Glenn: There you go. That's a better fish! Oh, my goodness.
Carol: Oh, keep him down, keep him down.
Glenn: Oh, my goodness. Let go, let go, let go.
Keri: He’s going wherever he wants to. So, take your time, I don't think there's anything to snag on.
Glenn: That's a much better fish. That's a much better fish.
Carol: I’m going to take us out
Glenn: Yeah, get him away from these bushes. There you go, there you go, there you go. There you go.
Carol: Oh, my gosh, Keri.
Glenn: Get him in.
Keri: Okay, I'm trying.
Carol: Well wait. You want...?
Keri: Yeah, I want you to net him in. Keeping tension on him.
Carol: Yeah, keep tension on that. Let me see.
Keri: Oh, wait. No, you're not gonna be able to, there's cameras.
Carol: I know.
Glenn: Here he comes, here he comes, here he comes.
Keri: Oh, my...
Glenn: Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!
Carol: A giant. Well, that was worth the whole trip.
Keri: She's heavy.
Glenn: You want some pictures of that one, don't you?
Keri: Oh, yeah. Take one right here.
Carol: I bet you it's spawning.
Glenn: There you go.
Keri: That's what we're looking for here! That is what we're looking for.
Glenn: Nice, yes.
Carol: Now you're spoiled. Spoiled. You won’t want anymore dinks.
Glenn: Woa! Goodbye!
Hey, folks. Glenn May here with BassResource.com and today, I wanna talk to you about drop shotting. Specifically, the best times and places to fish a drop shot. Now, the logical obvious thing is, "Hey, you can fish a drop shot year-round." Well, yeah, true. But it changes throughout the year and the reasons why you fish, it changes throughout the year. So, I wanna walk you through that, starting with the spring.
In the springtime, these fish are moving up shallow and in the very early stages of the spring, they're real skittish when they first come up. You can just move your arm and bam, they're gone. It disappears. So this is when a drop shot really comes in handy. Because it's a real subtle bait, it doesn't put off a lot of action, and it's not gonna spook them.
So what I like to do is in the early spring, they're coming up usually on their outside points and then moving into the secondary points up in the creek channels and they start to work themselves up towards the flats. So that structure works really well for a drop shot. And I just like to throw it out there, and I give it a little bit of action and move the rod tip like this. You just want to give it a little bit of movement. See how this is already dancing around just from me doing that. Just a little bit of shaking. You can see my hand isn't moving much, but that bait is dancing all around. So just give it a little bit of shaking action while you're working it down a point. And a lot of times it attracts the attention of the bass and they bite it.
What I also like to do is during that time of year, the hydrilla and the milfoil is just beginning to grow. When it starts to turn green, that's when the bass move in and start feeding on baitfish. So that's a good time.
What I like to do then is I'll take the leader here and the leader will be long enough to get this bait just above those emergent weeds. So they're visible. Keeps a bait up above it so it doesn't sink down inside the weeds, keeps it up there where the bass can find it and you can catch a lot of fish doing that.
This also works really well. Later on in the spring when the fish are getting up shallow, they get up under docks. I really like throwing this alongside docks and just working it along the edge of the dock and entices those fish to come up underneath it.
This is really a good technique to use when you've got a lot of fronts coming through in the springtime. And every time a front comes through, it tends to shut down the bite. They're not as willing to go chase down a lure like a spinnerbait or a crankbait. That's when this really shines. That's when you wanna break this out. This is not like a search type bait, but it's a good bait to use. When the bite is slow and you've got an idea where the fish are hanging, that's when you bring it out.
Now, one more thing to talk about in the spring is during the spawn. You can use a drop shot, cast it out there and let it land on the other side of the bed and then let it sit there. And all you're doing is you're lifting up on the rod tip and all you're doing is you're just letting that bait dance right over the bed like so, unless this is spinning around a lot. I have another video on how to rig this. So I use a spin shot hook. So I'll show you that more in another video. I've got a link down the bottom of this one so you can look at it in more detail, but you're just using it to bounce that bait up and down over the top of the bed. And that aggravates the fish. Eventually, they're gonna bite it. So the type of bait I'll use during that time it doesn't really matter, it just needs to be a bright, visible bait that you can see so you can see the bite. So I usually use a white tube or a chartreuse tube, some kind of bait like that, or a white grub, something small that the fish, when he grabs, he's not just grabbing the tail, he has to bite the whole thing. That's typically what I like to use.
Come here. All right.
Keri: He is not happy.
Glenn: There we go.
Keri: What are you using, Glenn?
Glenn: Drop shot finesse worm.
But moving into the summertime, things change a little bit. Now, the bass are... some are up shallow and they stay shallow all year-round and that's a great time. You can fish the exact same way I was telling you like you do in the spring.
But in the summer, a lot of bass also move to offshore structure. So you wanna move out there and start fishing that. And again, it's when the bite isn't very strong. During those days when the fish aren't aggressively feeding, that's when you break out the drop shot. And during the summer, fish, all they want to eat is baitfish. They are eating, eating, eating on baitfish. So what you wanna use is a bait that mimics that.
So what I'll use is something like this, like a YUM Pulse minnow. I like to use that on a drop shot. Can you see that? I'll put that on a drop shot. Just nose hook it and it looks just like a little baitfish. And I'll throw it out there in those rock piles and those humps, anywhere that's 10 to 15 feet and deeper points, ridges, drop-offs, creek channels. Those are the things I like to fish on the drop shot, especially when the bite is really off.
