Winter Tips: Slipshotting
The three big rigs used by sinker bouncers these days are:
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The Dropshot Rig. Excels in a relatively deep, relatively open water environment, and is at its best with a near-vertical, often light tackle presentation.
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The Carolina Rig. Comes into its own in a horizontal, often heavy tackle presentation as the sinker plows a path across bottom as it bumps and bounces its way back to you.
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The Texas Rig. Seems right as rain in medium to heavy cover with medium to heavy tackle.
Nary a soul slings a slipshot rig these days. There's a chance you may not have heard of one (or you may think it's a typo but no, I don't mean "splitshot" rig).
The Slipshot Rig unites the best features of the dropshot, the Carolina and Texas rig into a single rig as follows:
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Like the dropshot rig, the slipshot excels in a relatively deep, vertical presentation.
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Akin to the Carolina rig, the Slipshot uses a loose, sliding sinker on the main line above a swivel. The bait dangles below on a length of leader tied to the swivel.
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Same as the Texas rig, the slipshot is right at home in medium to heavy cover.
Slipshot Component Parts
I find the best slipshot sinker shape is a thin pencil lead type - the thinner the better - with a line-hole bored dead-center down its length, to thread the line through one end, out the other. I call these "in-line" sinkers since they operate straight in line with your fishing line.
In-line slipshot sinkers ranging from 1/4 to 3/4 oz.
A bright plastic bead is always an important component of a slipshot rig to me. A bright bead helps trigger several instincts in bass:
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It beckons to small bait-sized fish which peck at the bead. This can cause a cloud of small fish hovering about your rig, tugging on the bead. So you're presenting a school of small fish to the bass along with your bait. Talk about matching the hatch!
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Second, the small fish's actions signal to the bass that food is in the area. The small fish validate that something worth eating has entered the cover you've targeting with the slipshot rig.
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Third, it fires the bass's competitive instinct to feed while the feeding's good.
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It infuriates a bass that smaller fish will brazenly feed in front of it. That invokes a pecking order response strike from the bass. Whether it is a bush, a tree, sunken log, a small patch of bottom that you're targeting, the bass considers that turf and everything on it to be its own private property. There may be resident food living within the safe confines of the cover, plus food burrowed snugly into the bottom at the base of the cover, and there will be transient food - pelagics like shad - stopping in to use the cover as a temporary rest spot before moving on. The resident and transient bait traffic's the reason why the bass is holding there. The bass is running an inn - the "Baits Motel", offering lodging to its guests, and discreetly eating those who can't pay the rent. It doesn't want other fish, especially smaller ones, upsetting the apple cart by driving away or eating its food. So when the small fry start pecking at the bead, the bass is going to try to restore order, often belting your bait in the process. It's out of the ordinary and doesn't belong there anyway.
Imagine all that firepower just from a little bead, eh? That's why I use one.
Wireguard Hooks for Wacky Rigging
In order to fish down through vertical cover (trees, deep brush, boathouses, etc) or to hover vertically barely above any irregular bottom patches, rocks, ledges or depth breaks that show on the graph, I often wacky rig a soft bait on a short hook with a good wireguard to make it snagless. This is my preferred way to suspend a bait in front of sluggish winter fish holding directly above, within or nestled underneath whatever form of cover or depth break shows up on the graph.
Spread the wireguard far out wide to the sides to get the most snag deflection and protection.
As long as you have 20 feet of stained water or 25+ feet of clear water, you can fish vertically right under the boat, slipshotting whatever appears interesting on the graph. Likely prospects for the slipshot rig include any deep cover whatsoever. Winter fish will hold tight to anything hospitable. That may be flooded timber, flooded brush, submerged weeds, treelines, weedlines, brushlines, brushpiles, rockpiles, humps, rough patches of bottom or anything irregular that scrolls across the graph.
With the slipshot, you're often fishing vertically directly over, within or down through whatever cover or depth breaks appear on the graph.
As the boat is positioned above the target, the wacky slipshot rig is lowered and when it gets within the strike zone, I like to strip arm lengths of line off the reel so that the slipshot rig descends in a stop-and-go falling fashion, with short pauses between every few strips. What I mean by the "strike zone" (or line-stripping zone) is the section of the water column which may have fish holding in it. For example, the strike zone could begin, and I could start stripping arm lengths of line, right under the surface in a crown of a 25 foot tall tree that stands in 20 foot of water. In another case, where 10 foot high flooded scrub brush stands in 20 feet of water, the strike zone starts about ten feet down, where the crowns of the brush begin. The stripping approach is a little remindful of legendary trophy bass hunter Bill Murphy's "stitching" retrieve if you've heard of that, except I'm hand-stripping line, usually slowly, to vertically lower the slipshot rig, pausing often. I re-engage the reel each time I make a stop to pause, in case I need to make a hookset.
What I call this hand-stripping (and pausing between every strip or two) is making "elevator stops" and you can hand-strip quickly (creating a semi-loose line fall) or slowly (causing a semi-tight line fall). The colder the water, the slower you go. Pausing at appropriate intervals is most likely when you'll get bit - or as soon as you start the next line strip after a pause. You can swish, bounce or jiggle the rod tip briefly during a pause - but just deadsticking can prove best of all. Once a few fish tell you what they want, it usually sets a pattern for the day, meaning that most all fish will want the identical presentation repeated and react the same way on the same day. Mostly slow and easy with little or no action is quite appealing to winter bass.
