Meat and Potatoes Tackle Company

                                                                                                                   Draggin'
Sometimes we cast our fool arms off for hours and we get nothin' for it.  This may be the right time to make a single cast and work that one cast until a fish jumps on your lure.  It may be a few minutes or it may be an hour.  Unfortunately, if things are really grim, it may be for the rest of the day or night.  But if nothing else, you've made just one cast, you've kept the lure precisely where it should be during the entire retrieve, and you've saved a lot of wear and tear on your shoulder.  And you've not spent a drop of fuel running hither and yon.

Two methods of this tactic to choose from.  The best one will probably be prescribed to you - you won't have much choice.  You see, you can either let Mother Nature help you, or you'll have to take a more active role.  Wind is the determinant factor.

Method 1:  The wind is not a factor.  In fact, if your battery is low or you just feel lazy, you wish it was.  With Method 1, you use your trolling motor to drag the lure down a bank or across a point or whatever structure you want to work with your one cast.

Method 2:  The wind is a factor, or at least you wish to use it as one.  You use the wind to drag the lure.  This one's a little more complex, but just a little.  Take a bank or point or dropoff you like, start at the upwind point, and let the wind push you down that bank.  With only minor course corrections with the troller to keep you just where you feel you need to be.  More on that later. 

So here's how you do it regardless of method described above.  Get on that upwind point, dropoff, bank or whatever.  Cast your lure upwind, and hold until the lure gets to the depth you're going to want to drag it.  Now turn the boat down wind, and begin the drag.   Here we go.  The complicated part involves keeping your outboard trimmed up or down to keep the drift at the speed you believe is best.  And, if wind speed is helping you with your drag, you'll have to tap the troller right, left or in reverse to keep the speed of drag as you believe it should be.  So sometimes this dragging tactic is not one in which you can sit down and take a nap - you may have to keep up and at 'em.

Lures that do well on a drag?  Our favorites are a Texas-rigged worm, a crankbait with suitable diving depth to scuff the bottom during the drag, or a heavy single spin spinnerbait.  Further, the very best draggin’ baits are, not surprisingly, the Meat and Potatoes HotBack™ Crankbait and Long Arm Pro™ Spinnerbait because the HotBack™ is not going to get hung up while it scuffs the bottom, and the LAP has the weight to stay down.  The key is that whatever lure you chose, it should be staying at the same depth during the entire drag.  Your mission is not only to catch a fish, but find or eliminate water.  If you drag good water at a certain depth and you find no takers, then adjust your depth - don't give up the drag.  Remove variables such as depth and speed.  And this is the beauty of the drag.  You quickly determine these things.  Got an upcoming tournament and you don't know where the fish are?  Are you seeing the value of a drag? 

You have someone else in the boat that's willing to drag with you?  Then think about putting one lure at one depth and another lure at another depth.  Think seriously about using two distinctly different lures on the drag as well.  One plastic worm and one crankbait.  Maybe the worm is draggin the bottom, and the crankbait is either scuffin' the bottom or working for suspended fish.  Sometimes you can accomplish two depths while making a straight line drag along the structure.  But other times, you may have to keep the boat at a 90 degree to the direction of travel.  This is where it gets a little more challenging than a simple drift, but hey, we can do whatever it takes to put fish in the boat, right?

Think about getting on a channel ledge, stand on your troller, watch your depth finder, and drag the appropriate lure along that drop.  Of course when you find some interesting topography along that ledge such as a ditch coming into it, then you can cease the drag and pick that structure apart.  But this brings up another interesting derivation of the straight-line drag.  There's no rule that says a drag must be a straight pull.  You can go in circles so that you can cover the whole area of that ditch dumping into the channel.  Right?

Draggin' lures is not only productive, but at times, when the day has been long and less than memorable, it's an effective way to keep the lure in the water, at just the right depth, but also give that aching shoulder or elbow a break!

Some tips to make this tactic work for you.  For a lure such as a plastic worm, you're going to have to maintain enough bow in the line to allow the fish to suck up the worm without feeling you.  Maintaining this bow in the line will be a function of drag speed and weight.  But since you're moving, and sometimes with the wind it will be at a pretty fair clip, it could be a very quick hook set, so there's no falling asleep during the drift - you're going to have to be on point!  For a crankbait, you're going to want to hit the fish instantly.  Regardless of lure, you'll probably have a fair bit of line out for the drag, so you'll want to really crank some line in quickly to get the fish up and away from any bottom snags