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Shallow Cranking the Docks - Part 1
Throw the Fish a Curve
Jim Pope
Dateline 10/26/98
There have been many articles written which describe how to catch fish from around and under boat docks. It is true, boat docks offer prime habitat for bass. Boat docks or sheds offer shade during any time of the day, and the posts allow the predator to lie in wait for a passing minnow or crawdad.
Virtually every article I have read instructs us to work jigs or worms around the posts and adjoining cover, but there is another way to stimulate a bass into taking a synthetic resemblance to its diet. The method of using a modified crankbait can be a real producer around docks and sheds.
This method of working boat docks came to me completely by accident back in the late seventies. My fishing partner, Brent, was throwing a medium running crankbait along a rocky shoreline on Pickwick Lake. The shoreline of this cove soon gave away to three or four boat docks. I had fished the south side of the dock with the crankbait with no luck.
Brent made a hard cast in an effort to get his bait under the dock. His cast left a little to be desired, landing six feet from his point of aim. As luck would have it, it hung on top of the dock. He gave it a good hard jerk, and, surprisingly, it freed itself. The only problem was that it contacted a piece of metal as the slingshot effect accelerated it back toward the boat.
After inspecting the lure and discovering that no parts were broken, Brent gave it a sling along the front of the dock. Picture this; the bait hits the water a few feet past and to the outside left of the front of the dock. As Brent began his retrieve, the bait began diving hard right. "Great!" he said (actually he said something a little different). "I've fouled up my bait!"
When the bait got to the first post of the dock, it was already about two feet to the right of it. He continued his retrieve, and the bait wobbled around the post and began to dive under the dock. Before it got to the second post, my partner grunted (One of Brent's trademarks was that he always grunted when he got a strike.). A few seconds later he boated a nice keeper.
