How to Fish the Drop Shot Rig 2 Ways- Bass Fishing

what's going on guys this is gene jensen and in this video i'm gonna show you all the details that you need to know about a drop shot all right so the first thing i'm going to talk about is how to rig the drop shot rig and i'm going to talk about two different ways which are the two ways that i fish it the most and really it covers just about any way that you can fish a drop shot rig one is your classic open hook style and the other one is a weedless style and those are the two we're gonna cover first of all the open hook style and i'm talking about these style of hooks right here i got two different sizes these are the gamakatsu g finesse drop shot hooks that i use and i've i can't remember the size i think it's number one and one are the two sizes that i use and the sinker there's three different general style of sinkers there's the ball sinker the cylinder sinker and the bell singer or teardrop as they call it i only use the teardrop and i use 3 8 or 4 ounces and that's it i keep it pretty simple um but the cylinder works great the ball it just gets snagged up so much that i had years ago i completely and totally stopped using it but the teardrop is the way to go these are some striking i believe striking tungsten teardrop weights and those that's your standard hardware let's talk about rods with the open style hook the rod that i'm looking for is this one right here this is a 6 foot 10 medium light it is an almond black it has a a 2.0 size reel on it 20 pound test braid and a 8 pound test fluorocarbon leader now the leader material that i've just started using is this gold label seaguar uh eight pound test comes in six i have it in two just for fun um it's it is the premier fluorocarbon on the market you're going to pay for it it's it's not cheap but the most important thing is is make sure you're using fluorocarbon for this technique any type of fluorocarbon will do that's just what i use you know another thing i love about a drop shot is the hardware takes up very little space in your tackle box that's all i have just the weights and the sinkers and i love that that way it's always there i don't have to get rid of it because it takes up too much space for that trip or anything else love it all right let's talk about how to rig it all right so first thing you do is you just run your line through the eye you hook you're going to tie a palomar knot with a long leader is what you're a long tag tag end is what you're going to do pass it through pass it back through back in the day there was a guy that said well how you know all the videos that show you how to tie a palomar knot show you folding the line and sticking the the folded part through the eye of the hook and stuff like that and you know how do you do that in really small hooks well that's how you do it you literally all you do is just pass it through twice so you have your loop with about a 14 inch leader or tag end okay real quick palomar knot overhand with a loop and then you reach through your loop and i'll set it i'll put a link to a video up here how to how to do it in a little bit more detailed but then you pull everything tight and i like to pinch the eye of the hook to prevent the the knot from wrapping around that eye and just kind of pull it tight just like that now when you do this your hook doesn't always stand up or stand out like it's supposed to you want it to stand out 90 degrees from the line the trick to make that happen is you take your tag end and with the tip of the hook up you pass that tag in back back down through that the eye of the hook now my eyes are a lot older than they were last time i did this video but we got it look at that so when it hits the bottom that hook is always standing about 90 degrees out with the with the with the worm on it then we take the sinker now the sinker has a uh i call a split shot swivel i don't know what they're called but anyway you take and you pass your line through the eye of that thing double your line up and you pull it snug and you just you don't have to tie it it's just like this and and the reason it's like we have it like this is that if you ever do get this stuck on the bottom or snagged on the bottom and you can't get it loose then you can just break it off and the sinker is the only thing that comes off and you still have your hook and your bait and everything else it's just a lot less issues then you just grab another sinker and slide it on there and go back to fishing so but that's how to rig a drop shot rig that is a little bit of a long leader than what i normally do but i like to tie a long leader because then i can just take and slide that sucker up just like that and have a shorter leader if i feel like i need to get it get the bait a little bit closer to the bottom which i will here because of the water clarity so we're going to run it about like that all right so how to rig the the standard drop shot is is pretty simple and you know we use a lot of different baits we use really really small finesse style baits if i don't feel like the bass if i'm fishing a lake that's big bass or a lake that has um that i feel like the conditions uh warrant the bass to be pretty active i'm going to go larger i'm going to go like a straight hill trick worm but the most important thing to me is i don't want a lot of action out of that worm out of that bait so i'm not going to use a creature bait or a craw bait i have used a lizard before and it's worked fine and i've used an old monster but the only problem with those ribbon tail worms is they get tied in knots a lot for this during this technique so i like a straight tail worm this is a trick worm and this right here this one is the the half shell of the drop shot half shell from strike king so and i love to fish it but let me show you the different ways to fish it if i'm fishing this one right here it usually means i'm going to nose hook it and most people would just nose hook it like this they'll just put it right through just like that and i that's fine and dandy and if you're fishing wide open and there's no