Deep Deadsticking - Part 4
September 18, 2008
Foreword by Jim Gildea
The deep deadsticking article series has focused on the bait, the predator, and a few of the techniques that Russ shares.
In reality, this article series could also be called, "Fishing the Bait".
We all get caught up in structure, depth, water clarity, and spots or areas, but in truth, bass don’t care about that – they care about food. If you have a dog, you know what I mean. For man's best friend, their entire life pretty much revolves around when you are going to feed them.
I don't think there's much else a bass cares about either. They're going to hang around where the food is.
On a personal level, and why I'm authoring this final chapter on deep deadsticking is it's something that's worked very well for me the past few years. I’ve had a couple of good seasons doing deep deadsticking.
2008 has been my best season so far. I won the Massachusetts TBF 2008 State Championship on Lake Winnipesaukee. I made the Massachusetts State Team for the third time in a row. My partner and I won Angler of the Year on two separate team trails. I finished 10th in the TBF Nationals on Lake Wylie, and 11th on the Stren on Lake Champlain. I cashed checks in 19 out of 22 tournaments in 2008.
My success is due, in large part, to applying the ideas I first wrote about two years ago in the original Part Four of this series. You can read that below.
Jim Gildea cashed checks in 19 out of 22 tournaments in 2008, mainly by deep deadsticking.
My success in 2008 also had to do with better preparation. The good news is that what I did to improve is something that anyone can do. I caught my first bass when I was 31 years old (aside from a handful one summer as a ten year old). I didn’t fish my first tournament until 1996. So I really haven't been bass fishing for very long, and it has been mostly by reading and applying what I’ve learned that I’ve gradually improved at it.
A large aspect of what I do in tournaments is what Russ has termed, “Deep Deadsticking”. To effectively deep deadstick, you need to do three things:
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find the bait,
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prepare the boat, and
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prepare yourself.
I go over those three things for you below.
Find the Bait
Finding the bait is something that we all know how to do. It just involves spending some time on the water looking and searching. You might have to spend an entire day and only catch one or two fish. The best practice I can have is spending the entire day on water I haven’t fished, and find one or two new spots with bait in them.
Once you find one spot, you need to find other spots nearby. There’s no sense in running across the lake. If I find fish on a point, I’ll comb the area nearby so I can set up a milk run during the tournament day. Also, if they aren’t where you first find them, they are probably on the other good spots nearby. So it makes sense during practice to uncover and connect nearby spots to one good spot you've found, thereby extending the area from one spot into several.
It seems like common sense, but it bears repeating. You are better off spending a day finding one spot near a spot you already have, rather than finding three or four spots all over the lake, which you can't get to.
Using your electronics is one way to find the bait, but I also find that “old school” works well too - your fishing rod. Since I am canvassing areas near known spots, by fishing with a bottom contact technique, I can find small, subtle spots that I might miss by using my electronics. For example, I have only practiced six days in my life on Lake Champlain, but I’ve fished five tournaments, and cashed checks in all five. I start on a good spot (often a well-know community hole), and then expand it by dragging a Carolina Rig or a drop shot rig. Sometimes I find stuff on the screen, but often I catch a fish or pull up grass on my rig. Once I catch something or find good grass, then I’ll drive around and dial it in. Deep grass is always a good thing to find - it's an oasis that holds life.
Prepare the Boat
Most times when you are fishing deep bait means you are out in open water - and it can get rough. The boat needs to be ready – nothing laying around loose, everything in it’s place, hatches battened down and nothing extra. The only items that go in the glove compartment are things you need to access that day – culling tools, pliers, a scale, and a jar of livewell additive to keep your catch in top shape. You can't have a ton of junk in there and then expect to find a pair of pliers while the boat is rolling in three foot waves.
I only bring the rods I’ll use that day (three or four at the most), and minimal tackle. If I draw a non-boater, I explain that bringing the entire hockey bag is not a good idea – take out what you need, and stow the rest in a closed compartment behind the co-anglers seat.
Trying to fish a bait ball and deep deadstick in rough, open water, while climbing over a three foot tackle bag and seven tangled rods is just not a good idea.
Prepare Yourself
This is something you see mentioned occasionally, but it really contributes to success. Getting in better shape was a goal for me this year, and it helped. If you are going to fish your way to the winner's circle consistently, you need to be in shape for it, both mentally and physically. I’m 47 years old this month, and I feel I need to keep going to the gym if I want to be competitive on the water. So I go to the gym in order to do better at fishing.
Getting your rest is something that you need to do as well. If you are fishing open water, it’s very tiring, with the boat crashing through rollers just to get there (and back), and then trying to fish all day with waves breaching the gunnels. I make sure I get eight hours of sleep, don’t drink alcohol the night before, and try as best I can to eat right. You can't pick the days to have a tournament, so you need to be in shape, rested, hydrated and properly nourished in order to do well in a tournament.
As funny as it sounds, I’ve found that helping other people helps me. My brother-in-law just started fishing, and wasn’t catching much. I took the time to teach him about throwing a small Senko on light line, and now he’s outfishing everyone. I’ve also helped club tournament beginners. I met a guy going who had just joined a club and was not catching any fish. He was a bit discouraged, so I helped him simplify what he was doing. He had been trying everything – jigs, crankbaits, spinnerbaits and so on. I told him to just pick one area of his upcoming tournament lake and pick it apart with a Senko. He wound up with a solid bag and finished second.
So in some funny way (maybe its good karma) helping others actually helps me refocus, and helps me do better. It puts me in my game mind.
