How to Fish a Drop Shot Rig

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The drop-shot rig is a finesse technique that has taken the bass fishing world by storm. A drop-shot rig will often catch fish when reaction baits just won’t do the trick.

Steps

1. Drop-shotting is a finesse technique that requires light line, so use a spinning outfit spooled up with 6- to 10-pound-test line.
2. Using a Palomar knot, tie a small drop-shot hook onto the line, about 18 inches up from the end. Tie so that the hook stands out perpendicular from the line.
3. At the tag end of the line, about 18 inches from the hook, tie on a drop-shot weight.
4. Put a small finesse bait on the hook. Four-inch worms, small tubes and grubs are good drop-shot baits. In California, the bass anglers are beginning to use some flies, like streamers, on their drop-shot rigs.
5. Drop the rig straight down over the side of the boat (no casting right now). When the line goes slack, reel up until the line is taut and the weight is on the bottom.
6. With the weight on the bottom, shake the rod gently. You just want to wiggle the lure without lifting the weight.
7. A bite may be anything from a tug to a sideways movement. If your hooks are good and sharp, all you have to do is reel hard to set the hook.
8. Don’t horse the fish in. Remember you have light line on.
9. After landing a fish, check your knots and hook and go back to it. On a good piece of structure, there may be several good Bass.

Tips

• Fluorocarbon line costs more, but since it is crystal clear and has no stretch, it is ideal for drop-shotting.
• You can make your own drop-shot weights by pinching one end of a barrel swivel in a split-shot. The swivel helps reduce line twist.
• Once you get good at drop-shotting vertically, you can start to experiment with casting out and dragging the rig back, and fishing it over breaklines and other kinds of structure.
• You dont have to tie a hook directly to the line. You can add a barrel swivel, and extend a piece of line, and hook approximately 2-4″ from the swivel.

Warnings

• Casting a drop-shot rig can be dangerous, so be careful, and don’t try it if you don’t have plenty of fishing experience. Since the weight and hook are separated, it’s easy to hook your partner (or yourself)if you don’t watch out.

Things You’ll Need

• Monofilament or fluorocarbon line in 6- to 10-pound-test.
• Hooks (many companies now make hooks specifically for drop-shotting.
• Drop-shot weights
• Small soft plastic baits such as worms, Yamamoto Senkos, grubs, tubes, etc.

Related wikiHows

• How to Spool New Fishing Line Onto a Reel
• How to Go Bass Fishing
• How to Choose Lures for Bass Fishing
• How to Get a Fishing Job in Alaska
• How to Spear a Fish
• How to Clean a Fish

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Fish a Drop Shot Rig. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Pro-Bass Fishing Techniques Exposed - Click Here!

Entry fee is $350 with a portion of the proceeds going to the Coastal Conservation Association.

You can register at www.NationalSportfishing.org or in person at New Port Richie Hooters on Thursday Oct. 22nd from 7-9pm.

Some lights would hold Snook stacked up right before your eyes and others would hold big saltwater trout. This is when you shake when you make a perfect cast, saying to yourself, please have the right fly, and don’t make me look like a fool now. These were prayers when you see this many fish at a 40 foot cast away. QUIET. Three guys on the boat each take a turn making their cast so as to not kill one another with the flies.

Now, there was this fellow on the flats boat who would always jump ahead and always make the first cast. And on top of that he would narrate his cast, and how good it was, and on and on with too much constant talk. It would drone on so eventually it just became noise.

Suddenly, dead quiet. I was sitting changing a fly, the boat owner was making a new leader, and we both turned around to look at the quiet behind us from our very noisy friend. He was sitting at the end of the boat dead quiet, and very pale. He pointed to his thigh and low and behold he had hooked himself in the leg. And that had shut him up.

The boat owner laughed, dug out his camera and photographed this guy’s leg. Then he promptly removed the hook from the guy’s leg, at which point the guy started his noisy narration again.

“Why did you take that out? We had some peace.” (My own narration).

