Dock Finesse
The water is slick. The sun is bright and hot. The clouds overhead do
not exist. The wind is scarce.
This is a classic and daunting summertime scene, and it’s what FLW Outdoors Magazine creative director Brian Lindberg and I are welcome to as we pull up to the Gull Lake boat access.
Conditions like this are great for getting a tan, but getting a tan is all a lot of anglers do when put under these conditions. High skies and a shining sun can make the bite tough if you don’t have the right game plan. Luckily, we do.
On a day like this, we aren’t just going to blindly cast around. We’re going to put our lures right on the bass’ noses. Today, precision casting is the name of the game. More precisely, skipping docks.
Skipping soft plastics under docks is a great way to catch bass all summer long. With water temperatures rivaling bath water and the sun glaring, fish instinctively seek out shady areas that provide cooler water, relief from the sun and prime opportunities to ambush prey. On a lake like Gull in Brainerd, Minn., there is no shortage of docks. Long docks, short docks, wide docks, skinny docks – you want a type and Gull has it, and the bass take advantage of it. However, with so many docks it’s almost impossible to hit them all. Luckily, bass prefer docks that are adjacent to deep water as they allow for easy access to better oxygen levels and food if none can be found up shallow. Focus your efforts on deep docks, and continue to hone from there, as certain docks will be better due to cover, structure or various other factors, such as inactivity. By inactivity, I mean ones that don’t get many swimmers, boaters, jet skiers, etc. The longer a dock remains “inactive,” the more and bigger fish will be underneath it.
So how do you go about catching these fish? With small, finesse lures,
such as a 4-inch stickbait rigged wacky-style or weightless. In conditions like this, with the fish often not actively looking to feed, fishing docks means fishing slow and meticulously, and few lures do that better than a finesse worm slowly drifting toward the bottom.
When fishing docks, you have to remember that the fish could be absolutely anywhere underneath it. However, there are certain spots that tend to hold and congregate bass more than others. For example, the far back corners of the dock tend to hold fish more than the front of the dock because most fishermen only get their lures on the front end and then move on. If a dock has multiple platforms, the platform in back will tend to have more and bigger fish on it for the same reason.
In order to access these fish under docks and get them to bite, you need to be a great precision caster. You can not just cast your wacky rig on the front post of the dock and call it good enough. You need to be able to get your lure to go as far to the back of the dock as possible. The farther back it is, the better chance you have of getting bit. This requires skip casts.
Luckily, stickbaits are some of the easiest lures to skip across the water, Though even they require practice. Don’t be ashamed to start off in the middle of the lake to practice getting your bait low to the water and skipping it across the surface. Many top pros often make a few practice casts before attacking the first dock. Once you feel comfortable, start skipping docks. However, only pick docks that are your “level.” Clanging docks that are too low to the water for your casting ability do you no good. If you can only skip comfortably under a dock with 8 inches of clearance, than only fish those until your become a better caster.
From there, it’s all about hitting as many docks as possible. I can’t remember how many docks we hit that day, but I do remember the more than 45 bass Brian and I landed out from under them. Not bad for a day that looked better for the beach than the lake. Of course, we both still managed to get our tans.