By David A. Brown
Special to BassFan
(Editor's Note: In observance of the Thanksgiving holiday, a new First Cast feature story will not appear until Monday, Nov. 27. The BassFan staff would like to wish you all a joyous and relaxing Thanksgiving.)
Ever look closely at Salvador Dali’s famous work “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory”? Funny, I find this oddly connective to the angling notion of time management.
Stay with me on this one; we’re going somewhere quickly.
The Spanish surrealist may have been expressing his interest in nuclear physics; but melting clocks above and below the water’s surface, bricks stacked like smallmouth-friendly boulders, a human face and a prominent fish make me wonder if the mustachioed eccentric didn’t have at least some thought of the topic to which Bassmaster Elite Series pro Jason Christie has devoted much of his thought — controlled drifting.
Art aside, when the clock’s running and time melts quickly, there’s no time to doodle. You gotta find those fish and taming the seemingly random drift with principled directives will define your day.
“When you’re drifting big areas, you have to cover a lot of water and give yourself the best opportunity to find productive spots where you can concentrate,” Christie said. “The key here is covering the water efficiently by controlling your boat’s speed and direction.”
Line it Up
“You control your drift by angles,” Christie said. “On your electronics, you have your trail and your heading extension, which tells you where your boat is pointing and your course extension, which gives you the projected line of where you’re going, regardless of which way the boat is pointing.
“It’s almost like shooting a deer — you want to start above it and then get your course line set up so you’re going to pass over your best area.”
Christie said the combination of course line and trail gives him a visual reference for subsequent drifts.
“You may want to move over 50 or 100 yards and as long as the wind is the same, it’s going to keep you where you’re fishing new water ever time,” Christie said.
Essential to this process is achieving the proper speed, which allows you to monitor what you’re passing while also working a bait effectively. For example, in his Elite Series win on St. Clair in late August, Christie found his sweet zone at 1.1 mph.
“That let me cover a lot of water and let my tube drag along the bottom,” he said. “The maximum I like to fish is 1.8. If it gets over that, I’ll start doing things to control my speed.”
Tubes are a great choice for targeting the spots you identify while drifting.
In the big water, Christie said he only drops his trolling motor to use his Garmin Panoptix transducer mounted to the head. His primary steering comes from angling his Mercury outboard and manipulating his Power-Poles fitted with Drift Paddles.
Be careful with the latter, Christie said, as it doesn’t take much paddle to significantly impact his drift. Adjusting his Power-Pole heights and experimenting with one or both in the water creates impacts ranging from subtle steerage to nearly dead stops.
“What I like most about my Power-Poles is the ability to put just one down,” Christie said. “I’ll put one down if I need to slow down just a little bit and I need that boat to drift sideways. That keeps me from having to fish over the back of the engine; instead, I can fish off the side of the boat.
“Also, that keeps the boat in the trough of the big waves, which keeps my trolling motor in the water at all times and lets me use my electronics in the front.”
See Your Scene
That latter point is one worth highlighting. Simply put, drifting smallmouth waters isn’t like Tennessee River ledge-fishing, where you might idle for 20 minutes and watch the console units until you find a stacked-up turn or drain and then stop to fish it from the bow. Rather, you have to be fishing-and-lookin the whole time, lest you miss that bronzeback bounty.
To this point, Christie’s sold on the top-to-bottom view that Panoptix offers him. For him, it’s all about efficiency, and the more he sees in each drift, the better he can break down water effectively.
“Say you’re drifting in 20 feet, with traditional sonar, your cone angle is usually about the same width as your depth, so you’re covering a 20-foot path,” Christie said. “With Panoptix, you can set that path wherever you want. I set mine for 100 feet on both sides, so I’m covering a path that’s 200 feet wide. When it comes to efficiency, I’m covering 10 times the amount of water that somebody would see with traditional sonar.
The effective use of drift patterns can result in big sacks of smallmouths.
“For perspective, say you’re in a 400,000-acre wheat field and somebody gives you a flashlight with a beam that’s only 10 feet wide, you’re not covering much area. If I have a flashlight with a beam that’s 100 feet wide, I’m seeing much more of that field.”
Specific Objectives
Addressing his drift spacing, Christie offered this perspective: “The decision to move over 50 yards or 250 yards is based on the number of bites I got on a drift. If I go over a drift and catch four to five big ones, I may go over the same drift and if I don’t get bit, I may move 50 yards.”
Notably, Christie said his specific strategy depends on the day’s urgency level.
“Say I’m in practice mode, if I make a drift and I don’t bet bit, I’ll move over 200 yards and then another 200 yards. Once I start getting bit, I start dissecting. I want to make that grid a lot tighter. So, it’s really the difference between search mode – bigger distances between grids – and catch mode where you found them and you’re going make small drifts to really cover that area.”
As far as bait selection, Christie said he likes to crank or cast a spinnerbait — when depth permits — to cover water and then slow down with a tube once he gets bit. The former finds the hot zone; the latter tells him how many are living downstairs.
Another strategy point: Christie typically conducts his big-water smallmouth searches with a combination of his forward-looking Panoptix and traditional 2D sonar. He sets up his electronics to also show him what’s under the back of the boat – in case he attracts any followers. If he spots any trailers – or any following a hooked fish to the top – Christie will toss a waypoint on the spot and circle back to see what was holding those fish.
No two searches are equal, as dynamics of bottom contour, winds and particular fish remain ever unique. Nevertheless, Christie summarizes: “If a guy understands his heading extension, his course-over-ground extension and his speed, it’s really just about getting on that proper line and then letting nature take over.”