One night my friend Frank had a few too many of those Scotch and waters. The following morning the lake was completely still and flat and not a breeze. This was great for fishing but not too good for my friend Frank. We were circling these floating islands of weeds very quietly and my friend made a cast and just fell asleep in the chair on the boat. Suddenly a large mouth hit his lure and yanked the pole out of his sleeping hands.

He yells “ MY ROD IS GONE.”  Mark and I could hardly keep from laughing when Frank dove into the water, and stayed down for a long time. Then, up he came with rod, no fish, very wet and very sober. Frank was and is my friend and now that was a story to tell.

It would be pitch dark out and I’d have bacon cooking, eggs out and coffee on and be too excited to breathe. Already I had looked outside the cabin and saw there was NO WIND. Eggs on , can’t wait.  Suddenly there were shouts from the other bedrooms “Quit that cooking we have hours before safe light.”

Safe light? Who cares about that NOW?  My idea is to be totally ready before whatever that safe light meant. Lazy  guys. I could never go back to sleep so I drank my coffee and read a magazine, re-lined one of my reels and oiled every piece of my equipment. Safe light. NUTS!

My boat was equipped with an oil filled compass. Sure that looked like a perfect solution to prevent getting lost. You understand that weather had no bearing on my going fishing or not.

I was a rainy day and I went out in a new direction. When I stopped I began fishing with the trolling motor and made lefts and right and around and around having a great time. Suddenly, it was dark. NO SUN, and NO IDEA WHERE I WAS. I shut every thing down and sat there totally lost.

After about 15 minutes, checking how much food and drinks I had, with the intention of spending the night, I heard a horn beep in the distance. I noted the direction, looked at the dumb compass and out I came. You do realize what some of us will do for a little rainy day fun.

There was a huge amount of stress, deadlines, and too much running around. Yes I made loads of money but I needed some ME time.

One particular afternoon I just got in my bass boat and headed for the Everglades. I was in such a hurry to get away I didn’t even bother to change my clothes. Soon I hit this clearing and the quiet was so heavy you could hear the line peeling off the reel when I made a cast. That was followed my the plop of my spinner bait in the water. NICE AND QUIET..

Then, just when I thought this was heaven, and a million miles away from anything stressful, my pager begins to BEEP BEEP BEEP. So, I calmly took it off my belt and threw it as far as I could, as it continued to BEEP BEEP through the air, as if it were protesting its impending death. PLOP.

My thought was, HA. I’M FISHING. Nothing is more important. Don’t you agree?

I must have been a site in a t-shirt and jeans, and catching fish, and usually more than they did. Wet flies for Rainbows and dry for the brown trout. Each day you bought a permit for the number of fish you could keep. I chose one fish, since this was the cheapest permit, and I always released them anyway. Now the funny thing is I always used a small row boat rather than fish from shore.

England is a wonderful country, no Fourth of July picnics, no Halloween, no Thanksgiving either, but whew, the fishing and the people are all first class. You realize the Brits like things a little slower and calmer than us but that suits fishing just fine.

To this day I couldn’t figure how many Spanish Mackerel, Pompano, Blue fish, Snook, and for sheer fun Barracuda, and huge Needle fish, we caught. It was an amazing pier for an 11 year old and his dad.

During one week I was in a Sport’s Authority picking up a few things and there I spotted a beautiful Guy Harvey t-shirt with a great illustration of Tuna. It was very white. I wore it to the pier that following Saturday.

Lots of inconsiderate pier people use the pier rails as bait cutting platforms, and the result of this is that the rails can get pretty dirty.

I leaned on the rail to look straight down into the water. I leaned my new WHITE shirt against the edge of the rail and came up with a black line across my new WHITE shirt. This was upsetting and I said to my son; “Look at this.” He look at the black line and just shook his head and said; “That’s Pier Pressure, Dad.”

I just stared at him in awe.  We all think OUR kids are smart, but this set me way back. I just started laughing, and he did as well. And that was fishing with my kid.