Gettin’ Down the Dabble

Matching the movement of your bait to the mood of the fish

This is one of those interviews where a great fisherman decides to give up the whole story, all the details, the stuff that took his whole lifetime to figure out. It’s the kind of conversation you could only hope to have with somebody, if you’re lucky enough to catch him in the right mood. Only this is even better, because we had a pencil and paper handy and wrote down all the good stuff.
Here it is, in its entirety, a sit-down interview with Pat Smith, who is dedicated to Ice Team and its mission of helping people improve their fishing skills.
The focus is on presentation. It doesn’t matter whether you’re after bluegills or giant pike, the general concepts are the same.
No matter how polished your skills might be, you will pick up some new ideas from Pat’s personal approach to ice fishing. If you’re struggling to consistently trigger bites, these insights can change your world.
Before we get started, just a few key things to think about, so they don’t swish by while you’re reading. Smith talks about being so wrapped up in the fishing experience that it’s not relaxing for him. You don’t have to fish with quite the same edge he does; lots of people go fishing for lots of reasons, and you can be more relaxed about it and still benefit from using Smith’s approach.
For example, one thing he often does is something you probably have never thought about. He typically begins the day by searching hard and fast until he finds a few fish. He, like Dave Genz and the rest of the Ice Team, believes in the value of moving, most of the time, until you find active biters. But on that first pod of fish, he often settles in to see what it will take to catch them. That’s where the title for this article came from. Smith assumes that once he has the dabble down, it will translate to other fish he sits over on that same day. Once he has the dabble dialed in, he goes back into run-and-gun mode, resuming the hunt for more fish.
Casual observers who run into Smith on the ice often misinterpret his strategy, thinking he sits too long over the first group of fish he encounters. Now you know why he does it.
Through this interview, Smith will teach you how he studies the fish for clues as to how they want the bait presented. We’ve all heard that we should ‘give the fish what they want,’ but how much information do we ever get that explains how to do it?
Smith can’t talk to the animals any better than we can, but he has taught himself to read their body language. What may be most impressive is that he not only does it when he’s sight fishing (and can see the fish with his own two eyes), but also when he’s studying the display on a Vexilar.
He is going to tell you how he does it.
When the fish is in the hole in clear, shallow water– and you’re within sight of each other– that might be the most exciting moment in ice fishing. What you do as the fish approaches dictates whether it takes the bait, or fades out of sight without opening its mouth. Pay close attention as Smith explains how he has learned to focus on specific parts of the fish to read intent and mood, while avoiding eye contact, just as deer and turkey hunters avert their eyes. It’s long been believed that ‘eyes burn into eyes,’ and Pat is among those who believe there is something to that.
Fishing the way Pat Smith does is an intense thing, and we’re grateful and excited that he has so completely offered his secrets to you.

Q: You always talk about how important ‘the dabble’ is to your ice-fishing success, how it’s “all about the dabble.” Just to make sure we get off on the right foot, tell us how you would define the word dabble.
Pat Smith: (He thinks for a long time, then speaks slowly and thoughtfully, and you can tell he’s choosing every word)… it’s matching the movement of your lure or bait to the attitude of the fish. It’s your attempt to give the fish what they want, which changes as their mood changes.

Q: There must have been a time when you were not as good at triggering bites as you are now. Think back to the time when you struggled more. Were there big breakthroughs, or even little ones, that you can remember? What helped you understand the importance of the dabble, and learn to become good at it?
Pat Smith: Getting my ass handed to me on Okoboji, for one thing (laughs). That wasn’t the only time, either. There are several lakes like that, where it’s tough, like Osakis. You go out there in the mood to be all wound up and fish them hard, and it doesn’t work that way all the time.
You have to analyze the situation every time you go out, and do what it takes. It’s not always major revelations that let you figure it out; it’s the little, itty-bitty things that make the biggest difference in fishing.

