Catching Your Drift
Published: Monday, October 31, 2022 12:00 pm
By: Dan Armitage
A version of this article appeared in the Fall (September/October) 2022 of Great Lakes Scuttlebutt magazine.
While working as a mate on a charterboat that worked the Gulf Stream off Key West, every now and then, an angler who had lingered – among other things – too long on Duval Street the evening before would doze off during his turn in the fighting chair. The problem was that whoever was in that position had primary bait-watching duty, reporting any hang-ups, missed hits, or fish activity in the trolled baits skipping along in the boat’s wake. Dozing off was a no-no.
To teach a slumbering multi-offender a lesson and to keep the balance of the day’s fishing party on its toes, I would get the nod from the captain, snap a five-gallon pail to the working end of an 80-pound offshore rod and reel rig, place it in a rod holder and silently free-spool the bucket back 100 yards or so. At the same instant, I flipped the level-wind reel into gear and get the drag screaming; I’d yell “FISH ON!” and step back to watch the action.
The resistance offered by the plastic pail was substantial, and combined with deft boat handling by a skipper experienced with the stunt, the bucket could exhibit bursts of line-robbing runs that would make a wahoo proud, sound and sulk deep below like a 100-pound amberjack, and do everything but jump like a sailfish. I’ve seen tears shed and breakfast ejected during “fights” that lasted as long as a half-hour before exhausted anglers muscled their plastic “prize” to the surface. At that point, oaths – and sometimes fists – often flew as the ruse was discovered, but no angler along on a pail-trained fishing party ever nodded off again.
When I moved to the Great Lakes, I harnessed that resistance and dragged common five-gallon pails as “drogues” to slow the pace of my boat down to the sub-two-mph trolling speeds often required to take walleyes on a consistent basis. Deploying and retrieving the bulky buckets was wet, back-wrenching work, and adjusting their resistance to match wind and water conditions was limited to adding a second bucket to the mix.
To slow their boats’ trolling and drift rates, some anglers were experimenting with common sea anchors at the time. Acting as underwater parachutes, sea anchors made of canvas, rubber, or nylon fabric are deployed on a line off the bows of boats to keep their bows pointed into the waves and to slow their drift in high winds. Anglers began using smaller-sized versions of traditional sea anchors and found that by dragging anchors of various diameters or using conical-shaped, open-ended adaptations called “drift socks,” their trolling speeds and drift rates could be fine-tuned to match the conditions.
I tried my first drift sock, a 24-inch-diameter “Trolling Sea Anchor” model by Hollywood-based Cal-June incorporated, a major supplier of traditional sea anchors for ocean-going craft, back in the 90s’. From that season forward, the buckets aboard my boat have served as storage receptacles for a quiver of modern drift socks I now own.
Drift socks have since become common gear aboard fishing boats, especially those owned by anglers seeking walleyes, which often prefer slow, precise presentations of bait. These fishermen have learned that the adaptable underwater ‘chutes serve as more than mere boat brakes for a craft that’s underway.
Walleye pro Mark Brumbaugh speculates that “nearly every” tournament competitor carries at least one drift sock aboard his boat and that most equip their craft with more than one. He carries no fewer than five aboard his craft in 25-, 40-, 50-and 60-inch diameters and uses them more for precise boat control while drifting than he does for reduced speed while trolling.
“I’ve used as many as four separate socks at one time to get the right drift,” said Brumbaugh, adding that the larger the boat, the more – or larger – drift socks that are needed to slow its progress.
“When drift-fishing, aluminum boats may require more sock diameter in the water,” the pro said. “They tend to have higher freeboard and are lighter than glass boats, which make them more susceptible to wind drift.”
When Brumbaugh is on walleye water that demands slow-trolled baits, he has a pair of 20-inch drift socks rigged and ready, and never employs more than two at a time when under power.
To slow his progress and offer better low-speed control while trolling, Brumbaugh attaches a 20-inch drift sock to each of his boat’s two forward cleats, which are near the bow. He is careful to set a tether line length that will keep the deployed socks forward of his outboard’s propeller yet far enough back to allow them to open fully.
