How to Rig a Drop Shot, Step by Step

A drop shot is the most forgiving finesse rig in bass fishing and the easiest one to rig badly. Almost every problem people have with it — the hook hanging limp, the bait spinning, weights pulling off on the hookset — traces back to two or three steps in the setup rather than to the bait or the water. Here is the whole thing, in order, with the reasons attached.

What a drop shot actually is

Every other bottom rig puts the weight above the bait. A drop shot inverts that. The weight goes on the very bottom of the line, and the hook is tied in above it on a short section of the main line called the tag. The weight sits on the bottom and stays there; the bait hovers above it at whatever height you set, and you work the bait by shaking a slack line rather than by moving the whole rig along.

That inversion is the entire point. Because the weight is anchored, you can keep a bait in one square foot of water for thirty seconds without dragging it away from the fish. It is the reason a drop shot catches pressured, inactive and deep fish that will not chase anything.

It also changes how you pick a weight. On a Texas rig the fish feels the weight when it picks the bait up, so you go light. On a drop shot the fish never lifts the weight at all, so weight is chosen purely for your own bottom contact. That is covered in full in our guide to drop shot weight shapes and sizes, and it is worth reading before you buy.

What you need

• A spinning rod and reel with a smooth drag. This is a light-line technique.
• Line. Braid to a fluorocarbon leader, or straight fluorocarbon. There is a real trade-off between the two and we walk through it in braid or fluorocarbon for bottom contact.
• A drop shot or light wire finesse hook, or a straight shank worm hook if you plan to rig the bait weedless.
• A drop shot weight. Two shapes, two eye styles, four sizes — more on that below.
• A small, slim soft plastic. A finesse worm, minnow or small straight-tail bait.

That is the whole kit. No swivels, no beads, no leader knots beyond the one you are about to tie.

Step 1 — tie a Palomar and leave a long tag

Double about eighteen inches of line and pass the loop through the hook eye. Tie a loose overhand knot with the doubled line, leaving the loop hanging. Pass that loop down over the whole hook. Wet it, then pull the standing line and the tag together to seat the knot against the eye.

The critical part is the leftover tag. Most knots you tie in fishing get trimmed flush. This one does not. You want somewhere between eighteen inches and three feet of tag hanging below the hook, because that tag is your dropper — the weight ties to the end of it. Leave more than you think you need. Trimming later is free; retying is not.

Step 2 — the step that decides everything

With the knot seated, take the loose tag end and pass it back down through the hook eye, entering from the top, the same side the hook point faces.

This single pass is what makes a drop shot work. It locks the hook at right angles to the line with the point riding upward. Skip it and the hook hangs limp against the line, the bait lies over on its side, and your hook-up rate collapses. If you have ever fished a drop shot and felt like you missed everything, this is very often why.

Check it before you fish. Hold the line up. The hook should stand out from the line like a branch off a trunk, point up. If it flops, run the tag through the eye again.

Step 3 — attach the weight

How you do this depends on which eye style you bought, and the two behave differently enough that it is worth understanding before you pick.

Open eye weights have a pinch-style attachment. You do not tie anything. Lay the tag end into the slot at the top of the eye, pull it down tight, and the line seats and grips. Changing weight takes three seconds. The trade-off is that the grip is designed to release under enough load, so a hard pull into a rock can leave you with a bare tag end. That is a feature more often than a fault — the weight lets go instead of your leader breaking — but it does mean you lose weights.

Closed eye weights have to be tied to. A simple clinch or a couple of overhand turns is plenty. It is slower and you are committed for as long as that tag lasts, but it does not come off. Once you have found the size that is working and you are fishing the same piece of structure repeatedly, tie one on. A common approach is to fish an open eye skinny while you are still figuring the day out, then switch to a closed eye in the same size once you have.

Either way, do not trim the excess tag flush against the weight. Leave a couple of inches. If the weight does pull off, you still have enough to reattach without cutting into your hook knot.

Step 4 — hook the bait

Two options, and the bottom you are fishing decides.

Nose hooking means running the hook point through the very nose of the bait, in one side and straight out the other, so the point rides exposed. It gives the bait maximum freedom to quiver and it is the best hook-up rate of the two. Use it on clean bottom.

