West Coast vs East Coast

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Permalink Reply by David Parnicky on August 25, 2012 at 12:54am

  I say go for it if that's what you want to do!  I would try to spend more time figuring out how the fish are positioning in the area you are fishing and the best way to exploit that behavior rather than "the deal" or how someone else has been catching them though.  If you are catching them on a dropshot or football jig and feel a shaky head can be worked through that same area just as well, go for it!   I think just the fact you might give the fish a different, yet still effective look for the type of water you are fishing could buy you one or two more bites than you would not have gotten otherwise.  That could be worth GOLD as opposed to focusing on "the deal" and the deal alone if it fills a limit or culls even one fish.

  As far as one technique being better than the other, I don't see it that way.  I think it boils down more to how you are presenting your current technique to the fish at that given moment.  Sure, one might outfish the other on a given day but there is no way to know for sure without figuring out what the fish are doing and then best methods of catching them based on their behavior.  Then you can experiment and tinker with those and see if one technique, color, lure, weight size, etc. outproduces the rest.  

Permalink Reply by Tag Watson on August 25, 2012 at 9:24am

Like everything else in bass fishing, constantly experiment and listen to the fish.

When I fished Table Rock earlier this year, we spent one day down at the clear lower end, fishing primarily for spotted bass.  When they wouldn't eat jigs, swimbaits or topwaters, we would slow down and fish plastics.  They would gobble up a shaky head but wouldn't touch a dropshot.  The buddy I was fishing with, an FLW pro in that area, says that's very common on many of the lakes back East.  I've seen a shaky head outfish a dropshot up here on some occasions as well.  The reason you haven't heard of any major tournaments being won up here on the shaky head:

The smart anglers who have had success on shaky heads aren't broadcasting it to the world because they know Washington State anglers have a love affair with the dropshot. 

Permalink Reply by Ronald Hobbs, Jr. on August 25, 2012 at 7:46pm

No difference between east and west, they fish alot more shell beds, rockpiles, stumps with little weeds to contend with, so the shakey head would probably be a better bet. I have smashed largies in this state with shakey heads when they wouldn't eat anything else and I have smashed largies on the east coast on drop shots when they wouldn't eat anything else, so its fishing doesn't really make sense sometimes the fish prefer something hiding amongst the rocks crawling across the bottom and sometimes they want something suspended hovering over the bottom.  I think when you are talking smallmouth, I think they prefer drop shots over shakey most of the time east or west, did you see the Lake Michigan tournament?  Remember these guys are fishing for Largemouths 99% of the time where we are fishing for smallmouth 99% of the time.  As you know these two species have two totally different attitudes, smallmouth more aggresive in nature largemouth especially Florida strain way more passive, now you do the math, which technique suits which nature?