Q: Let’s keep getting very specific and digging for examples. When you talk about little things that make a big difference, what kinds of things do you mean?
Pat Smith: Like not taking your style of fishing, because everyone has their quirks, and try to jam it down their throat. You have to develop the ability to bite your tongue and do something different. Don’t be so in love with the way you fish. If you need to change up jigs, you gotta do that.
And learn to change the attitude of your jig to match the attitude of the fish. Some people, not very many, can do that without cutting their lines (to change to a different jig). Dave (Genz) can do it, he can slow down the motion of his jig, or speed it up, to match what the fish want. I’ve seen him do it, and I don’t even know how much he thinks about it anymore. He’s just that in tune with the fish.

Q: We want you to keep thinking back to the days when you were just learning how to consistently catch fish through the ice. Was there anything you did that stands out in your mind that helped you learn to present the baits better, and detect bites?
Pat Smith: Actually, I did. I used a small center slider type float (like the smallest Thill Center Sliders). They were skinny, and about a half-inch long. I freelined the line through the float, didn’t use a slip-bobber knot or anything. I was just using the float to steady everything up and keep the line dead center in the hole as I jigged. When you shake as out-of-control as I do most of the time, you need something to steady you up.
I learned that if I got out of control as I was doing an aggressive pound (the ‘pounding’ presentation Genz and other Ice Team pros often talk about), the bobber would start flopping all over the place. I wanted it to stand straight up no matter how hard I was jigging.
That’s what dialed my pounding in.
I still think it’s a great way to learn how to pound and keep your bait in a very specific location, so it just quivers right in front of the fish without moving all over the place. If you make a mistake, the bobber flip-flops all over the hole. You learn to do that heavy pound while the jig is virtually quivering in place, which it has to a lot of times in order to be effective. A lot of people haven’t learned how to pound correctly.

Q: You’ve said before that practicing your pounding with the center slider float taught you not only to pound aggressively but also how to get a good vibrating kick to the jig when you fished it more slowly. How long did you practice with the float on your line until you felt you had it down?
Pat Smith: A whole winter. (For Smith, that’s many long days on the ice.) It took a long time, but it was worth it, because pounding is one of the best ways to catch fish, especially in heavy weeds. When you’re in the jungle, you have to make enough noise for the fish to find it.

Q: It’s not well known, but you’ve made a real study of the fish’s body language that helps you read the mood of the fish, and that in turn helps you ‘give them what they want.’ Sight fishing, being able to see the fish in shallow water, is often called a great learning experience. Was that true in your case? Did you do much or most of your early work while sight fishing? How big an advantage is it, to be able to see the fish with your own eyes, at least while you’re learning to read the fish’s body language?
Pat Smith: It’s incredible. It gives you far and away the advantage, once you learn how to read the fish. Being able to see the fish allowed me to learn what I did.
I learned a lot from fishing on Minnetonka (a large, clear-water lake in the Twin Cities area, now known as a big-time bass tournament venue). Gin-clear, 17 feet of water, and the luxury of seeing multiple fish eyeing your bait at the same time. I watched what those fish did as I moved my jig. Okoboji (in Iowa) is another good one, because you might see three or four fish all keyed in on your jig. But in ‘Tonka, I remember having 15 or 20 nice ‘gills in sight at one time.

Q: Have you developed a different way of reading different species of fish? In other words, does a walleye exhibit different behavior than a bluegill as it moves in to examine or eat the bait? Are there differences in what you look for?
Pat Smith: All fish are predators. They all manipulate their prey, ambush them, attack them. The body language is very similar, whether it’s a muskie, northern, walleye, bass, crappie, bluegill, whatever. I see flashbacks when I look down the hole at a super large bluegill, of a musky’s rear pectoral fin, of studying it and trying to see what kind of mood that fish is in.
I think that’s really a key, that ability to put in your mind’s eye what that fish looks like, by studying what his pectoral fins are doing, the lower fins on the fish. If you get used to watching them for clues, you will know exactly what direction that fish wants to move, and whether it’s in a positive or negative mood.

