Drop Shot from shore

[uwecsteeple]

Anyone here ever dropshot while fishing from shore, I normally fish rivers and have never tried it. If you have tried it, how does it work? I was thinking about making a drop shot rig under a slip bobber so I can keep the bait in the middle of the water column and shake the heck out of it.

[french_lake_kid]

I've fished a D.S. in docks B4 and done o.k. especially deeper 1's

[RK]

Hiya -

Drop shots rock for small stream and river smallies... It's almost like drifting a spawn bag for steelhead. When you match the weight to the current right, you can bump a DS rig along with your rod tip up, then stall it behind current breaks like boulders or riffle tail-outs and let it hover there. Long rods help a lot - the more line you can keep out of the water the easier it is to control things. 8 footers are great. Only down side is with hard fighting river bass, they can wear you out - but when you say things like "my arm hurts from reeling in fish" it's hard to get much sympathy...

If you can find them 'slinky' or 'sandbag' sinkers (basically, parachute cord filled with lead shot) work great for river drop shotting as they really stay out of snags. If you can't find them, smash a bass casting sinker flat with a pliers, or just use round split shot (stay away from the ones with the little ears - they twist line like you can't believe )

Never tried it with a DS rig, but slip-dragging with a slip-bobber works for sure. Might be dynamite with a ds rig below it (that's a heck of an idea, actually).

Go online and buy some Lunker City Hellgies to DS with too. River smallies love the things.

Good luck. You can really clean house on river smallies with a DS sometimes. Generally speaking I'm a pretty lousy river fisherman, but I can look pretty good with a DS rig sometimes

Cheers,

Rob Kimm