MINING DEEP CURRENT FOR PRICELESS BRONZE
the giant props propelling these ships
can actually create artificial feeding
situations.
“You see the big freighters going up
and down the river 15 to 20 times a
day,” Dobson adds. “Over time, the
water they’re moving – pushing it up
toward the bank and then sucking it
back out – creates new scours or
depressions in the sand. Shallow fish,
in particular, use these as current
breaks. But even if you’re fishing the
edge of a deeper shelf, you want to be
up there fishing before the freighter
goes through. The sudden surge in current
displaces gobies and crayfish,
which gets the bass fired up.”
DEEP DRIFTING DILEMMAS
While most days Dobson would certainly
rather tuck his bass boat out of
the wind behind an island and sightfish
a jerkbait around a shallow point –
the tactic he used to lock down Angler
of the Year in 2019 – he admits that in
the summer, the largest concentrations
of 4- and 5-pounders are often munching
gobies in 20 to 40 feet of water.
Some of the better drifts occur on 20-
to 25-foot-deep hard-bottom humps,
shelves or points off islands, surrounded
by 40 feet of water or more. He says
Dave Chong has mastered the longline
Carolina rig with big tungsten weights for
fishing on bottom in deep, fast-moving rivers.
chutes between two humps can also
be key bass zones. Always, current
breaks are the answer, whether it’s the
highest spot on a vast hump or the
eddy behind a single boulder.
“The deal is to start your drift
about 50 to 100 feet upstream from the
front side of the break. You want to
give yourself time to drop the trolling
motor and get your drop-shot, tube or
Ned rig to the bottom. It needs to be
down there before you reach the front
face of the rise. Your bait should crawl
up the drop on the upstream side of
the structure, canvass all the real
estate on top of the hump and then
inch its way back down the drop-off on
the down-current side. You’ll typically
get most of your bites in one of these
three zones. Once you figure it out, you
can pattern fish using similar spots
along other drift locations.
“It usually takes several drifts to
discover all the bass-holding areas, the
sweet spots, and get them punched
into your GPS. My new Lowrance
Ghost trolling motor even lets me tap a
button on my foot pad to log waypoints,
which will be huge. The goal is
to hit all the sweet spots on each drift.
It can be a slow process. Some of the
humps stretch over a mile, but the
juice might lie within 30 yards. Other
PHOTO BY CORY SCHMIDT
times, you never entirely figure out the
perfect drift.”
Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit
angler Grae Buck is a fellow big-water
smallmouth expert. He notes that while
smallmouths typically show up clearly
on electronics, river bass exhibit the
vexing ability to pin themselves to bottom
and elude sonar detection. He also
finds that bass on big rivers tend to
school by size. It’s the reason many
anglers, such as MLF Bass Pro Tour
angler Ott DeFoe, often deploy an
underwater camera while scouting
deep river locations, where the bass
hunker deep among the rocks.
“The Aqua-Vu underwater optics
show the bass clear as day,” DeFoe
says. “It’s given me the confidence to
stay and execute the right drift, angle
and speed to catch 4-pounders.”
Further, in the clear waters of Great
Lakes rivers, anglers often observe
smallmouth bass utilizing the boat’s
shadow for cover and ambush feeding.
“This can be an advantage for coanglers,
because on drifts, their baits
are usually in better position to entice
bites in the boat shadow,” says
Dobson. “It’s another reason I often
prefer shallow patterns over deep drifting
in tournaments. Of course, many
days, particularly with lots of fishing
pressure, the bass won’t bite a vertical
presentation, and you have to get your
bait far away from the boat.”
THE SWEET CAROLINA
Playing a quiet role at the 2019
Toyota Series Northern Division finale
was a traditional bass rig that’s often
overshadowed by the usual drop-shot,
Ned rig and tube jig programs – a
Carolina rig. Nonetheless, many
anglers opted not to go on record
regarding use of a Carolina rig for
deep-current situations.
Fortunately, ace fishing writer and
friend Tim Allard put me in touch with
Canadian tournament hammer Dave
Chong, who competed against top U.S.
pros in the 2019 Pan American Black
Bass Championship on Lake St. Francis,
a pool of the St. Lawrence River. Chong
was happy to divulge the technique that
has produced prodigious bags of bass
in many moving-water derbies.
“I’ve used a heavy-duty version of
the Carolina on the St. Lawrence and
other rivers for around a decade,”
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