Side Drifting

Fishing Technique to use from shore, bank, and boat

Timothy Kusherets

There are two ways to side drift: one is to fish from a boat and drift from the bow looking for seams, slots, drop-offs, and eddies; the second method is from shore to fish deep holds that are long enough to hold fish but too short to get down to using conventional weighting systems while fishing from the side of the boat.
Side-drifting from a boat is pretty straight forward. As the boat drifts downriver cast out to various holds. Both the boat and the offering drift at the relative same rate of speed. At the end of the drift reel in and cast out to the next hold downriver. The best offerings to use while side-drifting are jigs, corkies, and baits. Jigs and corkies last a relatively long time between leader changes but baits are different. Ordinarily baits don’t last for too many casts before it has to be changed but with side-drifting offerings can stay in the water longer without the added tension associated with excessive casting.
Side-drifting from shore is as fast as fishing from a boat since most holds worthy of fishing from shore are going to be short. Since most productive holds too short for active side-drifting are going to be easy to cover it’s not necessary to cast more than two times to fish the same water. To side-drift from shore cast well above the reach so that the leader can “naturally” drift into the hold. Give the line enough slack that it will fall to the bed at the top of the hold. As soon as the weight hits the bed reel in the slack, put a finger or thumb on the mainline, and keep tension just enough that any strikes will be perceptible without raising the leader off the bed. This is the meat of side-drifting. It’s easy, fast, and covers a lot of water in a short period of time.