Q: It sounds like the pectoral fins are the thing you key in on.
Pat Smith: The forward and the rear pecs. Actually, not so much the rear pecs on a bluegill, because their body shape makes them hard to see. But for sure on the long predators like muskies and pike. They are the telltale sign of what that fish is going to do.

Q: Okay, so we’re getting to the heart of it now! You’re telling us that you zero in on the pectoral fins as a fish approaches your bait. But we want to know more. Tell us the details… what are the various body postures that you see, what do they tell you, what do you do in response?
Pat Smith: Let’s say you drop the jig in the water and work it down super slow. The closer the jig comes to their strike zone, as you’re dropping it down, you watch each fish’s curiosity.
It happens really fast, but you might say that I’m asking myself constantly, a series of questions. Is the fish tentative? Is it continuing to approach? Does it back off? I want to know what their body language is telling me. They absolutely, without a doubt, tell you how they want that jig.

Q: Is it possible to come up with a neat, clean list of all the possible body postures and what each one means?
Pat Smith: I think fishermen always want that. Some of it you’re just going to have to learn to recognize, from experience. But now you know what to look for.

Q: We know what you mean. You can learn an awful lot by reading articles, but you still have to spend time on the ice, staring down the hole, so you can see for yourself what the various body postures looks like.
Pat Smith: Absolutely.

Q: Still, can you describe some of the things we can look for, so we’ll know them when we see them?
Pat Smith: Sure. The positive fish, if you drop it down too slow and don’t fish it aggressive enough, they lose interest in it. I do believe the hardest thing to comprehend is the difference between a super positive fish and a negative fish.
If a fish is up and running, and super aggressive, don’t be surprised if he backs off when you slow it down. But if you start pounding it again, really hard, he’ll probably turn around and slam it. That’s the kind of fish you can excite with what you’re doing.
You can tell a negative fish because when you’re dropping it down, it’s coming in, he’s nosing up to it, just fiddling around, but when you get aggressive (by jigging harder) he bolts out of your hole. That tells you to slow down, or try dead-sticking it.

Q: How do you hold the rod, or do you lay it down, when you deadstick?
Pat Smith: I put the rod on my leg and my hand over the rod. I don’t let go of the reel; I hold onto it and put pressure on the rod with one hand, on the blank just in front of the cork.

Q: Once you figure out how a few fish want the bait, do you then assume they all want it the same way? Or are you constantly on the lookout for differences in each fish that approaches?
Pat Smith: In the old days, we believed that all the bass in the lake were doing the same thing at the same time. That no longer holds water. You should always look for the pattern, though. You can start making up a pattern, and we can get most of the fish to eat a certain presentation on the same day a lot of times, but not all of them.
The day is the day, and the weather is the weather, and those are the cards you’re dealt, so you go fishing. Nothing screws up a day like the weather. And human error. You can have the perfect weather, be in the perfect spot, think you’re doing everything right, and it still doesn’t happen. There’s a lot going on under the water that we still don’t understand.

Q: Even with your approach and your experience, do you run into days where things seem all scrambled up, with lots of different fish showing different preferences in how they want the bait presented? Where you just don’t seem able to pattern them?
Pat Smith: Yep. And I can’t write in stone what weather patterns, or time of year, or time of day, or anything about when it happens. It just happens.

Q: That kind of day must be really tough to deal with.
Pat Smith: Yep.

Q: You have talked in the past about ‘creating a dabble’ for the day, or for a certain lake. Could you talk about what that means? (Because we’d still like more specifics on what you look for, and how you read the fish.)
Pat Smith: Sure. When I start out the day, I want to build my confidence by creating a dabble for that lake, for that day. So I have a tendency to sit on the first group of fish I find and work on my dabble before I start running.
Some days it hurts me, because I sit on the same school of fish for a long time, trying to figure out what they want. I’m trying to figure out a pattern for the majority. You want to trigger the most fish, and remember what you did to trigger them, and then you can start running all over, confident that you’re presenting the bait the way most of the fish want it. That helps you decide how long to stay in one hole later in the day.

