My drop shotting experience
Entry posted by Rusty
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River Kennet, Sunday 3rd July 2011
This weekend I tried a new method of drop shotting for perch and thought you might be interested in how it went. What follows is an account of my first attempt, it is absolutely not a guide so please don’t take this as how it should be done, it’s just my take on things and I had to make some compromises.
From what I’ve read on the forum the theory is that the line is ‘anchored’ to the river bed and the lure is suspended above the lead, a bit like a paternoster. The lure is then ‘worked’ by the rod to impart movement, the lead should stay put but the lure should move. Braid is used as mainline for direct feel, fluorocarbon as the leader for invisibility and the lures are soft wobbly rubber…for soft wobbly rubbering. A proper drop shotting rod is ideal as (I presume) it has the correct action and is quite short, you’ll be holding it all day. A rummage around my shed revealed that I had none of the desirable stuff i.e. braid, rod and fluorocarbon, these provide the feel which I was later to discover is all important. I tried joining Fireline Crystal to mono so I could use a ‘pin but the braid kept breaking at the knot and eventually I had to abandon the idea. In the end I fell back on what I had, a Wingham Tench rod (formerly known as a Drennan Series 7 Avon rod) and a Wingham Tench reel (formerly known as a Mitchell Avorunner). Line would have to be 8lb mono straight through, again Tench brand.
End tackle was sourced from The Friendly Fisherman, I bought a drop shot kit (£5.99) which included four 13cm dying minnow lures, a 15g weight and a bloody huge size 3/0 hook. I supplemented this with a six pack (£5.99) of 10cm ‘blood gut’ dying minnows, five 14g drop shot leads (£4.50), six size 1 hooks (£4.50) and six size 1/0 hooks (£4.50) both of which still seemed far too big for the lures. That lot cost £27 delivered, on reflection I shouldn’t have bothered with the kit and should only have bought the size 1 hooks thus saving a tenner but that’s only after I’ve used it. Adam at TFF was very helpful, I explained that I was a beginner and he sent me what he thought I’d need, he could have sold me a lot more if he’d wanted to.
On to the end tackle. For the venues I’d be fishing the hook was tied to the mono about four feet up from the end of the mainline, this distance really depends on the depth of water at the venue and how deep/shallow you might want to fish. I used a drop shotting knot but a palomar works too, both rely on the line being fed through the eye from the gape side so the end result is the hook pointing upwards when the line is tensioned; I got it wrong first time. The tail is then used to attach the lead, these have a swivel with an eye that narrows towards the top so the leader (my mainline) is trapped and the lead can’t move. You can position it wherever you like and if it gets snagged the eye will either cut the line or the line will pull through, in the event of a break off above the lure the lead won’t tether a fish. My leads were of variable quality, not all of the eyes gripped the line so I tied a few overhand knots in the tail of the leader to help them out a bit. This is one of the duds, you can clearly see where the top of the eye widens, it shouldn’t be like that;
And my drop shotting setup;
To the river. As usual I chose sub-optimal conditions to fish for perch, a bright sunny day in the middle of summer but I can’t resist Speen Moors at this time of year. A quick dabble in a shallow flowing swim revealed that, if left to its own devices, the lure resembled a minnow in very good health holding station in the current. Ailments had to be induced by me and that’s when the limitations of mono and the rod became apparent. When I could see the lure it was easy to make it look unwell but in deeper swims it was more difficult, at best I probably induced a common cold. I couldn’t feel what was going on and was continually lifting the lead by mistake, whilst this might be a valid drop shotting tactic I’d like to have known when I was doing it.
The first banker perch swim produced nothing (it’s off the list now), the second took me over a very wobbly bridge and through some dense undergrowth. It was worth it though, no sooner had I dropped the lead/lure into the water than something made off with it. It really was that quick and I can only conclude that a proper dying minnow must make a headlong dive into the river bed just before meeting its maker. The culprit was a nice perch of 1lb 9oz;
My first perch using this method and a decent one at that. The joy was tainted somewhat by the hole left in the fish’s mouth, it’d been hooked right through the upper bony bit of the mouth just behind the top lip and I think the hole had been enlarged by the struggle.
Swim three was a large weirpool where I could fish the slacks close to the bank. I thought this would give me a chance of working the lure but again the first perch took it on the drop, it was a small one and I was surprised that it managed to get the hook in its mouth at all. His buddies were more cautious and took some persuading but I did tempt a couple more tiddlers by gently lifting and lowering the rod to make the lure move. Those bites weren’t obvious though, I thought they’d be energetic takes but that wasn’t the case, I lifted the rod and felt a bit of a wriggle.
The day went well really and the method was great fun. There’s no need for bait so it can be a grab’n’go method or something to supplement trotting when a swim looks promising. On today’s experience I’d say a braided mainline is essential, perhaps a drop shotting rod too but I’ll try a few more times before deciding on that.
And do those hooks have to be so large?
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