses it effectively to locate fish or the bait they should be near.

“If there are no fish visible under the shad, that doesn’t mean they are not there. A lot of time they hide on the bottom, and you can’t see them. So I take the bait to the bottom, and reel it up slowly and see if anything follows it. You’d be surprised what’s hiding down there that you don’t see.”

Rigging up

Mike advises personal comfort when selecting a rod. His preference is a six-foot medium action rod. Six-pound test fluorocarbon is his line of choice.

“The distance from the bait can be 60 or 70 feet. That lack of stretch is important, and the bite can be so light that you need the sensitivity of fluorocarbon.

“I go backward from most people. I use six-pound test on my spool and eight-pound on my leader. Six-pound line is much easier to control and work with on your spool than eight-pound. The eight-pound gives a little more strength near the bait, but mainly I want the six-pound to work for me. It doesn’t have as much memory, and it falls faster off of my spool.”

Often fishing with clients, Mike ties his hook just six inches below the swivel to minimize the damage to the eye of his rods. With shad the primary forage in winter, baits that imitate this baitfish tend to be the most effective. You will typically find an ice jig at the end of his line instead of a conventional sinker

“It’s called a Jiggin’ Shad Rap. It ties on the back of the lure, so that it suspends horizontally. They use them up north for ice fishing. I’ll put one or two hooks above that, and use a very small Fluke or any type of minnow imitation. I generally don’t use anything bigger than three or four inches. I like the grays, milk and salt-and-pepper kind of shad colors.”

But flexibility is called for and fish sometimes indicate that they want something a little different, such as a finesse worm. Green with red flake has often been the best fish producer.

The catching

Mike calls fishing for suspended fish, “The best video game in the world.” His eyes are constantly glued to the screen on his graph so that the fish can tell him what kind of mood they are in on a particular day.

 “Whenever I locate fish, I will drop the bait and the very active fish – typically ones that are currently feeding – will start coming up to meet the bait as it is coming down. That’s an easy catch; those are the kind you hope for.

“If I am dropping my bait and I see he is coming up at it at Mach 3, I’m going to stop it right then. I won’t just leave the bait there. In reality, if that fish is after something and it doesn’t move it throws up a red flag. As the fish gets close, I will slowly move it away as if it is trying escape.”

More often than not, cold water means the fish will be more lethargic, calling for some experimentation.

“I’ll drop the bait, and stop it above them to see how they react. A lot of times these fish will come up and look at it, and then go back down … just acting curious. When this happens the second or third time I will take it away from them, reeling it real fast two or three cranks. Generally that will provoke a strike. It’s like an injured baitfish running from something.”

Since bass tend to “feed up,” Mike almost always stops his bait above the fish he is targeting. The action he uses varies.

“I let the fish tell me … I will vary my cadence. Generally it is just like you are real cold and you are shivering. Change your cadence. On your graph, you don’t want it to look like a heartbeat. That’s too rhythmic. It doesn’t look real to the fish.”

It can take a little getting use to the bite of a fish moving up to hit the bait.

“When I am fishing with clients, I will often look back and their line will be slack, because most of the time the fish will hit the bait coming up and they never feel it. It’s real important that you put your index finger against the line, not so much to feel the bite as much as the lack of resistance.”