Question about using wacky rig in deeper water

[Esox pro]

2 hours ago, roadwarrior said:

Well...

 

Basically there is a senko color that ive fish wacky rigged in the erie canal for smallmouth and do really well but basically due to that same forage in the st Lawrence And the wacky rig being the best for me i want to do that but need the weight due to depth and current and a question ive had about fishing it in deeper water as i want it to sink but keeping the bail open might either let current take it or cause me to gut hook fish so i was curious what you guys would do as I didnt know if it would sink all the way down with the bail closed to sum it all up

[billmac]

I've had some success using a wacky rig on a drop shot.

[Esox pro]

To sum it all up im using goby colored senkos so i want it to fall right to the bottom and stay on the bottom and since wacky rigged is most effective i was going to try that

dropshot wouldnt work as gobies stay on the bottom 

[Teal]

Wacky rig is good is deeper water, I use the lightest wacky jig head I can get away with.  Back in July wore them out on 1/8 with a wacky rigged zoom centipede in about 16 foot of water up against a bluff wall of rock.  Half of time it was hit before it hit bottom

[Esox pro]

12 minutes ago, Teal said:

Wacky rig is good is deeper water, I use the lightest wacky jig head I can get away with.  Back in July wore them out on 1/8 with a wacky rigged zoom centipede in about 16 foot of water up against a bluff wall of rock.  Half of time it was hit before it hit bottom

Did you fish it like normal or keep the bail open

[fissure_man]

The key here (revealed late in the thread) is that it sounds like you’re facing heavy current on the St Lawrence, right? Not just deep water. Ideally there is some bottom topography/cover to break the flow, but you need to get your bait down to that zone and stay in contact with it.  A light wacky rig is no good.  The fish are tucked into those deep current breaks and just getting your lure in front of their face should be priority one.

 

Are you in a boat?  Try “drift fishing.” Toss out a weight that gets you contact with the bottom in a hurry (just drop it off the side of the boat). Set up a drift that lets you keep your line fairly vertical, which means using your TM against the current.  Slip back with the river current, ‘tickling’ your lure along bottom. Again, you need enough weight to stay in contact with the bottom with a fairly vertical line to detect bites and avoid snags. When you drift to the end of your target area, loop around and start over. 

 

A heavy drop shot works great for this because it protects the line from abrasion which means you can get away with thinner line (cut through the current), it protects your hook point from rocks, it has a very high bite to hook to land ratio, it’s snag resistant, and when you do snag you can just clip on a new sinker most of the time. You can wacky rig your senko on the DS but it wouldn’t be my first choice in current.  I’d nose hook something smaller: xzone slammer, poor boys goby, gulp minnow/leech, etc.

 

A heavy football head or tube jig will also work, but they’re more snag-prone and more costly to donate to the river – drop shot has replaced them for me.  Other rigs for big-river steelhead and walleye will also work but are not in the usual bass repertoire.

[Esox pro]

Boat not concerned off snags actually get them near weedbeds on dropoffs

problem with dropshot is it keeps lure suspended off bottom which is what i dont want

[Fishes in trees]

Try a jika rig - think of it as a drop shot rig with a very short ( inch and a half or less) dropper.

[Esox pro]

Also known as a Tokyo rig but gobys live on the bottom so i. Using a jig

[fissure_man]

Ah you’re probably right, drop shot won’t work on the St Lawrence

 

It doesn’t matter what bait you’re using if you’re not getting it in front of the fish and you're not able to detect strikes. In a deep water + heavy current scenarios, many conventional presentations won’t be effective. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re facing, but if the water is so deep and current so strong that you’re having trouble keeping in contact with your bait and the bottom despite using a 1 oz weight, I would try a drift method vs. force-feeding what has worked in other conditions. 

 

Bail open vs. closed seems like a solved issue – close it unless you’re stripping a bit of line at the end of your cast to allow a more vertical fall (then close it). If you’re leaving the bail open and the river current is stripping line and creating a huge bow – yes, that’s a problem.

[Esox pro]

To be honest I haven’t even tried the method 

i was just curious what is needed to get it to the bottom 

[Esox pro]

1 hour ago, fissure_man said:

Ah you’re probably right, drop shot won’t work on the St Lawrence

 

It doesn’t matter what bait you’re using if you’re not getting it in front of the fish and you're not able to detect strikes. In a deep water + heavy current scenarios, many conventional presentations won’t be effective. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re facing, but if the water is so deep and current so strong that you’re having trouble keeping in contact with your bait and the bottom despite using a 1 oz weight, I would try a drift method vs. force-feeding what has worked in other conditions. 

 

Bail open vs. closed seems like a solved issue – close it unless you’re stripping a bit of line at the end of your cast to allow a more vertical fall (then close it). If you’re leaving the bail open and the river current is stripping line and creating a huge bow – yes, that’s a problem.

Thx 

there are guys that drop shot there and do well

its just dropshot doesn’t work with this presentation as gobies dont suspense 

 

[Way north bass guy]

I don’t know where in the heck you read or heard that a drop shot won’t work where there’s gobies, but that’s nonsense ?‍♂️. I have caught well over 500 smallmouth this summer on Georgian Bay, and almost every one of them has come on a drop shot, many in water up to 40’ deep. And guess what they’re feeding on for the most part, that’s right, GOBIES!

It’s not like you need a 36” long lead to your weight, most of the bass I’ve got this year are with a 10-14” long lead off bottom, and I’ve caught quite a few gobies on my baits as well. It’s not like the gobies can’t swim off bottom at all, and if a bait is presented just off bottom, the bass are still gonna hit it as evidenced by my very numerous bass catches this year. 