And it's good using current, too. What I'll do is I'll heavy up a bit on the weight and I'll use more like a quarter-ounce to a half-ounce weight depending on the current. Now, if the current is really strong, here's how you tell. I can't give you an exact weight to use, but if you cast upstream and the bait gets by you and it still hasn't hit the bottom, you need to add more weight. Keep doing it until finally hits the bottom. and now you've got enough weight.
So a quarter-ounce to half is usually a good starting point. You may have to go higher than that, but the drop shot works really well in current. You get back behind those eddies and breakpoints where the fish will be hanging out and they're not in a real biting mood and the dog days of summer, that's a great place to place a drop shot with that Pulse Minnow. And man, you can have yourself a heyday out there in the current catching fish like that. Now, as you move into fall, things change again.
Keri: Hey, you got something. Finally, you caught a fish on the drop shot.
Glenn: There we go.
Keri: It's a little smallmouth.
Glenn: We'll take it. A little smallmouth on a drop shot.
Now the fish are moving up shallow. If you live in the southern part of North America, there's a lot of shad. And these shad move up shallow in the fall. So they move up in the backs of coves, back bays of the shallow areas and the bass are gonna follow the feed. So again, we're gonna go back to some of the same techniques we were using in the springtime, a little bit of combination of summer because what happens, they don't go all the way to the backs of flats, for example, but they get up there on those creek channels and the secondary points, they'll get up under docks and those stump fields, those types of things. That's where a good place to fish drop shot rig is right in those areas. Again, when the bite isn't really strong, that's where I'll fish it again using the Pulse Minnow because they're feeding on baitfish.
Now, if you don't live in the southern part of North America, you live in the northern climates, we don't have so much shad, but what we do have is perch and bluegill. Now, what happens is the perch, they'll ball up. They start to school up as you move deeper and deeper into fall. And they get a little bit offshore, you need to find them with your graph. But I'll take that drop shot, I'll add some weight to it, quarter-ounce to a half-ounce with that Pulse Minnow because what happens is the bass get up underneath those school of perch and they'll feed on the weak ones. So the trick is, is you've got to find that ball and get that drop shot and punch it through that perch down underneath where the bass are waiting. And I use a heavier weight to do that because perch, man, they'll chew up plastics in a heartbeat. If you've been around them, you know what I'm talking about. So a heavier weight, I can get it through that school of perch quicker without them mauling it. So I can get it down to those bass that are waiting underneath. If we can get through that school, the bass are down there, you're gonna get hit and you're gonna get a good fish. So that's a great way to fish drop shot in the fall.
Keri: Ooh, you're pulling like you're mean.
Glenn: There we go.
Keri: You're probably like you're mean.
Glenn: That's a bit better. That's a good fish there. There you go. That's a largemouth.
Keri: Oh, boy, you are not happy with me.
Glenn: There we go. That does the trick.
Keri: That does the trick. Drop shot fish, there we go. Yeah. Much better fish. Much better.
Glenn: That works.
Keri: That's what we've been waiting all day for.
Glenn: That's a good one.
Keri: Thank you, dude. The little belly on him.
Glenn: Yeah. That works.
Keri: The little fish drop shotting. Here you go, baby. Thank you for the play. That was fun. Slowly just saunters off.
Glenn: Into the wintertime, it's a little bit different. Now, the fish almost always are exclusively deep. You can find some shallow, but it's few and far between, so I focus on the deeper areas like we did in the summertime. Same type of structure. Rock piles, humps, ridges, ledges, creek beds, deeper water, and this can be really deep, my neck of the woods. Dead of winter, fish are for 45 to 55 feet deep. So you need to get really deep.
But I won't use a super heavyweight. I'll still use an eighth-ounce to maybe quarter-ounce weight, maybe at the most. It really depends on wind, because what I wanna do is I wanna get that bait all the way down there. I take the rod tip and I'm holding the rod down. I'm just holding it down along the side of the boat. Usually, I'm fishing like this. I'll just bring it down, I'm holding down the side of the boat and I just get on a trolling motor and I move it maybe at speed 10 up to 15. I don't even go 20. I'll just let the wind drift, but I want that bait to get all the way down to the bottom and just sit there and bounce along. I want the weight to bounce along the bottom and real nice and slow. So I want a bait that's the way it is heavy enough to keep it down there.
So if the wind is really blowing the line around, I might get a little bit heavier weight just in order to keep maintain contact with the bottom, but as light as I can get away with.
And during that time of year, I'm using a finesse worm. I don't want a lot of action, a lot of appendages. So something like a YUM finesse worm or like this is a Robo worm, this is an Aaron's Magic color. I like the color "Peoples" as well. I know that that's a color, guys, “People's”. but just a real nice. So it's like a hand pour type bait. Really has no action to it and that's perfect in the wintertime. You don't want a lot of movement.
So just sit it on the bottom and you're just dragging it along. I'm not bopping the rod tip, I'm not moving it and dancing it around. Just dragging it across that structure nice and slow and easy. The weight is really making the action. The weight is moving and bouncing across the bottom and contours, and it's making that bait shimmer and shake. And that's all you need. You don't need to do any more than that and you'll catch a lot of fish that way.
So those are the different times and places I fish a drop shot. I hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this, visit BassResource.com.