Finally, having your family on your side is a big part of anyone’s success. I fish a lot, so I miss a lot of important family events. At the same time, I try to spend as much time with my family as I can, so I miss out on other things. The only movies or TV shows I watch are with my two boys who are 9 and 11. So while I’ve never seen the Sopranos or the Matrix, I have seen many issues of their favorite show (and now mine), the Mythbusters!
Well, that's all I have to say about 2008 (a very good season), and new here's the original Part Four to Deep Deadsticking I wrote in 2006...
Deep Deadsticking - Part 4
Story by Jim Gildea
Predator and prey do an elaborate dance, and the dance steps change depending on the prey species. In parts one through three of this series, Russ told us how bass relate to shad balls, and he shared good ways to catch bass when they follow shad.
Now here's deep deadsticking 4.0 ~ Northeast style.
Shad are filter feeders, which means they thrive on various types of plankton that float around in the lake. Not all bait species are filter feeders, however. In the Northeast, many lakes like Champlain and Winnipesaukee for example, are chock full of yellow perch. We have schools of yellow perch that would blow you away. When the young-of-year perch reach a size about three or four inches, they become a main food item for smallmouth bass. Unlike shad, the annual bumper crop of juvenile yellow perch once they hit that size range, feed primarily on minute crustaceans and small insects.
Unlike plankton, this stuff does not get blown around by the wind - it stays put. What that means on lakes in the northeast, is that finger-sized yellow perch pretty much stay in the same spots all the time. Small perch relate mostly to grass, since the little critters that perch feed on live in grass.
But the deep deadsticking technique still works great. In fact, we've added a few wrinkles of our own up here in Yankee land. Here are some guidelines below.
First Find Them
The first thing you have to do is find the perch. Generally, the best place to start looking is where you found them last time. They tend to stick in the same spots every time, even year after year.
It's important to understand also that the majority of these glacial lakes, most of the bottom is grassless. So the yellow perch can only be in certain spots (limited to where the grass is).
On a big lake like Champlain, one way to find perch is to look for the commercial fishermen. They catch perch on rod and reel and sell them. So if you see an old 18 foot open cockpit boat with a Johnson 40 horse on the back, and a guy with a weather-beaten face throwing a string of tiny jigs on a spinning rod, the odds are good he's harvesting a bed of perch - and there are smallmouth around.
On Champlain, some perch will always be on the edge of weedlines, the textbook place to find them. But the bigger and better balls of perch will be embedded on grass flats that have grass anywhere from a few inches long to a foot or so.
You can find perch by motoring around while watching your sonar. When perch stack up on a spot, it will change the bottom reading on your sonar, they get so thick. Make sure you waypoint the spot, because if they were there once, they'll probably be there again the next time you show up.
The Rigs to Use
Once you find them, you can "deep deadstick" them. As Russ wrote, you can deadstick a weightless Senko in water down to twenty feet deep with little or no wind. But the Northeast is notorious for nasty high winds. It's not too often we get calm days when weightless Senkos can be used down deep. To compound matters, many of the better perch beds can be right out in open water, exposed to the full wind. Worse yet, prime perch beds are often found in a gut between two islands that can funnel and whip the wind. So we need some weight to deadstick here.
In the Northeast, two of the most popular rigs used to deadstick are:
1) a Yamamoto Hula Grub (color #297 green pumpkin) with anywhere from 1/4 to 3/8 ounce jig head, or
2) deadstick a Carolina rig.
The key with either is to deadstick it, and not move it fast. With lots of food around, the fish usually aren't inclined to chase too much. Just cast out, leave your rig in one spot, and wait. It's not uncommon for it to sit in one spot for a minute or more.
Many anglers don't believe in deadsticking. Not long ago, I drew a partner in the Massachusetts BASS Federation's State Championship who saw firsthand how deadly deadsticking can be. Over the course of the day, he became increasingly frustrated because he wasn't catching any fish. Meanwhile, I had a limit and was culling it. I kept telling him to slow down, and not fish too fast - but to no avail. It wasn't until the end of the day, while he helped net my 15th keeper of the day, he left his Carolina rig in the water rather than reel it in.
When he picked his rod up, there was a fish on, a good one about three pounds. He turned to me and said, "You know, maybe I AM fishing too fast!"
The Techniques to Use
Once you get around a ball of perch, you need to think of it as a piece of structure. The fish will relate to the ball of perch just like they relate to a rockpile or large dock. Sometimes they'll be tight to it, sometimes they will be off it by 100 yards or more - but they usually will be there.
I first throw a marker buoy out to orient myself. The bait is not going to wander around much. The bait ALWAYS stays in the same spot - it's the smallies that move. They come in, bust the bait up (but it never goes more than 100 or so yards away), and once it's all busted up, the smallies move on to the next school of perch, bust that up, and so on.
After the temporary disruptions, the perch schools reform and ball up on the same spot again.
To begin, I fish the edge of the perch ball, just like fishing a weed edge or edge of a ledge. This is a critical concept. The fish will cruise the edge, usually pretty close. If I don't get bit right away, I'll circle the outside, around and around, going in an ever-widening spiral around the perch bed and marker buoy until I'm almost 100 yards away.
All the time, you have to watch your sonar. If you haven't marked any bass during the process, you aren't going to catch them right at this moment. Move on to another perch ball.
The neat thing about this technique is that it's dependable. Since the bait doesn't move too much, you can generally count on it being in the same spot week after week. Like fixed bottom structure, perch balls tend to stay in the same place.
This works well in the Northeast and should work anywhere you have clear water, yellow perch and smallmouth bass. So if you live in yellow perch country, give it a try. Just remember to slow down!
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