During a dozen trips to a new spot, largemouths always bit. Big ones. Well, for mid-Minnesota. Something over 4 pounds, at least. And they bit on a variety of techniques, indicating they might be a tad untutored. So it became The Spot for a time. It had all the makings.

A spot could be a lake. It could be an area within a lake. It could be a specific piece of structure, or the spot-on-the-spot on a piece of structure. The Spot was more of the latter, only slightly more defined. Rather than a spot-on-the-spot, it’s more of a spot-off-the-spot-on-the-spot. Such spots exist by steadfast laws. Law One: Spot will fail when least convenient. I took a friend fishing for the first time, decided to share The Spot, and the bass, of course, wouldn’t bite. I knew the rest of the lake was good, with some other likely spots, but nothing like this one.

I turned off the electronics and pulled out the anchor. To my friend’s frown, I announced, “The bass are here. We could go all around the lake and have the same thing happen. So we’re going to deadstick a prime spot until you can’t take it any more. Then we’ll get a burger.” He was sold, but obviously puzzled. In his mind, bass equate with reelin’ and dealin’ spinnerbaits, cranks, and topwaters.

But where to deadstick? If the lure is just sitting on bottom for long periods of time, it has to be in the right spot. When you know an area well, the decision-making process is simple: Drop the bait into the thickest cover in the smallest area producing the largest number of fish in recent weeks. Whether bass on The Spot were driven off the bite by conditions like changes in barometric pressure, a big wind event, or intense fishing pressure doesn’t matter. Some largemouths always seem to bury themselves in the weeds on the same key spot where they’ve been feeding heavily in recent days.

We positioned the boat to cast downwind and anchored, so the wind wouldn’t pick up our lines and move the baits. We rigged Texas-style with Berkley Power Craws and no weight. Scent-impregnated plastics and scent products are right for deadsticking. After shape, size, and color, scent and taste are the only attractors left when the bait sits still, on bottom, for as long as it takes. And it took about ten minutes and six comments about burgers before one of our lines began to trail off to the side. It was slow, tedious, and meticulous angling, and we had to reposition the boat a few times; but we put several 4-pound largemouths in the boat that day.

Some anglers deadstick more often than they realize. Most of us fish plastics in some kind of twitch-pause fashion. When the bait is moved and the fish is already on it, do the bass react to the plastic only after it sits still on bottom for a few moments? The only way to know for certain is to deadstick on purpose. The question is: How long? Depends on conditions. In cold water and after cold fronts, when bass are less active, the bait can’t be left sitting too long. In cool or warm water, facing active bass, a few seconds might be all it takes.

Nothing is the word. The arm, the rod, and the lure do nothing. If that’s all there is to deadsticking, strapping on your equipment and pointing yourself downhill is all you need to know about skiing. While the tactic is pretty much a do-nothing enterprise, the real key to deadsticking is ultimate location. Sometimes that means knowing the spot-on-the-spot, and sometimes it means knowing a general area. Delivery boys who can’t hit the doorstep with a newspaper rarely get tipped. Deadsticking in summer is all about putting the paper on the porch.

L is for Location

The ultimate spot-on-the-spot is located over time. It doesn’t jump off the contour map for you, contrary to the assertions of most early explorers of structure fishing. You have to find these spots. In many cases, if you don’t know a spot really well, you may have a tough time deadsticking plastics there.

The largest boulder right on the outer tip of a complex of shallow shelves and reefs (a classic spot) consistently attracts smallmouths, but chances are good that it’s not the ultimate spot-on-the-spot. The deepest cabbage near the sharpest drop into the deepest water may consistently produce largemouths, but it’s equally probable most bass accumulate elsewhere most of the time. Get to know these spots and invariably it seems some isolated boulder near the middle of that shallow complex of rock flats and reefs has a pile of smallmouths around it every time the weather is stable. And well inside that cabbage line, mostly hidden under the weedgrowth, you might find an old log, pier piling, or sunken rowboat that typically outproduces the area that structure specialists would point to as the classic spot-on-the-spot. They might say structure ultimately led fish to this cover, but that simply isn’t so in all cases. The literature on structure isn’t wrong, it’s just not perfect. And no locational theory can be perfect. Fish are living things that adapt to change, forcing us to find more working theories.

