Hunting for Them

Last weeks drop shot pattern was great until the weekend hit. I talked to Bassmaster Elite Series pro Shane Lehew about how he would approach the conditions we had been facing. His advice was a topwater or a 10″ worm on the drop shot. I honestly have three different topwater lures tied on and none of them have caught a fish all year so I swapped out my 5″ drop shot worm for the biggest one I had in the boat. It was a big ribbon tail worm. It felt funny throwing it on the drop shot on a lake in Ohio because I’m not exactly catching five pounders. But I wanted to give it a fair shot since he was willing to give me some advice. I was actually able to get a few fish on it Saturday evening but I also missed quite a few that didn’t get the whole worm. But this led me to something. The bite on my purple drop shot worm had died but I was getting a ton of bite on the 10″ worm that was a green pumpkin color.

I only make my drop shot worms when I need them and I only make them in purple. After getting a few bites on the other worm I decided I had better get some made that aren’t purple since they weren’t hitting well any more. So we got out all the necessary items and spent some time sweating in the garage as we poured a pile of worms.

Last night we got back out on the water for the first time this week. I was fishing the drop shot, Easton was fishing 17 different lures and my dad was throwing a Ned Rig. After struggling to get many bites in the 10-15 ft. range where we had been getting all of our fish I decided to move closer to shore and hit some docks. On my second cast at the dock I got a decent fish and then a few casts later lost a real nice fish. We spent the rest of the evening hitting the shallow water and the docks. We honestly caught more up there than I thought we would. It is just a good reminder that changing things up when you aren’t getting the bites can pay off. I really paid off for my dad who caught a 19″ smallmouth on his Ned Rig right near the bank.

We will keep making the adjustments to stay on the fish and hopefully these good ones will keep turning up. – Michael