Dropshotting for Perch: Quick Start Guide & Some Slightly Weird Tactics

What is Dropshotting for Perch (and why do it?)

Dropshotting for Perch is a clever finesse method of fishing soft plastic lures. It was originally designed for difficult largemouth bass from high-pressure waters in Japan. The rig allows you a huge degree of control over your lure in terms of action, pace and fishing-depth. The key advantage is it lets you suspend your (sinking) lure at any position in the water-column – even when fished in a static presentation. This can unlock fish that have “got wise” to (or are feeling too lazy to chase) jigs.

Drop Shot Rig for Perch

Aside from down-sizing the hook a bit compared to bass, a drop shot rig for perch can be identical to the original versions for largemouth bass. You just need to account for the smaller mouth of a perch!

The key components are a weight attached at the end of your line (although I’ll cover some clever modern tweaks later in this article…) and a hook attached to your line using a special knot to make it fish “point-up” and perpendicular to your line. Here's how to tie that knot:

For ultimate bite-detection, braided main-line (with its near-zero stretch) is a good choice. A “leader” of fluorocarbon to present your hook and attach your weight completes the basic rig.

Depending on snags, braid in the 13lb – 20lb breaking strain range will see you right. I like a three-foot fluorocarbon trace (usually 10lb breaking strain) attached with an Albright knot to the braid.

Dropshotting for Perch: Reels

When dropshotting for perch, I prefer a fixed-spool reel. As well as being able to cast lighter weights easily over greater range, having a rig that separates the weight from the lure is an important factor:

Reels can be as small as 1000 size and up to around 2500 size (as pictured below) to match the sweet spot in casting weight/bait-sizes for perch.

Dropshotting for Perch: Rods

A rod with a soft, sensitive tip and more backbone further into the blank is ideal for detecting subtle strikes on your lure, while still getting a good hook-set.

You can buy purpose-designed drop-shotting rods (the upper rod pictured above) – and these can actually make good finesse lure rods when fishing other soft plastic rigs too. That can be important to know when your budget is tight. With that said, you can still fish a drop shot from other styles of light lure rods as well.

It is just that, if you're only going to buy one rod for both light lure fishing AND drop shotting for perch - a drop shot rod is probably the most adaptable.

Weight options (See Highlighted Box in Rig Diagram Above)

The first thing to emphasise is that split shot still work! Basically, at a pinch, you ought to be able to scratch around in your kit and find something that will do the job.

Small pear-shaped weights/sinkers with swivel attached (in the 1/8th oz/3.5 g range) were early favourites with bass anglers. Nowadays there are many custom-made drop shot “pencil” weights with line-clips that allow you to move the weight up and down the line to change the fishing depth. That ability to fine-tune the fishing depth really improves your chances of success when dropshotting for perch.

Be careful though – at the very least you need to tie a knot in the end of your leader to help pull those moveable weights clear of snags (otherwise they just slide off the end of your line).

I actually find that the clip design often cuts your line far too easily (and pulling the line through the clip when you do get snagged “pigtails” the fluorocarbon). 

Again, this is another example of the Fishing Discoveries philosophy of cross-pollination between different branches of fishing - so as well as the drop-shotting tactics covered in the section below, you could take back some of the advantages normally guarded by top lure anglers:

Dropshotting for Perch: Presentation Tactics

A major advantage to the drop shot rig is the degree of control over the depth of your lure – regardless of the pace that you fish it. On pressured waters (or days when fish are not aggressive), fishing jigs can be less effective. With a perch jig setup, everything generally moves quite quickly (one reason it is good for searching water).

That quick movement can either be the pace you need to retrieve to keep your lure off a really snaggy riverbed – or simply because of the natural sink-rate of the lure in freefall.

In other words, even when you land the jig on the bottom and “hop” it along, the rise and fall movements of the lure have a certain minimum speed – and that minimum is still fairly fast. When fish are unwilling to chase or strike at fleeing prey, that presentation style isn’t your best bet.

Drop shotting gives you a couple of great alternative presentation “modes”

Semi Static Mode: “Deadsticking”

This is where you cast your lure out to a feature or chosen spot and allow the weight to settle on the bottom. Gently reeling down so that you can feel a light tension between your rod tip and the weight allows you to hold the lure at a particular depth (depending on the angle of your rod tip, as long as you are not fishing directly above your rig – from a boat or platform).

The deadsticking tactic (pictured above) is where you gently waggle your rod (often side to side or sometimes up and down) so that the lure wriggles attractively on the spot. If you make the movements small enough, the weight should stay where it is while the lure wriggles and jerks.

