Drop shot for trout

[FDRB3]

I’ve recently gotten on this river fishing kick, seeing as how I live about 10 minutes from the soho dam and I was told working a jerkbait on the river for trout would greatly increase my experience and confidence in throwing it on the lake come spring, anywho, one thing led to another and 3 weeks later, here I am tinkering with every finesse technique I know trying to pull a 6 inch slimy fish out of 20 inches of water. So far I’ve found that drop shotting gets me the most bites, problem is, I can only set the hook decent enough to land 1 out of every 6. I try exposing my hook just a bit on the back of my bait because mainly I’m fishing from the bank into logjams and tree roots, and I lose more hooks in 30 minutes on the river than I do 30 hours on the lake. I have some small treble stingers we got to rig on a damiki for short nibbles on the tail, but I don’t want to risk the fish swallowing it because I release all my fish. I just want to know if anyone else has experimented with this and have found any tricks they would share. 

[trackertxw175]

 When I use a dropshot, my hookup ratio got better switching to the circle twist knot that is used on a trot-line. Had problems using a Palomar knot with the hook dropping at an angle. I think it helps to nose hook the plastic and use a circle hook with the point of the barb that angles slightly off the line of the shank. A longer tag end to the weight would probably help you since you are fishing closer to horizontal than vertical in 20" of water.

[rusty50576]

Like tracker said I have always heard missed dropshot bites are usually because of the knot. I will also throw out there that a trout is a nibbling bait stealing sum b