chance at all for you ever to get snagged that'd be way efficient but the one of the way that i like to fish it now is i take and i put that hook in the worm like this and then i kind of pull up till the tip of that hook almost comes out the head and i fish it just like that and that way and i did it crooked because i'm not eyeball not looking at it the right angle but anyway just like that and that's how it sits on the worm when it's down on the bottom it sits just like this now other baits that i like to use and for specific reasons is i got the trick worm i got the bff there's one box that i'm missing and it's right behind me right here is the old and tried and true robo worm okay let's get one out and aaron's magic boy these things stink and i love to use the robo worm and one of my favorite ways to use it on these open style hooks is to wacky rig it and it's really really simple you go through the bottom of the worm just behind that little egg sack and it's just like this and you get a ton of action out of it this iron magics color is really good in clear water i will not be fishing it today because this water is not clear but any bait i throw down there is going to try i'm going to try to get it right in front of the fish the the nose of the bass so they can see it but to wacky rig it is one of the best ways to just rack up numbers when you're on a good school of fish and it's real simple so don't don't just fish it nose hook classic style try a wacky rig and see how many more fish you catch it's so awesome all right so this the classic open hook style of drop shotting basically i'm making short pitches out to offshore structure and cover um deeper stuff right now we're fishing 10 10 feet deep on the edge of a creek channel drop um you can also i also would look at humps and points and anything off offshore that the bass are going to be hanging on but we're about we're fishing about 10 to 12 feet deep right now and the the reason we're gonna we're using and it's and it's critical to use a fluorocarbon leader is you've got to have that bait falling down to the bottom okay so it's off the bottom when you pull it tight but when you let it go slack it will slowly sink down to the bottom and you want to be able to fish it on that slack line if you use braid it will float if you use monofilament it'll float and it will prevent that that bait from getting down to the bottom where you want to fish it um the weight is there just to keep it in one spot so i'm gonna i'm letting it get down to the bottom i'm dropping it to a semi-slack line meaning my line is halfway bowed and i'm just shaking it is all i'm doing is i'm shaking it on on a slack line and then i'm going to pull it up to see if a fish is on it because a lot of times when you're fishing on that slack line you don't feel the bite but you pull it up and you start to feel tension and then you set the hook on them all right so one of the questions i'm going to get asked is how long of a leader do i use and let me kind of explain this i'm in 11 and a half feet of water right now my leader starts right that right there so about a 15 foot leader is what i've got on and the reason for that long is one if i need to re-tie or anything else i don't have to retie a leader i can just use that leader up it's still got plenty of room to use it up another thing is is that the more leader i got the the more i feel the more invisible i feel that fluorocarbon is in that super clear water and the fg will not last so long which is the knot that i used to connect with the fg knot it lasts so long that i don't have to re-tie so much so i can get away with keeping a long leader on there and not feel like i'm wasting fluorocarbon so that's why i use a real long leader all right so when you set the hook you just got to make sure you just lift up on it is all you got to do is just lift don't set the hook hard like you do with a text oh this is a big fish no it's not just thought it was big but you don't jerk it like a texas rig you've got that open hook so you just got to make sure you tighten up on them and you should have them hooked right in the roof of the mouth most of the time unless you let them take it too long and then they'll have it a little deeper but eight pound test i'm not too much worried about losing this fish i am going to loosen the drag up just a little i just tightened it loosen it up just a bit a bit so you guys can hear the drag scream i guess it's not a bad little fish i'm just going to lift him up in here oh yeah he is a good oh he'll come right off come here look at that son summer gun all right let's get back in there see if i catch another one now what i did different with that one is that i didn't nose hook it i wacky rigged it and got a bite almost immediately on the drop and and he shook my weight off so let's get another weight and put it on all right so let's talk about how to rig the weedless drop shot rig now because of the way i'm gonna i'm gonna hook the worm i need a little bit heavier rod so i'm gonna go with a medium power rod uh spinning rod same thing a 2.0 reel size reel and i like a longer one because i'm going to be doing a lot of casting dragging like a carolina rig working it through cover and stuff like that so i got a seven foot three medium spinning rod this is a fake black the new fake black's out by 13. but uh the hook is is pretty important now you could use a standard offset worm hook and about a one odd or something like that but these ten uh hooks by gamma got so they got the tin keeper are in my opinion the best you get the best hookups they're a light wire hook it's easier to get a good hook in them in the fish and that kind of stuff you just don't want to use it with too fat of a worm if you're going to go with a fatter worm than say a trick worm then you're going to want to use a an extra wide gap or just a one offset round bend but anyway this is a really good really good hook i'll leave the links to all of the stuff down in the description so you guys can go look them up on tackle warehouse um but we're gonna tie it the same way we're gonna