Deepwater Senko Fishing

[airborne_angler]

I know it can take Senkos a long time to get to the bottom in deep water. How deep do you all consider to be too deep to fish a Senko style bait. I fish Senkos on a baitcaster and I cant tell when im on the bottom when fishing them weightless.

The baitcaster limits the depth you can fish a Senko because you have to manually feed the line once the bait hits the water...correct? Does using a spinning reel fix that by having the line peel off the spool automatically as the bait falls?

[BadKarma42]

I personally use a spinnign set up for all of my senko applications.  I think you could fish deep with the baitcaster, however.  Depending on the weight of the senko (or knock off), and how you have the reel set you may have to strip line.  It will pull line on the fall on its own, just very slowly.

I have been using bamboo sticks and they sink incredible slow.

However, once at the bottom I would keep an eye on my line to see if it stopped going into the water as a gage for the bottom.

Don't know if any of this will help or if I am complete off the mark here but good luck.

[Shad_Master]

I don't know how deep you consider deep in this this situation, but Senko style baits make for awsome drop shot lures and can be fished with either bait casters or spinning rigs.

[roadwarrior]

Have you read every article, thread, post and referenced thread in this section:

http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1121527643

Fishing a Senko is our #1 topic, there has been quite a bit of discussion on vertially every aspect of fishing this bait, but here's my answer to you question, in a nutshell:

I fish Senkos and Fat Ika weightless & weedless in water <12' deep.

[Cigarlover 1]

I personally don't think there is a depth too deep to fish stick worm style baits. I have been fishing water deeper than my usual 8-10 ft lakes/ponds that I usually fish and I've been casting out just letting the worm sink all the way to the bottom. I've been fishing in about 25-30 ft of water. My philosophy is you never know what's down there and people do catch LM in 30 ft of water on occasion.

With that said I wouldn't spend a whole day fishing stick worms in 30 ft of water but it nevers hurts to give it a shot for a bit.

[Gatorbassman]

OUCH, Just the title of this thread makes my head hurt.

[bassboy1]

I tend to like finesse worms better than senkos, but I fish them EXACTLY like 1 would a senko.  If they don't catch it on the fall, you ain't gonna get one on that cast.  But, I successfully fish 15 + feet with a weightless one.  Deeper than that, I would start using fluoro, as the mono starts to float the nose, and it goes backwards and the fish don't like it nose up.