Drop in for a Quick Bite

from Texas Fish & Game September/October 2023

LAKE GRANBURY

NOT EVERY FISHING TRIP IS ideal. Recently I found myself at a lake with a cheap combo rod, a box of hooks and so plastics and a few hours to kill. I didn’t have my usual shing kayak, sh nder, anchors, rod holders or any of the items I o en bring that help make a shing trip, if not easier, a li le more comfortable. I spent an hour or so casting o a dock with li le success. I tied on all the classics. A football jig, a Texas rigged worm, a Senko, a shallow diving crankbait, and nothing seemed to want to bite, so I decided to try my old tried and true, the drop shot.

A few minutes in, I had a bass on the line and nally felt that con dence that so easily fades when you’re not catching sh. A while later, a er no more catches, I gured I needed to try to get out into the deeper water, so I asked around and found a small, bare bones kayak to borrow. I tossed in the rod, a box of so plastics, a life jacket and took o out into the open water. Luckily there was a constant breeze blowing towards the middle of the lake, not only moving me along at a steady clip, but also creating chop on the water to help give some lower light penetration, cover and con dence to the bass swimming below.

When I don’t have a lot of time to sit and work an area I think is holding bass, I try to let the water do the work for me. In this case I decided to do some good old fashioned dri ing with the drop shot. I had never tried that before, so I gured it would be a good opportunity to see what would happen and if this was a viable method of shing for the future. e rod I had, an Ugly Stik GX2 combo, was fairly sensitive and I could feel each and every bump along the bo om, and at a reasonable price point I wouldn’t be too heartbroken if it fell o the very unstable and much too small kayak I was using. highly snaggy areas with sunken trees or brush, braid, when hung up, can be almost impossible to snap o so uorocarbon seems to bridge the gap between mono and braid, making it work well for me. You can experiment as well to see what works best for you.

Heartbroken If It Fell O The Very Unstable And

e drop shot rig, as much as you would think it would get tangled, did fairly well at staying weedless as I dri ed along. Occasionally I had to remove a few weeds, but not much more than I would under any other “weedless” shing scenario. I made sure to rig the worm in a way to prevent the point of the hook from sticking out of the nose of the worm, keeping it just below the surface of the plastic as one would with a weedless worm on a Texas rig. e drop shot weight itself did occasionally fall into a pocket of vegetation and get hung up brie y but came loose easily as the wind blew the kayak along. Overall, I was fairly impressed with how the rig held up over four long dri s over some medium weed cover and some fairly signi cant depth changes and drop o s.

Even with years of bass shing under my belt and hundreds, if not thousands of ticks felt at the end of my line, I will say I was having a hard time discerning a bite in this situation. With so much weed cover there was a fair amount of movement from the rod tip and it was a li le di cult feeling the difference between a true bite from a bass, from the weight bouncing o the bo om or getting slightly hung up on weeds, but as anyone who has shed for bass knows, when they decide to take the bait, there will be no doubt that one is on the end of your line.

Over the years I have tried shing the drop shot a multitude of ways. I have used braid, mono and currently I have found that I get the best result with uorocarbon line. With its invisibility underwater and its abrasion resistance I can still feel the sh messing with my so plastic fairly well like with braid, but when I am bouncing it or dragging it along the bo om, I am not ge ing all that added stretch that I get when I am shing the drop shot, or any jig or so plastic along the bo om with mono. I also have found that in deeper water shing, especially in

At the end of the day, the drop shot, and dri ing are both e ective methods I have used to catch bass independently of one another. e combination of the two seemed to work well under the conditions I was under, which were medium weed cover, choppy waters and late a ernoon shing. I think this would be a good combination for anyone to try if you simply don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to catch a few sh. Is it the best for all situations? I would say no, but it is something to add to your already fully loaded arsenal of bass shing, because half the fun is guring out new ways to nd them and how to get them to bite!

At the end of the day, I was able to catch a few sh with one of my favorite shing methods. Under ideal conditions and with more time I would love to experiment all day long to see what the bass want, change lures and so plastics every 15 minutes and nd what is making their clock tick that day, hour or minute. When I am in a time crunch though, I like to sh what I know, and this is when the drop shot comes in handy. If you haven’t ever tried this method for bass, I’d highly encourage you to give it a shot.

I prefer to use tungsten cylinder weights, uorocarbon line, drop shot hooks and a fairly sensitive graphite rod with an open face reel, but you can try shing it any way you’d like. e important thing is to get outdoors, try new things and hopefully catch a few sh while you’re at it.