run it through the eye of the hook pass it back through and i just had a bug try to land in my eye back through the eye of that hook so i have a loop okay and i'm gonna tie an overhand knot so this is just a palomar knot it's all it is pull everything snug it's probably a good idea to wet it before you tighten it down that way you don't weaken the knot any and then take the tag end pass it down through and pull that knot through the eye if you can if you can't it's no big deal and then put your sinker on you're ready to go all right so we're going to show you how to put this hook the uh the weedless hook into the end of the worm and it's pretty simple it's a lot like a texas rig but it's a straight shank so i'm going to put it in the tip of the worm at an angle i'm going to slide that in here try to stay center line of the of the worm which i did a horrible job at there we go center line of that worm pull that hook through pull the keeper through and then rotate it so it looks just like this okay then i'm going to take and i'm going to lay that hook alongside the worm so i can see where it's going to go into see let me get that line out of the way so i'm going to lay it alongside you can see where that hook is supposed to go into that worm and i'm gonna eyeball it and i'm literally just gonna go zip just like this and try to make it to where that the tip of that hook just barely sticks out of that worm and that's it and look at the only thing that concerns me is this is the 13 fishing bff and it does it works great with this hook i might use a bigger hook if i find that i'm missing hook sets because there's not a whole lot of gap for that worm to get out of the way and that hook to bite but i think we'll be okay with that that's pretty close though that's about my limit of thickness for this one knot hook so i might go bigger hook or i might go a different different style hook but that's how you rig it and it is weedless you can drop it down into the thick stuff and stuff like that so let's get out on the water fish this and and show you what it looks like all right so the weedless drop shot this is my favorite way to fish a drop shot by far my favorite way it just doesn't get snagged you can fish it like a carolina rig you can drag it slow like a texas rig you can do a whole you can cast it long distances and drag it through areas and it'll come through cover most of the time so what i've got in front of me is i've got some brush piles way out in front of me and i'm gonna make a nice half cast let it sink down to the bottom and i can work it through the brush pile but i'm gonna do it the same way i do the standard style is as i'm working it i'm gonna shake it on the slack line and i'm gonna drag it and i'm gonna shake it on the slack line oh i thought i just got bit but i think it just hit the bottom that's what and then and just working it like i would just about any other type of rig but the only difference is from a carolina rig in a texas rig is i can keep it in the strike zone longer so i can shake it in the same spot and drop it and shake it and drop it now if you do get it hung in a brush pile same goes with the standard style you've got that weight below the hook you get right over top of your snag and hopefully you haven't set the hook in whatever you got it snagged in but you get right over top of your snag and you shake it and that hook being below or that weight being below the hook will pull that a lot of times we'll pull that hook out of whatever it's snagged and you can get it out you have a lot better chance of getting it out that is all right let me work this thing back to the boat so we can catch a fish all right notice the difference in the hook set is you've got a hammer this one home eye came off dag gummy you got a hammer at home and i didn't set it hard enough really because that hook's got to come through that worm and into the fish's mouth can't believe he popped off now as for weights or size of weights i have two different sizes quarter ounce and three eighths i use the three eighths when i'm fishing 12 to 15 20 feet really deep and i want to get it down there fast but really most of the time i'm throwing a quarter ounce and the reason i do that is it forces me to keep fishing slow it i want to keep the weight on the bottom so it forces me to be a little bit more careful about how hard i work this bait with the weight because any i don't want to move that weight off the bottom i don't want to kick up any silt on the bottom or anything else and using the lighter weight forces me to do that there we go [Laughter] this one is a giant i mean at least in his head he's huge oh man poor little guy stop flopping and i'll throw you back in the water with a drop shot you really the the biggest thing to remember is that it is meant to be left in the same spot for longer than you normally would to be able to fish the same strike zone the same area but you know longer it works great in brush piles works great on flats it works really good you can cast and drag it back to you can flip it directly to a cover or something you know something specific you can cover a lot of water with it but slowly it's not one of those not a search bait but once you find the fish you can really really feel the boat but that's a drop shot i hope you guys learned something be sure to subscribe to my channel hit the little bell and like i always say be sure to introduce somebody to fishing introduce them to my channel let me help you teach them how to fish more importantly get out on the water go out and catch some fish and have a great day we'll see

Channel: Flukemaster

Views: 137,590

Rating: 4.9387236 out of 5

Keywords: how to fish, drop shot rig, bass fishing, drop shot, how to, largemouth bass, fishing tips, bass fishing tips, finesse fishing, drop shot fishing, big bass, fishing videos, fishing lures, drop shot rig for bass, drop shot knot, how to dropshot, fishing a drop shot, dropshot rig, spinning rod, braided line, bass fishing tournament, bass fishing 101

Id: Lk9vCW7rvcg

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021