Focus On Rock For Winter Dropshotting

By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor

Dropshotting is a technique that will catch fish year-round and in a wide variety of scenarios. It’ll often produce a bite or two when seemingly nothing else will.

MLF Bass Pro Tour competitor Josh Bertrand is one of the best at employing the tactic (weight at the bottom of the terminal-tackle setup with the hook and plastic bait fluttering farther up the line) that originated in Japan before making its way to the West Coast, and then proliferating across the country. It’s been responsible for a good percentage of the paychecks the 2022 U.S. Open champion has collected across his 12-year tour-level career.

It's an excellent wintertime option when bass are inactive in their chilly environs, and Bertrand has a few suggestions for using it in that scenario.

The Hard Stuff Rocks

If the lake, reservoir or river you’re fishing has rocky cover, that’s the first place to visit to run a wintertime dropshot program. The shad that bass chase around during the warmer months are likely dormant and the primary forage has switched to crawfish – and crawfish make their living in rocks.

Depths can vary quite a bit – from 10 to 20 feet down to 40 or 50. A lot depends on the clarity of the water and what’s going on in that fishery at that particular time in terms of the overall biomass.

Small to medium-sized rock (up to about softball diameter) is often best.

“A lot of times if the rocks are too big, the crawfish don’t want to be there,” Bertrand said. “The smaller rocks are easier to fish – the big ones are a lot snaggier.”

Electronics, or course, are a big part of this program. Bertrand runs Garmin graphs and uses Side Imaging to locate rocks and DownScan to pinpoint fish.

In regard to bait presentation, patience is paramount.

“In the summertime, a huge percentage of dropshot bites come from the fish seeing the bait fall, it hits the bottom and then the fish (immediately) picks it up,” he said. “You close your bail and go to pick up the slack, and you’ve got a fish on.

“In winter, that rarely happens. The fish are close to the bottom and they’re not necessarily looking up; they’re down there rooting around in the rocks for crawfish.”

You should painstakingly drag your bait a lot more than you shake it, and dead-sticking it much of the time can pay off handsomely.

“One thing about dead-sticking with LiveScope that’s so great is that you know when you’re around fish a lot of the times,” he said. “You see the fish and you present the bait, and because you know you’re in the vicinity of fish, you have the confidence to dead-stick it. That can be very hard to do without knowing that it’s in front of a fish.

“I’ll let it sit for 20 to 30 seconds – it’s hard to go much longer than that – before I finally get that tick.”

The Gear List

Bertrand’s gear consists of his own signature series 6-foot-10 medium-light dropshot rod, a size-30 Abu Garcia Revo SX spinning reel, 8-pound Berkley x5 braid (main line), 6-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon (leader), a size-1 Berkley Fusion19 Dropshot hook and a 1/4-ounce cylindrical weight.

“The rod has a lighter tip, which is really a big deal for feeling the light bites,” he said.

He uses tungsten weights most of the time, but will switch to less-expensive lead if he’s breaking a lot of them off.

In wintertime, he prefers a nose-hooked 4- to 5-inch worm (such as the Berkley PowerBait Bottom Hopper) for a smaller profile and reduced odds of missing bites. He also likes the 3.6-inch Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Flat Worm.

The best cold-water colors vary greatly depending upon location; around his home in Arizona, he goes with mostly brown and green hues at this time of year.

Give ‘Em Time

Bertrand points out that dropshotting is certainly not the only option for mid-winter, but it can be worthwhile to devote most of a winter day to it.

“There could be (time) windows for other things early or late, but on a cold, bluebird, maybe even post-frontal day, it might by the only game in town,” he said. “You might get two big ones cranking in the morning, which is a great bonus, but then you hit a wall and you need to find a way to generate some more bites. This is one of the things that can do it.

“You’re not moving around so much; you’re keying on places that you know have fish, but they’re just not as active as they would be at other times of the year. You’re not expecting a 25-pound bag – you’re trying to generate bites when the fishing’s very difficult.

“You have to give those fish time to be caught.”