So rigged, the drift bags will open up and stay to each side of the boat while underway in calm conditions, he said, but current and wind and waves may put one or both socks under the hull at times.
“It doesn’t matter where they are in relation to the boat,” he said, “as long as they are open.
“If I’m trolling in a side-wind, sometimes I just use one sock at a time, the one on the windward side of the boat. It may drift off to that side a bit. If I turn around and troll back the other direction, I’ll pull that sock in and put out the one on the other side.”
To maintain boat control while drifting with the wind also calls for at least two socks and sometimes more. To keep his craft drifting with its side to the wind, Brumbaugh starts most drifts by deploying a large sock and a small sock, the latter off a stern cleat and the former off a bow cleat, on whichever side of the boat he intends to fish.
“You usually need the larger bag on the bow because the front of the boat is higher, lighter and more likely to swing downwind than the stern,” he explained.
Brumbaugh has his boats fitted with handrails along the length of the top of each gunwale so that he can rig additional drift socks at various locations along the side of the boat.
“Sometimes you have to adjust the length of the tether line to get them to open up and stay submerged, and I like to have just enough line out to allow them to be open and underwater,” he explained. “The average length of the tether I have out while drift fishing would be four to five feet.
“No matter what you attach the drift sock’s tether to,” he advised, “make sure it’s sturdy and had a backing plate. These things generate an enormous amount of pull and will yank off loose hardware in the blink of an eye!”
Some anglers employ drift socks in conjunction with electric trolling motors to achieve precise boat control. When a “walleye chop” morphs into “walleye waves” and he wants to continue to drift and jig, rig, or use bottom bouncers, walleye pro Keith Kavajecz attaches a sock off a cleat located two-thirds of the way back from the bow of his boat and uses a bow-mounted electric motor to control the front of the boat.
“I point the motor into the wind and then use the ‘fine adjust’ knob on the footpad to precisely compensate for the wind,” Kavajecz explained. “Once that’s set, I turn on the Autopilot and I have a controlled drift without messing with the motor. If I need to pull ahead or move back to maintain depth, I simply turn the motor slightly ahead or back and it eases me to the right depth.”
Fellow walleye pro Mark Martin uses drift bags when working waves as well.
“When using my front electric in high waves, sometimes the prop pops out of the water, which causes me to lose position along structure,” he said. “When that happens, I break out a Wave Tamer and cinch it up tight to a bow cleat. It acts like a vertical sea anchor; it fills with water when the bow dips low and then when the bow wants top come up, the bag’s full of water and is heavy enough to keep the bow down and the prop in the water.”
Martin also uses socks to snub wave surge while trolling.
“Sometimes when you are trolling with the wind you end up surging ahead with each wave and going too fast,” Martin said, “and then slowing down too much after the wave passes by. To keep that from happening, I attach two Wave Tamers, one to each bow cleat, and drag them on leads just long enough to allow them to open. Their resistance eliminates the speed fluctuation caused by each wave and allows my baits to work at a more constant rate.”
Most socks are rigged with a trip line, which is attached to the small or aft-end of the bag and back to the boat, where it is tied off to the same cleat that the main drag line is attached to. Because it is longer than the primary tether, the trip line remains limp while the sock is deployed. When it comes time to bring in the bag, the trip line is used to pull the sock inside out and toward the boat small end first, which “dumps” the water out of the sock while collapsing the bag.
The trip line feature eliminates the water resistance that would make the open bag extremely hard to pull in – a primary argument against using standard plastic buckets AND the very feature that makes the plastic pails such effective teaching aids when training dozing anglers to remain alert!
About the Author
Dan Armitage is a popular Great Lakes-based outdoor writer and host of the Buckeye Sportsman show (www.buckeyesportsman.com), syndicated weekly on 30 radio stations across Ohio. Dan is a certified Passport to Fishing instructor and leads kids fishing programs at Midwest boat and sports shows, and is a licensed Captain with a Master rating from the US Coast Guard.
tags: Fishing
