The adage “sometimes less is more” applies to many life situations. Fishing is one of them. Consider some recent trips this spring.

A couple of weeks ago, my longtime fishing companion, Dave Keith, and I found ourselves on the Allegheny River. We were fishing a mid-river hump that rose to within four feet of the surface. While I held the boat in a stationary position, we cast soft jerkbaits – commonly called flukes – in and around the hump.

From this position, we cast our baits perpendicular to the shore, allowing the current to sweep them downriver. When the swing was done, rather than immediately reeling in and casting again, Dave simply let the fluke hover in the current, imparting an occasional twitch. It wasn’t long until a three-pound smallmouth bass rose from the depths and crushed the fluke.

Seeing this, I quickly anchored the boat and joined the action, using a Rapala suspending hard jerkbait rather than a fluke. I worked it in the same manner, achieving the same results. Over the next hour, we caught and released around two dozen smallmouth bass, the biggest being 21 inches/five-and-a-half pounds, nearly all coming on what I call deadsticking.

While it’s second nature to feel one needs to impart action to a lure to entice fish to bite and allow it to drift with the current in a natural presentation, I wasn’t overly surprised when deadsticking worked that day. I’ve had many similar experiences, including ones just a week or two prior.

In those cases, we were fishing below a small island. Eventually – likely sometime this month – smallmouth bass will create beds and spawn along protected areas the island provides. But at this time, they were relating to the current seam on the downstream end of the island, where two “splits” joined together.

Again, I anchored the boat so my guests could work the area below the island. A couple fish hit the drifting flukes on the swing, but then many more bit when the angler at the back of the boat simply held the bait in the current. Sometimes a minute or more would pass before a fish zeroed in on the soft plastic lure.

These scenarios differ in some respects, but also had important similarities. In the case of the mid-river hump, Dave and I were fishing, the water surrounding the shallow spot quickly dropped off into eight-to-12-foot depths. But despite the depth, and the cool water temperature that didn’t quite reach 50 degrees, the smallmouth bass were eager to drill lures hovering a foot or two under the surface. Conversely, the water below the island was only around three feet deep, basically a rocky/sandy extended point.

There were, however, two important similarities. Food and current.

In both situations, the bass were heavily feeding on baitfish, something made obvious by the regurgitated matter expelled as they battled boatside. Some fish even had the tails of forage fish protruding from their gullets. When fish are in a feeding frenzy such as this, the best thing you can do is keep a bait out in their zone and allow them to fish them. No finesse is needed, for obvious reasons.

Secondly, the fish were relating to obvious current seams, i.e., places where calm water met flowing water. It seems logical the bass would hold in the slacker water, then dart out to capture baitfish in the current.

While these anecdotes involve smallmouth bass, I’ve seen the same thing happen in other situations, even with wild brown trout. One that comes to mind is seeing fish rise to hit a green weenie fly hovering just under the surface in fairly strong current.

Keeping alert to when deadsticking is appropriate can lead to some excellent action.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle