I am new to the forum and this is my first post. I have been fishing Monocacy River and Potomac River (between Brunswick MD and Point of Rocks from a kayak for 4 years now. This past week I went and decided to try a new (for me ) technique. I used a VMC drop shot hook (with the little swivel in it) above a 3/16 drop shot weight and rigged a baby slug-go (arkansas shiner pattern). Slug-go and Fin-s minnows are my go to bait in ponds and lakes around my area and I just was looking for a new way to keep my slug-go close to the bottom while on the river.
It works very well. I anchored downstream and to the side of big rocks and the targeted eddies behind them. When you cast into the eddie, this technique seems to allow you to just keep your bait in the eddie, while shaking your rod tip to impart action to the bait. While drifting I was casting far away from my kayak and held my rod tip high, keeping no slack in the line. You can feel the weight draging across the bottom very well. It feels like little ticks on your rod, but you have no loss of sensativity when a fish bites because the bait is between you and the weight. I tried a dead sticking style and shaking/jerking the rod tip every now and then and it seemed that the dead sticking worked best. I like this style because I feel like I can keep my bait at exactly the same height off the bottom at all times. It seems like it does not snag too. When it was starting to snag the rod would just slowly load up with weight. A small yank up would dislodge the weight and then it would keep on moving. Bites are very obvious and were easy to distinguish from every other feeling.
The water was up and pretty muddy and the current pretty fast. The very first big rock I cast behind I hooked up on a 3.5 to 4 pound smallie. I fought her all the way to the boat only to have her jump and toss my hook right before I lipped her. I caught a few more using the drop shot rig, nothing real big, but it seems to work really well. Has anyone else tried this method on moving water?
- I nice little smallie I caught on the drop shot rig