Of course, if you feel or see any tremble or nibble through the rod tip, you need to set the hook.

Subtle Search Mode: “Crawling” while dropshotting for perch

On popular venues both jig fishing and deadsticking with drop shot rigs can sometimes be treated with more suspicion by fish. In fact, on any water, an essential tactic to try is an ultra-slow “crawl” – mixed in with gentle deadsticking-style rod movements.

Many anglers don’t view dropshotting as a search method. Instead they look to search with jigs and then, when fish are found (through follows or tail-nips), switching to a drop shot approach to try for a capture.

Don’t forget that you can search while dropshotting! It might not be as rapid-fire as jigging (although it can be if necessary), when it comes to catching fish, the ultra-slow turns of the reel which barely keep the weight crawling towards you along the bed can be hard to beat.

Again, experimenting to find the right intensity and frequency of rod-tip manipulation is key to this method. The slow crawl with the right manipulation is what gives experienced lure anglers a real edge when drop shot fishing for perch on hard-fished canals, rivers and lakes.

Drop shot fishing for perch: Lure choices

Obviously you can buy a variety of soft plastics labelled as “drop shot lures” – and you won’t go far wrong with these. They are often available either pre-rigged or as part of a kit with weights, leader and rig-holder spools. Most often, you’ll find these are paddle-tail lures with a nice inherent action when lifted and allowed to drop.

Here’s a few examples to get you thinking along productive lines…

Small "shad"/paddle-tails and flukes

Best hooked at the front of the head – but experiment with the orientation. In other words, try hooking so that the lure swims in an upright plane (hook-point in through the bottom lip and out through the top of the head).

As an alternative, hooking the same lure through the side of the head can give an extra “wounded prey” effect.

Plastic Worms

This is a really wide-ranging category with everything from fat Senko style worms, through straight worms (like the roboworm) and even small 2” sandworms. Because of that wide range of styles, there are a lot of options for rigging them on the hook  - as we'll see below.

Perhaps it shouldn’t need repeating but, just in case, Perch Love Worms. I think a lot of anglers get a bit too hung up on the fish-imitating drop shot lures and can ignore artificial worm options. So, treating them like the a truly generalist predator is important.

Here’s a few suggestions to kick start your own experiments in bait style and hooking/rigging

Oxblood/red flake Roboworm (straight tail)

Available in a range of lengths – 4.5” is a good one for UK perch. My favourite option for these is to rig them weedless on an offset worm hook – just as you would for a Texas rig (full on bass style).

Roboworms can also be good rigged “wacky rig” style on a smaller hook. See the next option for more information.

Senko/Stick worms

If you have big perch in your waters, then a nice fat mouthful can be a good way forward. Although not the only way to rig them (and in fact, these are great fished with no additional weight), wacky rigging using a flexible O-ring is definitely worth a try on a dropshot setup. They are also good simply free-lined in stillwater venues.

By positioning the O-ring exactly in the middle, the bait will sink and hold in the water on a horizontal plane (it also stops your bait getting torn up by the hook). Any dead-sticking rod tip manipulation causes the worm to wriggle from the middle – with both head and tail ends kicking violently.

Sandworm (with flavour)

Berkley Gulp sandworms are available in a range of sizes – and for perch I like the 2” ones. The lovely perch in the photo at the top of this article took a fancy to one of these (you can see it in the net - along with the drop shot rig).

 They are a great option for coloured water because they are strongly scented – to help fish track them down (and hold onto them once they’ve slurped one into their mouth). For these, I like a simple hooking at the head end so that the flattened side fishes parallel to the river bed.

Dropshotting for Perch: Round-up

Remember that the lure suggestions included here are really just the tip of the iceberg. When trying out your own options, think carefully about which of the rigging styles will function best for that lure - AND the situation you're fishing it in.

For example, in snaggy waters, the Texas rig style of hooking your soft plastic will be important. If only the action of your bait is important, think how best to hook it to create the most "wriggle" - even with small, gentle movements of the rod tip.

As well as being able to twitch your bait on the spot, don't forget the crawling/subtle searching approach. In fact, it is perfectly possible to fish a drop shot rig with a very similar retrieve to any that you would use with a jig. That can be a great tactic which allows you to "hop" a bait really close to the bottom - but with less chance of snagging up on rocks compared to a weighted jig.

I hope there is plenty here to fuel your own successful experiments while dropshotting for perch.

Paul

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