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January/February 2007

It's an hour after sunrise on what promises to be a bright September day on Missouri's Table Rock Lake, and tournament pro Todd Faircloth is quietly easing up to one of the more than two dozen waypoints he's punched into his GPS. This one marks a cluster of trees in 35 feet of water, and when he's on it, Faircloth diverts his attention exclusively to his depthfinder.

Yes, those marks near the bottom are bass, even though they're not showing as arches as they often do. The Texas pro slips a buoy into the water to mark the spot, then quietly eases a few yards away. His spinning rod has a five inch Thin Senko (9M-series) rigged as a drop shot and within moments of his first presentation, a spotted bass hits. A minute later another bass hits the Senko and also ends up in the livewell, but then it's over and Faircloth idles away toward another waypoint.

It was a scenario the Texas pro repeated many times during the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on Table Rock, which he won with a four-day total of 50 pounds, nine ounces. All his fish, including a "bonus" four pound smallmouth, came on the Senko fished on a drop shot 30 to 40 feet deep.

"I've fished Senkos for years on my home lake of Sam Rayburn," explains Faircloth, who's been competing professionally for seven years, "and I think the Thin Senko gave me some advantages because of its action.

"A lot of fishermen were drop shotting smaller four inch worms, because drop shotting is supposed to be a finesse-type technique, but at Table Rock the bass weren't moving at all to get a lure, and the smaller worms simply did not have enough action to attract larger fish."

"The bass didn't want a lot of lure movement, either. In fact, the less I worked it, the better, but when I nose-hooked the Senko, it still quivered from nose to tail, even though I wasn't moving my rod."

Gary Yamamoto, who designed the Thin Senko several years ago, wasn't a bit surprised at Faircloth's victory with one of the least-known members of the famous Senko family.

"I wanted a Senko that could be fished as a shakey head worm or as a drop shot bait," he explains, "so we shrunk a regular five inch Senko. That allowed us to keep most of the major attributes of a regular Senko, especially its action, so it would be an effective lure when bass are largely inactive."

"Probably the only thing you can't do with the Thin Senko is fish it weightless because it's so light, but for shaking or drop shotting, it's hard to beat. In fact, I've just designed a special round shakey head hook that will make the Thin Senko even more effective."

There's a little more to Faircloth's win, of course, not the least of which were his stealth tactics even though he was fishing deep water. This comes from years of experience on Sam Rayburn, which, although nationally famous for its shallow hydrilla, also offers excellent deepwater opportunities.

"Bass are so aware of their environment and any changes in that environment that I think it's critical to keep our disturbances to an absolute minimum," Faircloth explains. "For example, I know a depthfinder signal, if kept on constantly, will cause a school of fish to move. That's particularly true with the high-wattage units now available, and it doesn't take long for the fish to leave."

"Even at 40 feet where I was catching a lot of my fish, they knew I was there and they'd give me about five minutes to catch them before they scattered. I'd ease up to a spot, then drop the lure as quickly as I could. Even if I didn't have a bite in five minutes, I would leave, and I tried not to fish any spot more than once each day."

Equally as important in making deep drop shotting work is a thorough understanding of what the depthfinder is showing. Faircloth's Lowrance X-17 (he plans to change to an X-26 this season because of its color image) shows him not only the timber and the bass hiding in it, but also his Senko as it falls toward them. Because the bass were not moving to get a lure, he literally had to put it right in front of them.

"You could see the fish, if you knew what to look for," notes Faircloth. "The way I instruct beginning anglers in my seminars is to go out into calm water about 35 feet deep and drop a lure right down by the transducer on your trolling motor and look at it on the depthfinder. Turn the sensitivity down and put the depthfinder in a manual mode, then try to eliminate any surface clutter and clean up the screen by adjusting the surface clarity setting."

"After that, just play with it. You'll learn best if you can tie your boat to a tree or stump so it doesn't move, but most importantly, study the screen before you drop your lure and then study it as you are dropping it so you can see what's different."

"There are anglers who use underwater cameras to confirm the identification of what they think they're seeing on a depthfinder, and I've heard of some just putting on a diving mask and fins and swimming down to look. The absolute key is recognizing what you're looking at, and once you know you're seeing your lure, you can begin to put it exactly where you want to."

"At Table Rock, if I missed the stump or brush by five feet, I never got a strike. You could catch those bass with a jig, but the drop shot was just so much faster and more efficient."

Faircloth used two different Senkos, a smoke/purple (#157) in clear, bright conditions, and green pumpkin (# 297) when it was cloudy. He used a No. 1 Gamakatsu drop shot hook, and hooked the Senkos through the nose, not pushing the barb completely through the lure since he needed a weedless bait in the brush. He used a ¼ ounce XPS cylinder sinker, tied just eight inches below the hook.

Rod and reel-wise, he spooled 6 pound XPS fluorocarbon on a Shimano Symetre reel with a medium action 6'8" Castaway spinning rod. He has fished with eight pound fluorocarbon but feels the lighter line handles better on a spinning rod. It also falls faster.

The downside to using six pound fluorocarbon in deep timber is losing fish due to break-offs, but better lure control generally means that overall you'll get more chances with more fish.

"Universally, I don't think you necessarily need a lot of action with a drop shot, either," Faircloth adds. "The lure is going to move a little just from wave motion, and the Thin Senko is impossible to keep from wiggling anyway, so I just dropped the rig to the bottom and let the bass come to it."

"Most of the time, I would get a bite or two very quickly, too, but once the fish scattered I could never re-locate them so I was doing a lot of moving between spots. I had about 25 different places keyed in on the GPS but generally only fished about 15 of them each day."

"Overall," says Faircloth, "deep drop shotting is not really as difficult as it may sound, but like all deepwater fishing, it requires a lot of confidence." "That confidence," he emphasizes, "comes primarily from understanding your electronics, the fish, and the full potential of your lure."

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