new to fishing P4 current question

I am new to fishing P4 and was down there Tuesday. It was great to get out on the water again. Everts was a great help and will be doing business with them again, Thanks!

My question is everyone talks about dragging and keeping your line verticle. WOW I have no idea how you are doing this. I am running a 17.6 foot Princecraft deep V with a minkota 68lbs bow mount. I was having issues. We caught a few fish but I was spending most of my time trying to figure out how to work this current.

any advice will be greatly appriciated.

Dragging is a technique very different from verticle jigging. Think of dragging like extremely slow long line trolling with your jig.

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I am new to fishing P4 and was down there Tuesday. It was great to get out on the water again. Everts was a great help and will be doing business with them again, Thanks!

My question is everyone talks about dragging and keeping your line verticle. WOW I have no idea how you are doing this. I am running a 17.6 foot Princecraft deep V with a minkota 68lbs bow mount. I was having issues. We caught a few fish but I was spending most of my time trying to figure out how to work this current.

any advice will be greatly appriciated.

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Keep the jig vertical by drifting the exact speed of the river..

To keep it vertical you will have to adjust your weight of the jig. If your new, start with a 3/8 oz and work your way down, next try a 5/16 oz. Good luck. You’ll just love P4.

I think you are thinking of vertical drifting. You’ll need a 3/8 or 1/2 jig and use the TM to keep you at or slower than current speed. Braid or fluorocarbon will help as well.

Dragging is typically done as a long line technique, toss the jig out the back of the boat and drag it. There are IDO videos on youtube showing how to drag. I think in most they are using 1/16 and 3/32 jigs.

The current at the surface and the current at the bottom are not the same. If you want to vertical jig, you need to basically chase your jig with your trolling motor. Read the angle of your line to know if the jig is running faster or slower than the boat and then adjust. You will be on the TM a lot and the key is to be able to react before the jig gets way out of vertical. As previously stated, start with a heavier jig and work lighter. The lighter the jig, the more you need to do with the TM to stay on top of your jig.

With the heavier current I would assume you need a heavier jig. Figured out the vertical part last time down there. Thinking the current is pushing stuff along at x speed, a dragging jig would be to create slower presentation for the fish to have a longer look at the bait. Boat would I assume need to be slower than the current, and the heavy jig to be able to drag bottom without getting washed away, in these higher current flows.

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With the heavier current I would assume you need a heavier jig. Figured out the vertical part last time down there. Thinking the current is pushing stuff along at x speed, a dragging jig would be to create slower presentation for the fish to have a longer look at the bait. Boat would I assume need to be slower than the current, and the heavy jig to be able to drag bottom without getting washed away, in these higher current flows.

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When dragging jigs, you aren’t actually dragging it on the bottom. You use lighter jigs and run it up off the bottom, faster than the current going downstream, and just making forward progress upstream. I don’t drag in high flow conditions, but typically I am running 3/32 downstream and 1/8 upstream to maybe 1/4 at the heaviest.

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With the heavier current I would assume you need a heavier jig. Figured out the vertical part last time down there. Thinking the current is pushing stuff along at x speed, a dragging jig would be to create slower presentation for the fish to have a longer look at the bait. Boat would I assume need to be slower than the current, and the heavy jig to be able to drag bottom without getting washed away, in these higher current flows.

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When dragging jigs, you aren’t actually dragging it on the bottom. You use lighter jigs and run it up off the bottom, faster than the current going downstream, and just making forward progress upstream. I don’t drag in high flow conditions, but typically I am running 3/32 downstream and 1/8 upstream to maybe 1/4 at the heaviest.

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That doesn’t make sense to me. Why call it dragging? You guys are the experts though, I’ll go hide back in my cave

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That doesn’t make sense to me. Why call it dragging? You guys are the experts though, I’ll go hide back in my cave

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Yeah, that’s a great question, and I don’t have a good answer for you there. Some people call it jig trolling, which is probably a better description of what you are actually doing. Not saying that plowing bottom with a jig won’t catch fish though. Some days, that’s what the fish want. As an added bonus you get to set the hook on every rock and log your jig bangs into.