Q: And you can do this whether you’re sight fishing or fishing in deeper water, on what you call a ‘locator bite.’ One of the big things our readers are going to want to know is how you make the transition from seeing the fish to interpreting the signals on a flasher. What do you look for on your Vexilar display, and how do read it and know what the fish was doing in response to your presentation?
Pat Smith: You drop the Vexilar in the water, and yes, we see fish on the screen. Let’s say I’m fishing bluegills, the very first thing I’m going to drop down there is a Fat Boy, #10, with two maggots to start. I drop it down pretty aggressively, open bail, won’t go fast enough. Stop the jig abruptly, above the school. Try to wait long enough for the spin to come out of the line, and then start the aggressive pound, ‘boom-boom-boom-boom-boom,’ get those maggots twitching on the tail.
See what kind of reaction you get. I’ll start doing this a couple feet above the fish, and if nothing happens right away—and we’re talking milliseconds—I start dropping the jig down closer to them. I’m figuring out where, in the water column, they want to eat the bait. That’s the hardest thing to figure out. The fish either come up or stay down.
I’m lowering the jig as I’m pounding. All of a sudden, on the Vexilar, as you’re studying the rhythm of your jig, all of a sudden one of those red lines (that are being made by the fish) starts taking on that same dithering rhythm. That fish is moving toward your jig.
You get some lines that dither like that, that burn in a heavier red. Your jig flickers on the screen. All of a sudden, one or maybe a couple fish in that school start flickering. They’re moving, is what the Vexilar is telling you.
When I see that, I try to slow down and stay in that water depth, and make those moving fish come to my jig. The farther you can get the fish to move, either up or down in the water column, the better shot you have of actually catching that fish. The farther he moves out of his comfort zone toward your jig, that increases the chance he’ll bite.
If you don’t see any of this kind of signal, keep dropping the jig as you pound it, eventually going through the school. Try to piss off the bigger fish, and work back up through the school to see if you can’t break one loose and get it come with you.

Q: When you fish with a Vexilar, you have that stare going that parents worry about when their kids are sitting too close to the TV. Can you tell us what you’re looking at, what you’re looking for? Are there any secrets to doing a good job of watching your Vexilar display, in other words?
Pat Smith: I try to focus right around the jig. Say I’m on the 20-foot scale and fishing at 15 feet. I try not to let my eyes wander above 10 or below 20 most of the time. You’re zoned in. I want to know what my jig is doing to influence the attitude of the fish.
With the Vexilar, it’s no different to me than looking down the hole. I spent lots of hours practicing in sight-fishing situations, where I’m looking down the hole at the fish but I have the locator running, too. I’d turn the locator up, stare down the hole, look back at the locator, now a fish comes in and I’ve got the jig and the fish on my screen at the same time, and I can see how the fish is moving through the hole so I look back up at the screen and see how that movement manipulates the depthfinder display. I paid close attention to how the fish would show up on the screen depending on if he was off to the side of the hole or right below me, right at the jig.
This would be a good thing for anybody to practice, but you have to go into it with the mindset that it’s more important to spend most of the time watching the Vexilar than looking down at the fish. Look down at the fish just to get that picture in your mind of what it’s doing and what the fins look like, stuff like that. You don’t have to watch those fish eat the jig. Watch it happen on the screen.
It is a mindset. You should go fishing a lot of times wanting to learn more than having to touch the fish. You should want to learn the locator more than you want to touch the fish. Once you learn what it is you’re looking at on the locator, you’re going to catch way more fish every time you go.