One of the things they adapt to is fishing pressure. Deadsticking is, partially, a tactical response to the effects of fishing pressure. When fish stop biting moving lures, fishing pressure could be the reason. A straight-shafted spinner, deadly for smallmouths, is also a staple among steelhead anglers. After months of pressure, when river steelhead stop biting spinners on the swing, they sometimes swim up and pluck one that’s left sitting on bottom. Most steelheaders find the thought appalling, but there it is. When big trout or bass see a flashy minnow imitation glide to bottom and stop, curiosity takes over. Move the bait and curiosity can give way to wariness.

Fishing pressure is the sociological factor that leads us down this do-nothing path, but it ultimately helps us pinpoint bass. A pressured smallmouth, for instance, can be active and feeding, but may stay on the edge and rarely use the top of a shallow reef. A tube fished weightless or with a 1/16-ounce jig can be methodically presented around the edge of a reef and left to sit on bottom periodically. During summer on an unfamiliar but heavily pressured lake, when largemouths don’t seem to be biting at all, I try to focus on a small area that provides everything a bass might need (deep and shallow cover with access to deep water) and deadstick plastics from the deep weededge to the bank, concentrating on cups and inside turns in the weedline to start, and on the thickest clumps of weeds and slop. Pressured bass may not be buried in the heaviest cover, as they would be after a cold front, but they associate quite closely with it.

Deadsticking is the right response to certain environmental factors, too, like cold fronts and cold water, conditions which also point to location. Smallmouths do differ slightly from largemouths when reacting to cold fronts. Largemouths may just bury themselves in the weeds, and it is classic to find them hunkered down in the thickest clumps of cabbage, coontail, milfoil, or hydrilla, often near cups and gaps in a weedline. Smallmouths move off the tops of shallow structures to position at the base of these spots.

Smallmouths like to nestle into crevices, slots, overhangs, and cuts at the foot of a sharp drop. After a cold front, find the steepest drops off the structures producing the hottest bites and concentrate on depths of 10 to 20 feet (or even deeper in the Great Lakes and many reservoirs). Both species like to tuck in after a front, but deadsticking the spot-on-the-spot may work only for largemouths during post-frontal conditions. Smallmouths may tuck into dense woodcover or weeds in shallow environments, but otherwise they tend to leave the spot-on-the-spot just before a severe change in barometric pressure occurs.

When the water is cold or cool, somewhere between 38°F and 54°F, deadsticking should always be considered an option for bass, even in the most stable conditions. And, when conditions are stable, deadsticking can be carried out at a slightly faster pace by fancasting and leaving the bait on bottom for 10 to 30 seconds or so before moving it and letting it settle again, after bass have already dispersed on shallow flats in spring.

This does cover water, albeit slowly. Rip the plastic quite high off bottom in spring, moving it 3 to 6 feet, letting it drop from a higher vantage, giving bass another chance to see it. When water temperatures dip below 50°F in fall, however, it’s often best to pick a spot and leave a plastic bait on bottom without moving it for longer periods of time. When no bass are biting at all, finding the right spot can be a chore. During Prespawn and again during fall, when some bass are biting, or biting and missing the hook, your target area is identified. It should be combed thoroughly then revisited with a deadsticking approach.

The biggest largemouths and smallmouths in the systems you fish respond to deadstick tactics during the cold-water periods surrounding ice-out and ice-up. Prespawn bass have routes they follow toward spawning habitat every year. To know those routes, you have to know the system. In fall, bass tend to move to the same areas to winter. Those areas, somewhat easily defined, become perfect targets for deadsticking. The spot-on-the-spot is less important, as bass tend to cruise a lot, though some precise spots consistently produce the most bites.

Presentation seldom needs to be as precise as it does in summer, however, when bass often crush together in tiny spots under the canopy of the thickest clump of weeds available. Largemouths may winter shallower during mild winters than during harsh ones, staying in the vicinity of green weedlines, but they tend to use the same general areas every winter. Smallmouths tend to use the same depths and spots every winter.

Universal Deadstick Tools

Deadstick tackle includes every bass rod you use for presenting plastics, jigs, and more. Gear can range from medium-light spinning to heavy casting. Just match tackle to the package being presented, and to the available cover. I often deadstick tubes for smallmouths with 6-pound monofilament or 8-pound fluorocarbon on a medium-light spinning rod, but I may deadstick football heads or flukes on 10- to 15-pound lines with medium- to medium-heavy casting rods.

