When I was a kid, deep water fascinated me. I was convinced that those dark, seemingly fathomless depths that stretched into blackness below my boat held fish of unimaginable size. I believed that all I had to do to catch them was to somehow get my lures and baits down into the 50, 80, 100-plus-foot depths and wait for a leviathan. Yet, no matter how hard I tried or how much weight I put on my line, every time I fished that dark abyss, I’d come up empty.
Fishing in deep water is an incredible challenge. Unlike when you’re fishing the shallows and can easily pick out likely locations for fish or even see the fish, when you fish in deep water, it can feel like fishing in a dark, empty desert. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right techniques and strategies, fishing deep water can produce some of the best fishing and biggest fish of your life.
Finding Structure
The main thing to remember when fishing in deep water is that fish like structure. Whether you’re after giant, bottom-dwelling lake trout or suspended perch and panfish, finding these fish consistently is all about finding the structure. Deepwater rock piles, submerged vegetation, humps, ledges, reefs, and even manmade structures like brush piles will all attract and hold fish in deep water—you just have to know how to find them.
The easiest way to locate and fish structure in deep water is from a boat equipped with electronics. Fish finders, depth finders, and side imaging sonar are all fantastic tools for finding and staying on top of structure. The higher-end versions actually show high-resolution images of bottom detail and, of course, the fish that are holding around them.
If you don’t have a boat or are fishing from shore, you can still locate deep water structure using hydrographic maps. These maps illustrate the bottom contours and depths, showing where structures like underwater humps and ledges can be found on a body of water. Hydrographic maps can be found online or used through apps like C-MAP and I-Boating. However, the scale of these digital maps only shows details to a certain scale, so it’s a good idea to use hydrographic maps and fish and/or depth finders together to make finding deep water structure easy, even on a waterbody you’re completely unfamiliar with.
A Bit of Finesse
Once you locate areas of deepwater structure, the easiest and most efficient way to fish them is with finesse techniques. Techniques like jigging, drop shotting, Texas Rigging, and even slowly working spinners and spoons up from the bottom are all considered to be finesse techniques. While all of these techniques can be effective in deep water, each particular technique is most effective when fishing off specific structures and when targeting specific species.
Jigging and drop shotting are both effective when fishing around underwater humps or rock piles for suspended deep water fish like walleye, panfish, and even pike. Most of these fish species will be holding around or on top of the structure at the same depth as the hump or rock pile, and not at the depth of the water itself.
For example, a school of walleye lingering around an underwater hump that’s 12 feet down in 25 feet of water will be moving and feeding at 12 feet, even when they’re not directly on top of the hump itself. To fish these areas, you’ll want to drop jigs or drop shot rigs down onto the hump itself and then slowly work your way out around the structure at the same depth until you start getting consistent strikes.
Texas rigging is most effective when targeting bass, panfish, and even catfish around deep water ledges and sharp drop-offs. For those unfamiliar, a Texas Rig is set up with a few sliding bullet weights on a line above a hook. Generally, Texas Rigs are set up with soft plastics, but they work incredibly well with large live and dead baits, such as minnows and leeches, as well.
When you fish a Texas Rig along a ledge, you have a few different options. The first and most common is done by sitting directly over the ledge and then casting into deeper water so your bait sinks to the base of the ledge. Then, retrieve it slowly back up the ledge into the shallower water. If this isn’t effective, you can also sit over the ledge and cast and retrieve parallel to the ledge. Finally, you can move into deeper water and cast back to the ledge, working your lure down the ledge into deeper water.
The final effective technique for fishing deep water is by dropping spinners and spoons to the bottom and then retrieving them back to the surface. This is a fantastic technique for fishing deep holes and underwater rock piles and for targeting large predatory fish like lake trout, pike, and muskie. Start by sinking your lure on an open bail down to the bottom around the edges of the structure and then retrieving it back to the surface. It’s a simple yet effective method that draws a surprising amount of strikes. To make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck, try varying your retrieval speeds until you key in on a speed the fish seem to like.
Trolling Deep
Trolling is an incredibly effective technique for deepwater fishing. It allows you to cover a lot of water and key in on suspending schools of fish like walleye or target cruising deepwater predators like lake trout, muskie, or salmon. However, just using deep diving lures and heavy weights isn’t always the most efficient way to find fish. To troll in deep water efficiently, you have to use the proper set-ups, lures, and strategies.
Downriggers are fantastically helpful tools for deepwater trolling. These ingenious devices consist of a weight attached to a cable, which is lowered to a desired depth using a spool and crank (manual or electric), to control the depth of a lure or bait while trolling. You can clip a downrigger to your line and keep your lure or bait at a consistent depth while you troll, helping you cover water at a specific depth.
Once a fish strikes, the downrigger releases from the line, allowing you to fight the fish without tangling with the downrigger cable. Downriggers are great for trolling long stretches of deep water with consistent bottom structure or for keeping your lures moving just above bottom structure, and are ideal for targeting deepwater fish like lake trout as they help get your bait into the strike zone quickly and efficiently.
Another trolling tool for deep water is a bottom bouncer. Built on a wire frame, bottom bouncers are weights that you clip to your line like a downrigger, which literally tick and bounce along the bottom. They’re ideal for fishing gravel bottoms or weed beds in deep water, as they’ll hold your lures above the bottom and prevent them from getting snagged. Bottom bouncer rigs are useful for targeting trout, walleye, pike, and even deep water bass, as the fish will often be attracted to the sound of the bouncer running along the bottom.
What Lies Beneath
I used to aimlessly fish deep water for hours, hoping for a strike. It just felt like I was drifting my baits and lures in an empty no-man’s-land, and as much as I believed big fish were down there, I simply couldn’t find them.
Once I figured out how to break down deep water by looking for structure and approaching it with the proper fishing technique, I discovered a whole new addiction. Now, whenever I look down into the dark depths below me, I don’t wonder what may be down there, but how long it will take me to catch it.
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