Texas rigging the bait means skin-hooking the point back into the plastic so it runs weedless. You lose some action, and you have to drive the point through plastic on the hookset, but you can fish the same rig into grass and wood without dragging salad back every cast.

Whichever you use, make sure the bait sits straight. A bait threaded on crooked will spin on the drop and put twist in your line all day.

How long should the tag be?

The gap between the hook and the weight sets how far off the bottom your bait hovers, and it is the adjustment most people never touch.

• Twelve to eighteen inches is the everyday answer and where you should start.
• Six to eight inches when fish are pinned to the bottom — cold water, bright sun, post-front.
• Two to three feet when fish are suspended over deep structure or riding above a grass line.

Length has a second effect people miss: the longer the tag, the mushier the rig feels, because there is more line between your rod tip and the bait absorbing the shake. If your presentation stops feeling crisp, shorten the tag before you blame the weight.

Fishing it: shake, do not move

Cast or drop, let the weight hit bottom, then take up line until you are just barely tight. Now stop reeling.

The whole retrieve is shaking the rod tip on a semi-slack line so the bait quivers while the weight stays put. If the weight is sliding along the bottom, you are working too hard. Shake for five or ten seconds, pause, shake again. Then move the weight a foot or two and repeat.

Bites are usually not thumps. Most often the line just goes slack, or starts swimming sideways, or the weight feels weightless. When that happens, reel down until you come tight and sweep the rod sideways. Do not snap it. On a light wire hook a hard snap tears out more fish than it lands.

Vertical or cast?

Fished vertically from a boat over deep structure, a drop shot is close to unbeatable, and it is where the technique came from. But it works cast just as well from a bank or a dock, and that is worth knowing if you fish from shore — see our bank fishing weight guide for the rest of that kit.

Cast out, let it settle, then work it back in short pulls with long shaking pauses in between. The only real difference is line angle: cast out flat, your shake reaches the bait less directly, so you generally want a slightly heavier weight than you would fishing straight down.

Picking the weight itself

We make drop shot weights in 1/8, 3/16, 1/4 and 3/8 oz, in a skinny and a tear drop shape, each with an open or closed eye. The short version:

• Shape follows the bottom. Skinny in rock and riprap, because a narrow body pulls back out of the crack it dropped into. Tear drop on sand, gravel and clean bottom, because a wider base sits still instead of rolling.
• Size follows your contact, not the fish. 1/8 oz shallow and calm, 3/16 oz as a starting point, 1/4 oz as the workhorse, 3/8 oz for deep water, wind and current.

Wind pushes you heavier, but not for the reason most people give. A 1/4 oz weight reaches bottom in twenty-five feet in a breeze without trouble. The problem is the bow the wind puts in your line, which swallows your shake and delays every bite. Going heavier straightens the line and gives the contact back.

If you fish a lot of rock, our guide to fishing rock and riprap covers how to get a drop shot through it without donating a weight every cast.

Four things that go wrong

The hook hangs limp. You skipped step two, or you ran the tag through the eye from the wrong side. Redo it.

The bait spins and the line twists. The bait is threaded on crooked, or your tag is far longer than you need. Straighten the bait first.

You keep losing open eye weights without snagging. The line is not fully seated in the pinch. Push it all the way down into the slot before you pull it tight, or move to a closed eye.

You cannot feel anything. Almost always slack you did not know you had, not too light a weight. Come tight first, then decide.

When something else is the better rig

A drop shot is a hovering presentation. When you want a bottom-oriented bait that stands up on the bottom instead of hovering above it, a Neko rig does that job better and needs nothing but a nail weight pushed into the plastic — there is more on that in our nail weight guide. If you want to cover water rather than pick a spot apart, go back to a Texas rig. And for sizing across every technique at once, the tungsten weight size chart puts them all in one place.

Built to be what it says it is

Every Tungsten Edge weight is 97% tungsten, laser-engraved with its size, and finished with our EdgeGuard No-Chip coating so it survives rock and timber rather than just looking good in the package. The bore is insert-free, so there is no plastic sleeve to work loose and no rough edge to saw at your line. Tungsten runs about 1.5 times the density of lead, which is why a tungsten weight is roughly 13% narrower than the same weight in lead — a smaller profile in front of the fish and more of the bottom transmitted back up your line.