My guest on today’s show is Fredericton hockey great, Danny Grant. Danny was drafted by the Montreal Canadians in 1968 and played 22 regular season games and 10 playoff games, helping them to win the Stanley Cup. The following year he went to Minnesota and played a full season winning the Calder Cup for Rookie of the Year. Not to many guys have won the cup and then won Rookie of the Year the following year. It was a great story. Danny was also only the 12th player at the time to have a 50 goal season. He had some great stories to share and to top it all off the city of Fredericton has named the new arena after Danny and his good friend Buster Harvey.
Danny likes to fly fish but it sure didn’t take him long to get the feel of the Shimano spinning rod and reel. We worked some shallow water patterns first in an effort to see what the fish were doing. With the exception of a few fish in the weeds outside a stream mouth we never found anything shallow. After a couple of hours of this I went looking in deep water to see if I could find either schools of bait or schools of Smallmouth. I used my Lowrance HDS 8 to find a school of bait bunched up against a rock pile that dropped from 22′ to 27′.
I had a Shimano Cululus 6’10″MLS rod with a 25oo Stradic CI4 reel spooled with 8lb test Seige green Mono with a half ounce weight on the business end. I tried to find Danny something similar and end up rigged him up with one of my old V-Rods in a 7′ medium. My preference for this style of fishing leans towards the medium and medium light action rods. For some reason the fish don’t seem to rocket to the surface when you set the hook. With the heavier rods they seem to come up like a missile and a lot of the time they will throw the hook.
I put the trolling motor into the water and turned the front Lowrance unit on and then explained to Danny that all he had to do was let the sinker go to the bottom until the line when slack and then take a turn of the handle to put tension on the line. With the sinker on the bottom the bait is hovering above it at whatever depth you tie it on. In our case I had the hook tied on about fourteen inches above the weight. I turned back to the front of the boat and looked down at the fish finder and saw some bigger fish on the bottom. I told Shawn to turn the camera on and opened the bail on the reel. The weight hit the bottom and as I tightened the line the rod folded over with the first strike. Not to be left out Danny dropped his as well and thirty seconds later we were fighting a double. This was dropshot fishing at it’s very best and we continued to fish like this for the next three hours. Our Producer, Shawn kept count and said we put forty five fish in the boat.
A lot of what you read on Dropshot fishing implies that it is a finesse technique but I have found that in our waters you can be a little more aggressive with your bait. Out water is not gin clear as it is in some areas and I feel that allows some leeway in bait selection. I typically will rig a 3/0 Gamakatsu hook with a Wacky Rig Flutter Worm and put a half ounce weight on the bottom about fourteen inches below the hook. I lower the weight until it hits the bottom and the line goes slack. I then take a turn of the reel handle until the line has tension on it. The weight is now on the bottom and the bait is suspended above it. A gentle shaking of the rod tip keeps the bait moving and the fish will eat it. A lot of the time you will just feel pressure or a gentle bump. Time to set the hook.
Rick Greene
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