Drop Banks: Must-Fish Spot On Any Lake
Story and Photos By Vic Attardo

Like slipping pennies into a piggy bank, fishing the slopes, walls and gullies of a drop bank is like putting bass money in the livewell.

Drop banks are those cut-away and often cut-out edges beyond the immediate realm of the shoreline. The structure of a drop bank can be located near land, within the shadow of an upright tree or many yards from shore, past a wide and mostly barren border. In addition, drop banks can slope gradually, like the angle of a thin slice of pie, or they can be abrupt, like the plunge off a table.

Former Bassmaster Classic winner Mike Iaconelli has a description for drop banks that details their structure and their capacity.

"It's when you have a shoreline situation and from 10 to 20 feet out off the land mass there is really nothing there," Iaconelli explains. "This flat space is maybe 2 or 3 feet deep with sand and muck where you'll see nothing. But now you go, say, 20 feet out from the land mass and you get this second break, and the bottom drops out. That's the edge. That's the drop bank."

The thing that makes drop banks so attractive is the way they hold fish.

"It's a place where bass can roam and ambush," Iaconelli says. "Often they're relating to the break. There doesn't need to be anything else there but the break, and it will hold fish."
How the bass use the secondary bank is another interesting aspect.

"What the bass are doing is traveling along the drop bank and moving up and down that lip," Iaconelli notes. "It's a highway where they're going back and forth. They are paralleling it or going up and down the break."

But just as bass come in different sizes and anglers have different skill levels, not all drop banks are created equal. Some have just the right exclamation points to make them a continual hotspot.

"What happens a lot of times is you'll have an isolated piece of cover on that break," Iaconelli says. "That becomes the focal point. Let's say you have a group of 10 fish that are using the drop. They are roaming up and down the secondary drop. If there is something along that break, like an isolated stump or rock, that is absolutely, without a doubt, a stopping point for those fish. So isolated cover helps to create more of a focal point on a drop bank, but they like to relate to the break itself."

Once Iaconelli recognizes the presence of a drop bank and the cover associated with a drop bank, he methodically works the structure. Drop banks do require an attention to detail and a manner of presentation that gets those pennies into the piggy.

"Here is my ideal scenario for fishing a drop bank," he says. "Let's say you have a break that's uniform over the course of a half-mile stretch of bank. What I want to find on that bank is an isolated piece of cover. But it's hard to find. I could be using the electronics and a slow bottom bait, and it could take me forever to find it."

In this situation, Iaconelli prefers to use a coverage bait first.

"Probably the best bait for those drops, and a bait I've won a lot of tournaments with, is a billed crankbait — a diving crankbait, not a lipless but an actual crankbait with a bill," he says.

With Iaconelli's method, the diving crankbait is used simultaneously as a bass catcher as well as a structure locator.

"It's not only a great search bait to find the fish, but a lot of times I use the crankbait actually as a transmitter of what is down there," he says. "I'm using the vibration to feel the bait. Like when I'm working it and it comes off that clay break and you get that normal feel of what that bill feels digging in the clay. All of a sudden I hit that lone stump that's out there. That stump is hard, it's different, and now I've identified something that is there."

When using a crankbait as both a structure finder and a fish catcher, Iaconelli believes it's important to work the bait in such a way as to maximize its potential.

"I like to fish the drop by quartering it," he adds. "My boat is usually a cast length away from the break itself, from the down slope. I'm going to go along that break, but I'm not casting straight down the lip."

Iaconelli wants the first half of the retrieve to be on top of the lip and then have the bait actually come down the break itself and go into deep water.

"You can get that bait dialed to where the first half of the retrieve is hitting bottom, the lip is digging in, and as it comes off the break, it is digging in a little more, but then it gets too deep and goes over the break," he explains. "Usually on a day when the fish are active and the water is warmer, they will be a little high on that lip. When it's a colder day and the fishing is tougher, they'll be out over that deeper water or low on the lip."

But just as a single screwdriver doesn't fit all screws, Iaconelli knows the diversity of drop banks requires different tools.

"The thing about drop banks is that they are not always at the same depth," he says. "I'm a big believer in learning a family of baits. One I like to use for drop banks is the Berkley Frenzy crankbait. They have three different depths zones — a shallow diver that goes 3 to 6 feet, a medium diver that goes 6 to 12 feet and then a deep diver that goes 12 to 15 feet. So one of the best things you can do in that situation is carry a family of baits."

After his crankbait searching, Iaconelli has another offering to use on isolated pieces of drop-bank structure.

"When I find something like that, I like to go back and fish that piece of cover with a lot slower bait — a jig or a worm," he says.

Two baits that Iaconelli will use in this situation are the 7-inch Berkley Power Worm and the new 4-inch Chigger Craw.

"The Chigger Craw offers a slow fall with a stand-up action that's perfect when a bait is descending a drop bank," Iaconelli notes.

Jimmy Mason is another pro fisherman who is quite adept at fishing drop banks. The Alabama angler often looks for fall-away structure of a drop bank in the upriver sections of Southern reservoirs. He believes current is an important factor in finding biting bass away from the banks. Power generation powers up the bite.

The types of structure around drop banks that interest Mason include a bend along the shelf, a submerged high spot on the bottom and a ditch or channel intersection connected to a drop bank. To find the latter, Mason cruises shorelines looking for creek outlets and studies his sonar, a Lowrance LCX 26 HD, which has the contours of every lake in the country.

"In the intersections and around all of the drop-bank structures, fish will be in the slack-water areas, and they will be facing into the current," Mason says.

To tackle this structure, Mason uses a handful of techniques based on the seasons.

"Early in the year, it's more of a bottom bite," he notes. "Bass will use the drop bank to migrate up and down, and they'll be relating to the bottom."

To attack these fish, Mason uses a modified spinnerbait — one designed to hug the rug without getting caught on snags. Starting with a 3/4- or 1-ounce Booyah Blade spinnerbait in white and chartreuse colors, Mason removes the upper blade entirely and replaces the bottom blade with a No. 5 willow-leaf blade.

"This takes away a lot of lift and keeps the bait down," Mason says.

To the modified spinnerbait, he attaches a modified trailer, a 4-inch Yum Forktail Dinger in pearl silver colors, and cuts off the front inch of the bait. The soft plastic is rigged with a vertical tail, just like the tail of a natural shad.

Mason fishes the bait on 17-pound Silver Thread fluorocarbon that's connected to an Ardent XS baitcaster on a "stiff" Kistler Magnesium Chatter Bait Rod.

The same current that produces a strong bite also means that Mason needs to adjust his retrieve. He positions his boat and casts into the flow. The retrieve is just fast enough, or slow enough, to keep the line tight. He lets the current push the modified spinnerbait along.

"The fish are sitting in slack water, and when the bait hits bottom and it breaks the rhythm of the blades, that is when you get most of your bites," Mason says.