Q: This whole business of learning to read and interpret a Vexilar signal should almost be a whole story by itself, but let’s press forward and get into more details. Try to describe for us a typical scenario as you see it on your Vexilar, how you interpret what that fish is doing, and what you do in response.
By reading even one such example, our readers might get a better idea of how to go out on the ice and practice it for themselves, to teach themselves.
Pat Smith: Before you drop the jig down, you should have an idea of how you’re going to present the jig. Don’t start thinking about it after the thing’s down in the strike zone.
As you drop the jig down and work it in the strike zone, if you can take a green line (often made by a fish that is out at the edge of the transducer cone) and turn it orange and then dark red, you are doing something right. That fish is now directly below you, and likes your presentation.
If you get denied—if the green signal turns orange and then red, but the fish leaves without biting—then you need to change something about your approach. You got the fall down, and he didn’t just run off the screen. He was interested enough to give you a sniff, a love rub, whatever you want to call it, but he didn’t eat the bait. There are some fish that just do that.
Next time a fish comes on the screen, you need to remember what you did to the last fish that caused him to leave, and try to adjust your dabble to make him more interested.
If you drop the jig down hard and the fish run away, quit dropping your jig down so hard (laughs). If you drop your jig down hard and one of those little red lines comes screaming up to eat it, next time I’m going to stop it high above the fish and see if I can make one of those fish come up and eat it by pounding it hard.
Sometimes, you have fish on the screen but you drop it down too slow, and they’re gone by the time you get into the strike zone. Those are probably cruising fish, so if that’s what you’re dealing with, you have to get to the next ones quick, in time to get them to stick around and eat. They won’t sit there waiting for you.
We really should talk about flinching, too. A lot of people start doing something different when the fish show up, and I call that flinching. They pause or do something out of rhythm, and that can cause the fish to refuse you. If you do that, try to notice it, because that can be the problem all by itself. There might be nothing wrong with your approach, and if you just keep it going as the fish approaches, the next one will eat.

Q: Do you have confidence in your ability to solve the bite with just the Vexilar, without seeing the fish with your own eyes?
Pat Smith: Yes. I also love the camera. But here again, it’s a mindset. You have to wanna pay enough attention to notice what the fish want, whether you’re watching with your eyes or watching the locator. Unless you open your mind and actually want to learn, it isn’t going to come to you. This is one of those sports that, the day you quit learning you’re done. You might as well pack it all up and have a garage sale.

Q: We’ve learned a lot already by listening to what you have to say. You’ve always been quick to credit others with helping you learn, too. What do you have to do, in order to be a good ‘learner’ in this sport?
Pat Smith: I’m lucky, because I have an opportunity to fish with the legends. But you do, too, just by hanging around here at trueblueicefishing.com. I think you need to stop, watch and learn what those people do to catch fish, that might be different from the way you like to do it. The ability to change your style, or manipulate your style to imitate their style.
You have to choke down your pride and stop that feeling that you have to impress that person, do well in front of them, and just watch what they do. Dave (Genz) would flip if he knew the hours I spent watching him through my Fish Trap window. Your way isn’t always the best way. There are lots of different fish, and a lot of different ways to catch ‘em.

Q: Before we let you go, we want a couple more details on how you read the body language of the fish, and how you adjust what you’re doing to try to get that fish to bite.
Pat Smith: On a long predator like muskies or pike, the pectoral fins are way forward and way stern. They’re very separated. Sometimes, depending on the angle of the fish as it’s coming in to the hole, you can watch both sets really well.
On a bluegill, the forward pectoral fins are right below the gills, but the rear pecs are under his body, making it harder to read the rear fins. But they all quiver, and reading whether it might be a nervous quiver as the fish is coming up, or very steady, especially on big bluegills where they look like airplane wings, you have to watch those, because they move before the fish does.
On a hard-charging musky, walleye or pike, there’s a lot of overall body language you can read, too. If the fish is coming in kind of nonchalant, the pectoral fins are just kind of flattened out. Always, the pectoral fins tell you a lot about what direction the fish is about to go. The nervousness or steadiness of the fins, how high they’re riding, or low, shows the direction the fish is about to go. And the forward or rear canting to them, the angle the fins are held forward or backward, tells you whether that fish is about to start backpedaling or continue coming forward.
Those are all clues as to whether that fish likes what you’re doing, likes your bait enough to keep coming and eat it.

