rev up your outboard, but what I am saying that is that making normal movements in your boat is fine and sometimes needed to mask the silence and calmness of the water surrounding that boat dock.
DEPTH OF A DOCK
The water depth around and underneath a boat dock plays a huge role in a bass inhabiting a boat dock and yes, many times boat docks that have deeper water under them are usually more productive than docks with little to no water underneath them. But this isn’t always true, sometimes bass only need a mere inches of water to live and with the overhead cover a boat dock provides, shallow water underneath boat docks isn’t a bad thing.
If you do determine that the bass are using boat docks that are located in shallow water, you want to change up your presentation so it makes less of a splash as it enters the water. To me this is when a wacky-rigged stickbait is a great option, such as Zoom Fluke Stick Jr, rigged on a 2/0 Lazer TroKar TK97 Wacky Worm hook.
Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get a bass or a quality sized bass right away when targeting your fish. Many times it takes a string of boat docks (this all depends on the lake, it could be three or four or it may take 10 to 20 docks) to get a good sense of the dock bite on a given lake.
RELOADING DOCKS
Anglers also need to understand that revisiting a productive dock run or single dock throughout the day isn’t a bad idea. If a dock is holding bass, there is a reason for that and bass will repopulate under that dock. Other nearby bass that got spooked and swam off when you caught your initial bass may return after the water has settled and also depending on the time of day, bass will use docks more or less in relation to sunlight, water temperatures and boat traffic on the lake.
PRESENTING LURES BENEATH THE DOCK
To aid in the ability to better skip your jig underneath a boat dock and get it way back there, you need to select a jig that has a flat spot on its head. Another item that will eliminate the drag your lure has on the water and increase the distance that you can skip it is to use a smaller trailer that has few appendages.
My go-to dock
fishing jig is a
½-ounce War
Eagle black/blue or
green pumpkin jig
with a Zoom Super
Chunk Jr trailer.
What I like about
the War Eagle jig is
that with its hand
tied skirt; it won’t
slide down the jig as
it moves across the
water’s surface.
SUMMER 2017
25