Bottom Bouncing Rocky Shores

How do you keep your soft baits from hanging up when bouncing them slow retrieving over rocks?

:dono .... but, I can tell you from experience that weedless jigs won't stop you from hanging up in rocks :banghead

You might try using a small float, but that's about all I can think of right now ... and even that limits you to how deep you can fish, or how fast/slow you can reel in.

To my knowledge there are only 2 things you can do to help First use only one jig at a time and don't open the throat of the hook. There is also another trick you can do that I at one time used often but is not necessary for the conditions i currently fish. You can get some very small rubber bands and place them from the barb of the hook to the loop where you tie your fishing line, this makes the hook weedless and the rubber band comes off with very little effort which keeps you from missing fish because of its weedless apparatus.

Fishing rocks is tough indeed. Usually it's the jig head itself that gets wedged in the crevices of the rocks. Not much you can do about that. However, if it's in the cooler part of the season, I like using a slip float with a 1/32 oz. marabou jig, set at about a foot above the rocks. A slow retrieve with keep it in the strike zone longer and the marabou moves in a lifelike fashion with very little to no movement on your part.

Drop shotting is a decent method for fishing rocks, you can still bounce the rocks but you don't lose nearly as many baits. I personally don't feel too bad snagging a split shot in rocks since my jig is usually still attached to the line when I pull it up. Sometimes I tie a knot in the end of my mono to keep the split shot from flinging off when casting into the wind and it usually still comes off before the line breaks.

~J. Babcock