Q: But this all happens really quickly, right? You’re talking about having parts of a second to react and change what you’re doing, right? And there’s always the excitement factor you have to deal with as the fisherman who has this big fish in the hole.
Pat Smith: If you learn to read the fins, concentrate on the fins instead of your bait or the whole fish, I think that helps you increase your catch, because you’re less likely to flinch. You should be able to keep doing what you were doing with the bait, or slow it down or speed it up, without looking at it all the time. That’s where the jigging practice comes in. Presenting the bait should be second nature, so you can focus your attention on the fins and concentrate on them.
Plus, I think if you’re concentrating on the pectoral fins and trying to react to what they do—change it up if the fish starts to backpedal, keep it going if they keep coming toward the bait—you’re less likely to flinch on the fish’s forward motion. If you look at the whole fish and get awed by his size, you’re not in the game. That fish might still bite, but it’s not because of some great thing you did.
When that fish makes his move, you can’t flinch. This is the big moment. All super sports are the same. The ability to focus on specific things when the deal gets hot and heavy makes the end result positive and not negative. Watch the fins, and survive the major body rush. If you look at the jig and the head of the fish, on that first forward motion, the rush, you are likely to flinch, pull the trigger too soon, yank the thing right out of his mouth.

Q: If everything goes fine, which it does with a lot of aggressive fish, you probably can’t pull it away no matter what you do. But how about a fish that starts to advance, then changes its mind? How do you react in the heat of battle, and what do you look for?
Pat Smith: You’re staring down the dark hole and all of a sudden a big ‘gill glides in and fills it up. The pecs are out, almost like the palm of your hand, fingers spread really wide, canted forward, and just dithering, like your fingers moving out on the tips. You haven’t flinched yet, you’re doing the dabble, everything is just fine.
He gets right up to your bait, and he’s not going to eat. All of a sudden the pectoral fins cant back. He didn’t like something. I may start moving that jig up, just doing what I was doing, but making it move upward in the water column. I’m trying to manipulate that fish, so it goes back into a positive, fin-forward attitude. As I change what I’m doing, I’m focused on his pectoral fins. I want to see if I can change his mood.
If the fish continues to lose interest, you do something else different. Drop it down, slow it down, swim it more rhythmically. If you concentrate on the head of that fish, or sit there watching your jig, you don’t have that split-second to change your presentation at that critical moment before the fish totally makes up his mind what he’s going to do.
If you read it right, those fins give you a chance to take a fish that’s backing off and get him moving forward again. Keep doing what he likes, change what he doesn’t like. If the fish is moving forward, that tells me I’m on the right track.
Again, if you can see them, pay attention to the rear pecs. Those are the intense muscles when they’re about to go for it. They tell you the most about the direction the fish is about to go, and their attitude. The forward pecs are more like wings. You can work on a fish’s intent, and I think you can almost make them bite even when they don’t really want to. It’s less than a blink before it happens once it starts, and it seems like their muscles take over, like their muscles know before their brain knows.
The fish’s body definitely does specific things before the forward motion occurs, and you just have to learn to know it when you see it.
Make the fish move forward, then try to get him moving forward faster. Get him to commit. Even if you don’t catch that fish, pay attention to the positive things that happened, and build on it next fish, so you can dial in the dabble.

Q: Is the ability to do this a skill you can develop over time, or are there anglers who are just better at it naturally, or a little of both?
Pat Smith: Both. You’ll be way slow at first. Don’t get frustrated. Make the learning part of the fun of going fishing. Build on the good things that happen. Study the fins and learn what they look like when the fish is lolly-gagging and when he’s about to eat.
Get flashbacks to happen in your mind, and try to get your instincts to take over when the fish is in the hole. Train yourself to concentrate on the fins, not your bait and not the fish’s big head. Keep your mind in the game. Train yourself to be a fisherman, instead of just going fishing.