Had another great trip on the P.O. River fishing for smallmouth with my buddy Mikey. We put in at the Priest River boat launch and went st8 to the rock pile I found about a month ago. We tried cranks and a few other rigs but the only thing we could get bit on was the drag the dropshot method I discovered a while ago. We were draging about 3" off the tail of a Sink-N-Fool bait and it has turned out to be the best dropshot rig I've ever used.

First I'll tell you how I rig my dropshot. I use a 1/0 Gammy red finesse hook tied on with a double Palomar knot with about 30" of tag end & the hook eye pointing up. Then you put the tag end down through the hook eye and slide a bullet weight up the line and pinch it in place with a pair of pliers. That serves 2 purposes, it lets you adjust the bait height off the bottom and if the weight gets hung up it will just slide off most of the time if you can't pull it loose. I just nose hook the baits with the flat side up. I like the bait at about 18" on a rocky bottom with no weeds and about 30" off a weedy bottom. My drag the dropshot only works on rivers with a slow current & a rocky, sand or gravel bottom. Put on enough weight so the bait stays almost right under the boat and does not drag back. Put out just enough line to reach the bottom and let the boat drift with the current. Watch the rod tip as in bounces along the bottom as the strikes are very light most of the time. It is a little hard to tell the strikes from the weight hitting rocks, but after a little while you can see the difference. I have a two-pole license so I put my foot on that rod as it drags along and cast a crank to keep busy. I've had on two fish at the same time sometimes doing this, but that can be fun too.
We didn’t catch huge numbers, but fishing for Smallmouth in November is a BIG plus if you get any in my book. I got a total of 5 fish in about 3 hours; all were good size but no monsters. My buddy Mikey only got 1 but it was a good one too. Here are a few of the fish we got,

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/Fish-N-Fool/FNF%20personal/NovemberSmallies.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v37/Fish-N-Fool/FNF%20personal/MikeysNovSmallie.jpg[/IMG]

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