When situations suggest deadsticking, I consider a relatively short list of plastic baits. Sticks, which would include the YUM Dinger, Lunker City Slug-Go, Yamamoto Senko, and any similar baits, often come to mind first. Cigar baits, like Dingers, are especially deadly. They fall horizontally, slowly, and wobble on the drop. A tube is a great choice for both species, too. Thin ones, like the Berkley Power Tube, tend to work best in open to rocky areas for smallmouths, while thicker versions shine in heavier cover for largemouths.

Plastic worms were the original tools of choice for cutting-edge anglers who were deadsticking plastics back in the 1970s, ahead of their time. Again, match the plastic to the cover being fished. A finesse worm like the YUM Houdini is right for sand bottoms and light cover most of the time, while a thicker, tougher worm, such as any in the Culprit lineup, match up better with thick weeds, dense slop, or woodcover. In dense cover, it may be necessary to plummet through quickly with 1-ounce or heavier jigs and sinkers in order to reach bottom where the fish are before leaving it on bottom, but a slow fall is best whenever possible.

All those mimics of the original Zoom Fluke are naturals for deadsticking. The slow, turning, gliding fall of a soft jerkbait potentially leads more fish to the bait after it nestles into the bottom, giving them a better chance of finding it. The slower a plastic bait falls, the more time bass have to see it drop. Leaving a scent trail can be important when the bottom is cluttered or weedy, too. If the bait isn’t impregnated with scent, I like to add Blue Fox Dr. Juice or Nitro Crave to create an olfactory pointer.

Craw and lizard imitations are favorite standbys, the added surface area generally slowing the drop. Creature baits, with all their added appendages, are good choices for the same reason.

Dead-Rigging

Deadstick tackle is any tackle presenting anything that might trigger a response by sitting still on bottom, nestled onto a clump of weeds or suspending in the middle of the water column (deadsticking with suspending minnowbaits can be phenomenally successful during prespawn for both species, but the bait must be tuned to suspend for long periods of time). Rigging is basically the same for all these options as it would be when fishing baits actively, but the choice of rigging can be critical.

Sometimes less active or spooky bass prefer a wacky-rigged plastic over a Texas-rigged version when the bait is left on bottom for long periods. Sometimes not. And cover often dictates which option is efficient enough to truly succeed. Both methods of rigging have advantages. A wacky rig falls slowly and flaps at both ends on the drop, the vibration and motion serving to alert more bass. But, when fishing around dense weeds, an offset hook buried back into the plastic keeps fishing longer without fouling.

The most overlooked rigging option for shallow deadsticking involves a strike indicator. On windy days, it can be difficult to distinguish between a bite and wind, or waves breaking on the line. When fishing a spot 5 feet deep, put a small clip-on or sliding-fixed bobber on the line 8 feet above the lure, or far enough to allow the lure to stay on bottom without being influenced by up-and-down wave action. A small float also pinpoints where your lure is in relation to a weedline, boulder, log, dock, or any other visible cover.

Deadsticking a jig works wonders with inactive or spooky bass. It also works well in cold water for relatively active bass. When water temperatures drop below 40°F in river systems, I often walk football head-grub combos so slowly on bottom that each retrieve takes 7 to 10 minutes. Much of that time is spent deadsticking the package. Skirted brush-guard jigs tipped with a plastic craw or pork frog sometimes trigger best when left sitting still on bottom for long periods of time during the Cool- and Coldwater Periods of the year. Rattles are a good addition, here, as the jig can be jiggled and rattled in place periodically to help bass locate it in dark water or on dark days.

Actually, almost anything can be presented this way. When bass follow and bump a jig-grub combo without eating it, I often let it fall to bottom and leave it there. Leave a lure out there when running to net fish for somebody in the back of the boat. Smallmouths often pluck jig-plastic combinations off bottom, and have the jig when I pick the rod up again. Letting a jigworm sit on bottom works consistently well with largemouths. Something about a lure that glides to bottom and stays there can arouse curiosity or predatory instincts in all species of bass.

Finding the right spot can be easy or hard, but the technique is always simple. To deadstick a piece of plastic, just cast, allow it to sink to bottom, point the rod tip at the bait, leaving enough slack line so bass can’t feel anything until the bait is completely engulfed, but not so much slack that bites go unnoticed. Let it be. If the location is right, bites will come.