Barry Morrow enjoys bow hunting for deer, but on this occasion the string he is using is fishing line and the projectile is a plastic grub and jighead combo. Instead of a big buck, Morrow is targeting slab-size crappie under boat docks.
“Dock shooting” is one of the most effective tactics for catching crappies tucked up in the shady areas of piers and floating boathouses. “It is kind of instinctive like with a bow and arrow,” says Morrow, an Oklahoma tournament competitor and guide. “It is a matter of pointing, aiming and releasing.”
Another tournament angler who shoots for crappie is Missouri guide Terry Blankenship. He had to learn the technique in order to compete with the shooters on his home waters of Lake of the Ozarks since the lake contains thousands of docks.
The technique can pay big dividends for those who learn how to become expert marksmen. “It is one thing very few people do,” says Morrow. He notes the tactic reaches fish that are inaccessible for anglers with 10- or 11-foot dipping poles.
“Some of the biggest crappies are going to be like bass,” Morrow says. “They are going to be way back underneath the docks in the shade. There is so much of a dock to cover. Whether it is a swimming dock that is usually pretty wide or a pontoon boat in a dock well, there is a lot of shade in there. By skipping a lure back under there, letting it fall, taking your time and being able to watch and feel that line move, you are going to pull some big slabs out of there. A lot of tournaments have been won doing that.”
Although dock shooting has been around for a few years now, new trends continue to improve the effectiveness of this dock mining technique. “What I have seen is that everyone has gone to bigger baits,” says Morrow. “One of the key things that some people are overlooking is the fatter the plastic gives you more range to skip the bait way back into the shaded areas.” With a larger planning area, the plastic lures skip as smoothly as flat rocks kids skim across the water surface.
The biggest mistakes Morrow sees novices make when they try to shoot docks are using too big of a jighead or too heavy of a line. For optimum skipping distance, Morrow’s first lure choice is a 1 3/4- or 2-inch Lindy Watsit Grub, a thick-bodied creature-style bait with a 1/32- or 1/16-ounce jighead. He ties the lure on 6-pound Silver Thread Fluorocarbon line.
Once the lure arrives at the far dark reaches of a dock, the next critical stage is prolonging its stay in the crappie’s strike zone by controlling the fall rate of the lure. Since some crappies will be holding near the surface while others will be suspended 3 feet down or deeper in the water column, Morrow sometimes has to experiment with lures and line until he triggers a strike. “If you are using a 1/32- to 1/16-ounce jig then changing the size of the plastic body or a using a marabou jig is going to change the rate of that fall,” he says. When he wants a slower fall, Morrow switches to a Lindy Little Nipper marabou jig tied on 6-pound Silver Thread copolymer line.
“The tendency of crappies is that they like to get under the darkest areas of those docks,” says Blankenship. “A lot of times whenever you shoot a jig way back into those dark areas a lot of your better fish are the first ones that will bite and they will bite really quickly in 2 to 4 foot of water.”
Blankenship’s favorite skipping lure is also a large plastic projective, a 3-inch Bobby Garland Slab Slayer attached to a 1/16-ounce Bobby Garland Mo’ Glo jighead. He believes the 1/16-ounce jighead is the ideal size for skipping, since a 1/32-ounce head is too light to propel the lure and a 1/8-ounce model tends to plow into the water and dives too fast.
The Missouri guide skips his lures with 6-pound test Vicious Panfish HiVis Yellow line that allows him to detect any line movement indicating a bite when the lure falls in the dark spaces of the dock. “One of the key things is to get a line that doesn’t coil up real bad,” says Blankenship, who soaks his spool with line conditioner before a tournament.
A good lure launcher is another key to effective dock shooting. “I don’t think you have to have a high dollar rod but you should have a good feeling rod,” says Morrow. “For me it has to have sensitivity.” Morrow opts for a G Loomis ultralight rod either 5 1/2 or 5 feet long. He prefers a short rod because it allows him to get closer to the docks for shooting into nooks and crannies.
When he was a kid, Blankenship learned he could sling persimmons farther on a longer hickory stick, so he relies on the same principle today with his shooting rod. He uses a 7-foot medium-action spinning rod that has plenty of flexibility for loading up the line like a bowstring yet is stout enough to allow Blankenship to control his shot in close quarters.
Selecting the right targets is also critical in dock shooting. Morrow looks for old docks with fishing cleaning tables and cables, wire or ropes hanging down the sides, which indicates brush piles are planted below the dock. “Even newer docks with the new (encapsulated) foam are good if they have a lot of algae buildup,” says Morrow. He usually shoots inside the wells or under any part of the dock covering the most surface area.
Relying on Humminbird 997 and 998 side imaging units have made it easier for Blankenship to find the best docks among the thousands to choose from on Lake of the Ozarks. “For crappie fishing that side imaging is one of the greatest tools I have ever seen for locating fish,” the Missouri angler says. “If there is a row of 10 docks if I take my time and check those docks out, I can minimize my time greatly by finding the one dock with fish on it instead of having to fish all 10. I can go about anywhere on the lake and feel like I can catch fish, whereas before I felt like I had to work a little harder at it.”
His side imaging units have taught Blankenship that the looks of a dock above water can be deceiving compared to what’s happening below the surface. Most anglers target the dock wells and walkways where they suspect brush piles are hidden, but Blankenship notices more crappies under the swim platform and large deck areas of docks. “Those are the ones that the fish really seem to school under more than just the 4-foot walkways,” he says.
When scanning a uniform row of docks, Blankenship sets his unit’s side imaging range at 40 feet to show the most detail on his screen. With his unit fine-tuned, Blankenship can discern the difference between crappies and baitfish on his graph. “Crappies basically show up as a bunch of little specks,” says Blankenship. “The difference between crappies and shad is the shad seem to be more of a cloud on the screen whereas crappies tend to be more of a bunch of specks.” Blankenship originally suspected the specks were gizzard shad when he first started using the side imaging unit, but he soon learned the images were crappies when he would shoot his jig into the targeted area and kept catching fish.
Just like any other form of shooting, firing a jig and skipping it under a dock requires some practice to become proficient. “Starting off you might think this is a waste of time, but if you spend a day doing this you are going to feel comfortable,” says Morrow. “Then it gets to be fun especially when you pull a big one out of something way back underneath that nobody else has even thought about hitting.”
.
Forum Statistics
Articles and Stories
vBulletin Message