# Lake Lanier drop shot lesson... (Out of the area)



## WannaBay (Dec 2, 2015)

After a couple of trips with very limited success on Lake Lanier, I had a buddy take me out in his boat (sicfish and I on the same page here) to show me how he works the drop shot for spotted bass... I learned a lot just from seeing how someone else does it.
He had many brush piles marked on his GPS map that were mostly along underwater ridgelines and humps in the lake. As he approached each one, off went the main motor and down went to trolling motor. He had a separate FF on the front of the boat with the transducer on the trolling motor. We monitored the screen until we noticed the brush pile coming into view, and dropped straight into it with our drop shot rigs. We could see our baits going down and back up, and also fish marks following down and back up. He wouldn't spend very much time at each pile, either a fish hit fairly quickly or we moved on... 

Things I learned:
Of the dozens and dozens of brush piles he had marked on his GPS, we only targeted ones within a certain depth range (deeper as the summer and the water get hotter), right now about 15 - 30 feet. 
The lure (a small fluke or straight bodied finesse worm )goes 18 inches above the drop shot weight at the end of the line. Not two feet or 3 feet...
The angler induced action on the bait requires lifting the drop shot wieght 2 to 4 inches off the bottom, not two to four feet...

I hear, and I forget. 
I see, and I remember. 
I do, and I understand.
... Confucius

Questions I still have:
Since we spent the first couple of hours of daylight fishing topwater before we went to the drop shot, is this best during the later morning after the top water bite goes away,? Or could we go right to the drop shot first thing in the morning? Maybe the fish gravitate back to the brush piles after the morning topwater bite???
Since I only have one FF on the boat and the transducer is in the rear (I usually pivot the machine around on my center console so I can see it from the nose of the boat when I am fishing), will I be able to back my boat over the brush pile backwards and then drop on the brush pile, or is my GPS accurate enough to just drop when the GPS says I am there, without counting on the returns from sonar???
I guess the only way to find out is to get out there and 'beat the brush' until I find out... other homework will consist of riding around and finding and marking dozens of brush piles with my side scan.

Fish on! - Wannabay

PS- thanks to my teacher and those before who taught him. May the circle be unbroken!


I am 6'3", nearly 260 pounds. This was a FUN fish on 6-pound test...


----------



## Jason (Oct 2, 2007)

That pattern on the bass is beautiful.....good job learning a new trick. Seen it before, but ain't done it....


----------



## jcoss15 (Oct 11, 2010)

Awesome fish, I have done a little drop shotting on Logan Martin with some success, great technique!


----------



## Bodupp (Oct 3, 2007)

Beautiful spotted bass. Does your buddy ever get a striper surprise when drop-shotting a fluke?


----------



## GatorBane (Jan 11, 2010)

Just curious about tail damage. Looks like that fish recently spawned. Beautiful!


----------



## WannaBay (Dec 2, 2015)

Yes, the striper surprise is always a possibility. Probably mainly in the early fishing topwater on the points... not sure about the flukes on the drop shot rig, but flukes are common bait for them in the spring and fall...
I'm thinking about trying this technique with live bait. But I'm thinking it would not be a surprise to catch striper then!


----------



## BananaTom (Feb 16, 2008)

Nice looking "Green Fish", as the Pros call it on Lake Lanier.

It is nice that I know what your lake looks like now.

That Saturday after we fished with you, we rented a deck boat that holds ten, and spent the day joy riding that lake.

See ya.


----------



## SurfRidr (Apr 24, 2012)

Nice spot! I just moved here, grew up in the Tarheel State. My setup is like yours and my cc and the type of bow-mount troller I have do not make it easy to mount a front transducer, so I've been doing it the same way you are now. The lake I fished back in North Carolina (Belews Creek) from October through March had spots in it in addition to LMB. I have been told it's got some similarities to Lake Lanier. Spent a bit of time drop shotting at that lake. 

Yes, you can do it with your current system, but it's tougher. Backing over the brush and fishing off the stern is one option (which is what I usually end up doing). The other is to drop a buoy off the front when you see the brush coming into view in the back, and either drop another one in the same line to mark the trajectory or take a bearing on a shoreline landmark to get the right lineup and pull back and cast to the brush from your buoy. The downside of course is having to deploy and retrieve the buoy, and you don't want the weight to drop right into your strike zone. 

I know guys that are good at drop-shotting and do well with it - I do pretty well on spots with a carolina rigged trick worm or a finesse shakey head with a skinny worm like a Zoom Swamp Crawler or finesse worm. The other thing I like is using basically the same technique with a small rattle trap or red-eye shad lipless crank, or a jigging spoon.

Thanks for the write-up!


----------



## Bodupp (Oct 3, 2007)

Here I go giving up my secrets again...

An excellent spotted bass lure for clear lakes such as Lanier, Smith Lake, or Lake Martin, is a 3" smoke-colored curlytail grub on a 1/8 oz jighead using 6# line. It is _very important_ that the grub has a small "wrist" - that is, where the grub body meets the curly tail. This allows the tail to "activate" at very slow speeds, such as when the bait is falling in a pendulum motion. 1/4 oz heads fall too fast and 1/16 oz heads aren't heavy enough to activate the tail.

Cast out, let it fall to the desired depth (watching the line, of course), then retrieve slow to medium - ideally just fast enough to let the tail kick.

Whenever I was fishing back-of-the boat, I could aggravate the crap out of the guy in the front of the boat using this technique.


----------



## Try'n Hard (Oct 23, 2008)

Bodupp said:


> Here I go giving up my secrets again...
> 
> An excellent spotted bass lure for clear lakes such as Lanier, Smith Lake, or Lake Martin, is a 3" smoke-colored curlytail grub on a 1/8 oz jighead using 6# line. It is _very important_ that the grub has a small "wrist" - that is, where the grub body meets the curly tail. This allows the tail to "activate" at very slow speeds, such as when the bait is falling in a pendulum motion. 1/4 oz heads fall too fast and 1/16 oz heads aren't heavy enough to activate the tail.
> 
> ...


Really good advice especially the part about the speed / fall and the "pendulum" motion - You have to be able to twist your mind into a side view to be able to picture the fall of a bait. Understanding the water drag of the tight line vs the water drag of a slack line and learning to watch and read the point where the line enters the water graduates you into the category of advanced fishing secrets for sure!


----------



## WannaBay (Dec 2, 2015)

I appreciate the advice, guys. I haven't been much of a bass fisherman since I moved in from the countryside to the big suburbs. When I was much younger, (back in the days of Jimmy Houston haircuts!), I used to fish small water pretty successfully. But I couldn't stand bass fishing and listening to turkeys gobble, so I took up turkey hunting in the spring. Then when I moved to the Burbs, I only had access to large and impoudments and public waters. It is a tough transition. With a little taste of success, I could see myself actually bass fishing more often... my inshore saltwater addiction is what got me hooked on fishing again, and I thought that the freshwater fishing was just a poor substitute for when I couldn't go all the way south! But success breeds success. 
Somebody stop me before I buy a glitter boat!




Wayback - early nineties?


----------