I'll do the same thing on the way up - make elevator stops - by raising the rod tip high (not reeling in) in order to lift the slipshot rig up a few feet (about an arm length), and then reeling in line as I lower the rod tip back down to water level. This causes a stop-and-go retrieve with faltering movement punctuated by elevator stops to pause so the bait suspends there on its way up through the strike zone within vertical cover.
On clean bottom breaks, I simply raise and lower the rod a few times, so the bait lifts and falls back to bottom. If I mark suspended fish holding above a sharp bottom break, I'll try to make an "elevator stop" to vertically suspend the dangling bait right at their level.
What I call "kissing the bottom" means suspending the sinker barely above bottom, so that only the trailing bait hits bottom (without the sinker actually touching down). That tactic is extremely snagless even over very rough, irregular bottom. Kissing the bottom can probe sticky spots that eat dropshot, Carolina or Texas rigs alive. With the sinker suspended, it can't easily wedge into a crack or roll under bottom debris, and with the line straight up and down, the line itself doesn't lay draped over rocks. Sometimes with a Texas or Carolina rig, it's the line laying on bottom - not the sinker or bait - that gets caught under a snag first, and then the business end is pulled forward into the snag that the line started. With the slipshot suspended vertically, there's less chance for the line or anything to get wedged anywhere.
Even though you may be in vertical cover (emergent trees, flooded brush, right alongside boathouses or deepwater docks, bridge abutments or whatever else - keep in mind most bites are going to occur on or close to the bottom. Once you reach bottom with the slipshot sinker, you need to keep within constant contact with the bottom and keep the sinker within a leader's length of the bottom. Even fishing trees or tall brush, many bites will occur at the very base of a tree or bush where the trunk meets the bottom - or fish will be hunkered underneath the spread-out canopy of the lowest-lying limbs. So keeping within leader length of the bottom with the slipshot sinker is often paramount to success. No one's 100% perfect at doing that. You just need to keep lowering the rod tip, tapping down and then raising up a tiny bit so the sinker suspends. Always remember that laying the rig, sinker and all, right on bottom gets lots of bites. Some days you can't beat that.
Being too high off bottom is often the worst place to be in winter. Laying or dragging on bottom is often better than being suspended too high above it - but the true knack and art of the slipshot rig is to have the sinker vertically suspended barely above bottom or suspended within thick cover, and the bait shifting and waffling around freely below it.
Slipshot sinker will hang vertically perfectly in line as the 3" wacky Fat Senko (shown above) will dangle suspended below it. To make a slipshot rig, you don't need a lot of leader length - about 12 to 18 inches - and a small yet sturdy barrel swivel.
With the wireguard hook, the wacky bait is quite snagless, even when it's suspended down between many branches alongside a standing tree trunk. The thin sinker will hang vertically on the line, straight in line with your fishing line, so it is the most snagless sinker style for this suspending kind of stop-and-go presentation within vertical cover.
Wire Corkscrew Hooks to Texas Rig
We've discussed wacky slipshot rigging so far. Now let's look at slipshotting with a Texas-rigged bait. First off, hooks with wire corkscrews attached to the eye are the best style hooks to Texas rig soft baits today. I can't stress that enough.
With the short 12-18" leader and the proper size hook (meaning smallest practical to reduce hook weight, thereby enhancing bait action), the slipshot rig gives a flighty, wavering movement to a stick-like Senko bait trailing behind. Best of all, as it drops off a sharp ledge, off the top of a rock or is lowered down through a bush or tree, the slipshot rig imparts the coolest dying flutter of a mortally-wounded baitfish that's lost all control as the hapless Senko careens to the bottom in a zigzag tailspin. It imitates a shad or other critter suffering from winter-kill.
Often a slow and easy presentation works best. Occasionally, a ripping or jigging action - a "lift and drop" or using it like a blade bait or spoon - can trigger strikes. The beauty is, even in a bush or tree, the wire corkscrew in the head is going to hold the soft bait firmly in place so the bait won't ball up when you rip it, even if it bounces off a limb. With a standard offset shank hook, the bent kink in the neck just can't grip the bait firmly enough to prevent the bait from balling up in heavy cover. On the other hand, with the wire corkscrew keeper hook, you don't have that problem. The bait's going to stay in place far better on the corkscrew keeper, even when it's worked up and down with a lift-and-fall tactic in grabby cover.
Shown here is a 4" Senko on a 2/0 Owner TwistLock hook.
When you lift it, that 4" Senko just flits and darts all over behind the slipshot rig. Lifting it above bottom structure - or lifting it through the limbs of a bush or tree - definitely attracts these winter bass just like jigging a blade bait or spoon. They'll belt the bait as it flip-flops or tailspins recklessly on the fall - or whack it after the bait has settled back to bottom or suspends motionless in mid-cover during the pause. You're actually working the slipshot rig like a vertical, suspending jerkbait - and we all know how effective suspending jerkbaits can be on winter bass. Remember, most takers wait for the pause - and you may not even know they're on there until the next time you go to lift the bait.
Drop the whole works into an empty bag and douse everything with a liquid attractor from time to time.
To conclude, bass use a lot of vertical cover in relatively deep water in winter. It may be flooded natural cover like standing trees, scrub brush, aquatic weed lines, large singular rocks, rock piles, bluff walls or just rough patches of bottom that provide habitat for bottom-dwelling bait that a bass can subsist on for the winter. Fish stick tight to man-made vertical cover in winter too - pilings, deep docks, bridge stanchions, boat houses, dam rip rap or whatever it is, if you're able to fish it vertically, give the arcane slipshot rig a try. It's not known or understood by very many, except for us few now.