Pro-Fishing Tips: Deadsticking for Bass

When fishing gets tough as it invariably will, I have these words of wisdom for you. Slow down!!! No matter what the season or water temperature when the bite slows down, YOU must slow down your presentation, even to a dead stop if necessary, this is called deadsticking. It involves casting out your plastic bait, and then just letting it sit there on the bottom doing nothing.

No wiggling, no pulling, no jerking, no nothing!! I have caught some of my largest bass using this method. I came upon this method as a young boy,I was learning how to use bait casting gear, and frequently got backlashes.Once when I had not caught a fish all morning, and I was slowly picking out the mother of all backlashes, I noticed as I was pulling line off the reel it was moving out toward deeper water at the same time. I knew the plastic eel Ihad on the end of my line was not swimming away with my line, so I knewit must be a fish. I reeled down fast until my rod had a good bend in it, then set the hook hard, the rod was almost jerked out of my hands, and the line started peeling off the reel faster than I had ever seen it go. In seconds the line came taut at the backlash and with a loud crack the line broke. Boy was I a dejected twelve year old. Not only had I lost the largest bass I hadever hooked, I lost the only black plastic eel I had. (these were the very firstsoft plastic baits on the market, they came rigged with a three hook harness,and a couple of beads and a flat spinner in front).

Yes they caught bass, andweeds, and trees, and bushes, and lily pads and anything else close by those three hooks could get ahold of! They were not cheap either, close to two bucks for a package of three. It took me two to three hours of cutting my neighbors lawns, (back then most people had 1 to 2 acre lawns in the south in the sixty's) to earn two bucks. I soon learned to remove the harness and those infernal three hooks, and replace them with a single weedless hook with a large split shot pinched on right behind the eye of the hook, ( I believe this was the first weedless jig head) now I could cast it into any brushy or weedy spot and have a pretty good chance of getting my eel back, except when a big ole bass had it stuck in his mouth, and was trying to go deeper into the brushpile, which was often!

Now my last one was in some huge bass's mouth and gone. As I rode my bike the mile and a half home, I started thinking about what had happened, was it something that could help me when things were tough or just on isolated incident? The next day I was back with three eels, I tried casting and reeling them in, in the usual way but was not able to catch one fish. Then I cast out next to a dead tree that set right on the edge of a creek channel in about ten feet of water, when fishing from a boat, we always caught bass near the tree, so I knew they were nearby. After about two minutes the line slowly started to move away. This time when I set the hook the line wasn't tangled, the drag did its job and I landed a dandy five pounder. Once while fishing a plastic lizard at Lake Casitas, California, the same thing happened, I had just made a cast to the tip of a point that sat in fifteen feet of water before it broke steeply into a deep water section of the lake. My wife said "Roy, I have a tangle", I sat my rod down to help her, and a couple of minutes later when I was finished with her tangle, I picked my rod up and started to reel it in, except there was something heavy on the end.

Habit caused me to set the hook hard, and when I did, the line started peeling off the reel and going out towards the center of the lake. Long story short, I caught my largest California bass, an eleven and a half pound beauty.

Dead sticking can also be done with floating crank baits. The Rapala Frenzy is one of my favorites, it is a long thin minnow shaped lure with two extra sharp treble hooks on it.

Normally the Rapala Frenzy is best fished with a quick erratic retrieve, I cast it out and reel fast while jerking the rod tip quickly, this produces a very erratic almost frenzied action, that aggressive fish cannot seem to turn down. I have cast it out towards the center of the lake and had fish come up fifteen or twenty feet to hit it. No other lure on the market will give you the action the frenzy does! It works best in clear to lightly stained water. I always fish this lure with six to ten pound Berkley fluorocarbon ( Vanish ) on a six and a half foot med action spinning rod.

The lure casts a country mile on this outfit, and handles most bass you will hook on this lure. But what do we do in those times when fish are in a negative or neutral mood? Slow down! Slow down more! Stop! The water must be pretty clear for this method to be effective. This really works best on steeper shorelines and vertical cliff sections of the lake that have shoreline cover, it also works well cast over weedy or rocky reefs in five to fifteen feet of water.

Another good spot is a long shallow point that drops off into deeper water at its tip. Let's start with a steep shoreline, forty five degrees or more is best, I always start on a shoreline that has quite a bit of brush on it. I start by dropping my rear anchor out in the deeper water, then use the trolling motor on low to move the bow into a strong looking bush or tree and tie the bow to it. I try to find a rather long bank and anchor the boat in the middle. Now with the boat at a ninety degree angle to the shoreline, I can fish either way, first I fish to the right of the boat then turn around and fishto the left. This way I can cover a long stretch of bank without moving the boat. This is important when the fish are spooky due to heavy fishing pressure, and you can tie up a long stretch of shoreline and keep other anglers from fishing this stretch.

I always have one heavy rod rigged with a heavy shallow running crank bait, that I can cast a considerable distance, and when another boat comes around the corner I just grab the big crank and make a long cast in the direction of the other boat, it lands with a big splash and most other fishermen seeing the splash will give you a wide berth as they want no part of that big crank and its multiple treble hooks. Anyway they think you are nuts for throwing that big noisy lure under stealth conditions and stay away from you because you haven't a clue. I don't expect to catch anything on the big crank, just scare the other boat away from my spot.

Here in Southern California's crowded waters, this is the only way you can insure you have a area you can spend all day on if necessary to figure out fish that do not want to rush out and grab the first lure that comes by. I have certain shorelines that always seem to hold some fish most of the year and I know from experience that a quiet stealthy approach will catch some bass most days. Being on a forty five degree bank, I can reach water from one to fifty feet deep.