Deep Deadsticking - Part 2
September 5, 2008
Deep deadsticking is often the best (and sometimes only) method to entice gamefish riding herd on, but not actively harrying schools of bait.
A prey species will tend to constantly readjust the times and locations of their daily activities to be in places at times when the prevailing predators are NOT there. In situations with nowhere else left to go, they'll even beach themselves on a sandy shoreline if that's the only place to be where predators are not.
Predator species are just the opposite. They will constantly readjust their activity clocks to be at locations when the prevailing prey ARE there.
It's a constant problem of predictive timing. Neither side will ever get it entirely right, but they will never stop trying to set their survival clocks by each other. The situation's often a stalemate, a tense stand-off - and that's when deep deadsticking works best.
In part one, we wrote of watching shad schools milling on the surface, and deadsticking a weightless wacky Senko on the bottom beneath them. Problem is, the schools never stop moving, which isn't bad when you can see their whereabouts. They won't leave the area, but they don't stand still. The fact they move is good, since that lets ever-watchful gamefish slink up when the coast's clear in order to search the bottom for your fallen Senko. Otherwise, gamefish in these situations tend not to pursue lures that would make the bait schools take steps to avoid them. Distance is an effective barrier. The gamefish acquiesce to not breach that distance or else they'll trigger the bait schools to move decisively to shake them off their tails. They don't want the bait to stampede. So they dare not to chase lures you toss through these bait balls.
When bait balls aren't seen on the surface but can only be spotted on a graph, deep deadsticking gets tougher but not impossible. Your best bet can still be to drop a weightless wacky Senko straight down to the bottom below the graphed bait balls. Back-pedaling (doing an instant 180 on the trolling motor) and trolling in "reverse" carefully is a subtle knack you'll need to get the hang of, because once you see a baitball on the graph, you've already sailed past it.
Marker buoys (several of them) help give you landmarks in an otherwise open expanse of water. Comfortably milling bait won't stay where they were, but they won't wander all that far relative to your markers when they're comfortable in this kind of stable situation. Bottom line, it's far easier to stay on top of deep bait balls on a graph with marker buoys as relative reference points.
Anglers often use marker buoys to pinpoint fish-holding cover or structure, earmark a brushpile, the tip of a long point, the edge of a channel ledge and other underwater hot spots.
What we're using buoys to track here however are milling bait balls, and that's by far better than the best cover or structure you can ever find. Nothing else matters when you're tapped into a bait ball. Not the time of day, the season, the water clarity, the water temperature, the cloud cover or anything else we always speak of as right or wrong conditions. They just don't matter when you find these kinds of bait balls.
There's no better timing, cover, structure or conditions you can ever come across.
Chuck everything you've ever learned about conditions and locations. Nary a stitch applies when you seek the bait balls, you'll find success.
Click here to read more:
- Part 1: Deep Deadsticking
- Part 2: Deep Deadsticking
- Part 3: Deep Deadsticking
- Part 4: Deep Deadsticking By Jim Gildea
- Part 5: Deep Deadsticking By Jeff Gustafson