[Esox pro]

1 minute ago, Way north bass guy said:

I don’t know where in the heck you read or heard that a drop shot won’t work where there’s gobies, but that’s nonsense ?‍♂️. I have caught well over 500 smallmouth this summer on Georgian Bay, and almost every one of them has come on a drop shot, many in water up to 40’ deep. And guess what they’re feeding on for the most part, that’s right, GOBIES!

It’s not like you need a 36” long lead to your weight, most of the bass I’ve got this year are with a 10-14” long lead off bottom, and I’ve caught quite a few gobies on my baits as well. It’s not like the gobies can’t swim off bottom at all, and if a bait is presented just off bottom, the bass are still gonna hit it as evidenced by my very numerous bass catches this year. 

Not saying it won’t just saying it wouldnt look right and I usually deadstick and let it sit on the bottom 

So it looks like a dead goby

[Way north bass guy]

Just now, Esox pro said:

Not saying it won’t just saying it wouldnt look right and I usually deadstick and let it sit on the bottom 

So it looks like a dead goby

Who’s to say it won’t look “right”. I’ve caught a ton of bass on a wacky rigged stick worm on a drop shot, seems to me the bass don’t mind the look of it at all, but you do whatever you want to, if you can’t catch them and don’t want to try anything that gets suggested on here to you, why even ask then?

[Esox pro]

7 minutes ago, Way north bass guy said:

Who’s to say it won’t look “right”. I’ve caught a ton of bass on a wacky rigged stick worm on a drop shot, seems to me the bass don’t mind the look of it at all, but you do whatever you want to, if you can’t catch them and don’t want to try anything that gets suggested on here to you, why even ask then?

Because if I wanted to dropshot I would use live night crawlers  which is actually extremely effective for smallmouth 

and gobies live on the bottom they dont live in the middle of the water column

[Esox pro]

2 hours ago, fissure_man said:

Ah you’re probably right, drop shot won’t work on the St Lawrence

 

It doesn’t matter what bait you’re using if you’re not getting it in front of the fish and you're not able to detect strikes. In a deep water + heavy current scenarios, many conventional presentations won’t be effective. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re facing, but if the water is so deep and current so strong that you’re having trouble keeping in contact with your bait and the bottom despite using a 1 oz weight, I would try a drift method vs. force-feeding what has worked in other conditions. 

 

Bail open vs. closed seems like a solved issue – close it unless you’re stripping a bit of line at the end of your cast to allow a more vertical fall (then close it). If you’re leaving the bail open and the river current is stripping line and creating a huge bow – yes, that’s a problem.

By the way thx for giving an answer and to the other guys who said closing the bail pulls it towards me

[Bankbeater]

When I fish a wacky rig I watch the line close.  I cast out the bait a couple of times to get a feel of how the line is going to come off of the open spool.  After I cast out for real, I keep my hand on the bail just in case the line starts acting funny.  If the line starts coming off faster or it stops then I throw the bail and set the hook.  Basically I fish it like a jig when it's falling.

[Esox pro]

28 minutes ago, Bankbeater said:

When I fish a wacky rig I watch the line close.  I cast out the bait a couple of times to get a feel of how the line is going to come off of the open spool.  After I cast out for real, I keep my hand on the bail just in case the line starts acting funny.  If the line starts coming off faster or it stops then I throw the bail and set the hook.  Basically I fish it like a jig when it's falling.

Will definitely try your technique 

[BassKicker619]

Dude, there's no perfect answer. Try a couple of the methods above and see what works.

 

From your description, I'd use a wacky rigged, Tokyo Rig.

 

Adjust length to your need, but it needs to be a little off bottom to get the "wacky" effect.

 

 

[J Francho]

Why can't a drop shot senko be on the bottom?  You give the rod a dip and let the bait fall to the bottom like it does in two feet of water, instead of twenty feet.  If you just want it on the bottom, then just crimp on an ounce of split shots.  No fancy rigging, no fancy hooks.  That will get bit too.  You could use a jig too.  Or a nail weight.  Or a weighted hook.  All of these solve your issue.

 

I'm seriously starting to feel like you pose these threads simply to discount the solutions offered.  What you're trying to do is not new, and not hard.  It's frustrating to the people trying to help you. 

[Esox pro]

4 hours ago, J Francho said:

Why can't a drop shot senko be on the bottom?  You give the rod a dip and let the bait fall to the bottom like it does in two feet of water, instead of twenty feet.  If you just want it on the bottom, then just crimp on an ounce of split shots.  No fancy rigging, no fancy hooks.  That will get bit too.  You could use a jig too.  Or a nail weight.  Or a weighted hook.  All of these solve your issue.

 

I'm seriously starting to feel like you pose these threads simply to discount the solutions offered.  What you're trying to do is not new, and not hard.  It's frustrating to the people trying to help you. 

Thank you

wacky rig dropshot doesnt seem right as well it keeps the lure suspended

and become of that if I wanted to use a dropshot there are otherbaits I would use that work far better

[Glenn]

Okay, I see what you're saying. You want the lure to stay on the bottom, motionless, which isn't what a dropshot does.

 

So for this, you can either put it on a splitshot or Carolina rig, or rig it with a football jig.

 

Wacky rigging it doesn't really work here, because it's designed for a falling action, not dead sticking on the bottom.

 

Hope that helps!

[Mat_ski]

Make your own jika rigs with wacky hooks. Endless possibilities there with weight and hook size/shape. 

[Esox pro]

1 minute ago, Glenn said:

Okay, I see what you're saying. You want the lure to stay on the bottom, motionless, which isn't what a dropshot does.

 

So for this, you can either put it on a splitshot or Carolina rig, or rig it with a football jig.

 

Wacky rigging it doesn't really work here, because it's designed for a falling action, not dead sticking on the bottom.

 

Hope that helps!

THANK YOU