After many years of bankin' it, I have finaly got a driftboat, 16 ft. Lavro . I have taken it out a couple times and managed not to spin circles, hit anything, and have put a couple of steelies in it. All of my experience is drift or float fishing and I would like to learn how to pull plugs. I have puchased some Tadpollies for now. In all of the reading that I have done the same phrase keeps coming up, "good plug water". If any old plug pullin' hands would descibe what good plug water is I would really apreciate it. thanks.

steelnut, check your e-mail on some ideas.

Not to be a smart alec, but it'll be the water that has all the plug pulling boats in it. Do a drift saturday afternoon in december or january and look for guys fishing. You want the ones with the intent look that glare a little bit when you get close to 'their' hole. That'll show you most of what you need to know.

Don't be afraid to just pull in 100 yards above somebody, and fish behind them. Watch what they do. Do the same, or do something slightly different. If he's going down in the middle, go down right next to the bank, or the reverse. Eventually one or the other of you will catch a fish, and you'll learn something about what plug water looks like. You can easily catch fish behind other boats, particularly if you've got a little something special down there. If you know they're running bait, run plugs, or vice versa.

Now, for a description, it's water that is slow enough so that you can hold the boat in it without getting a coronary, fast enough to hold fish, and long enough so that you can get the plugs set out and have water to still fish. Preferably it doesn't also have a bunch of bank fishermen that are fishing the same area of water. If a bank fisherman can hit you with a rock or his sinker, you're too close to be plugging that water.

Does that help?

another idea that might be good would be to hire a guide that pulls plugs. that would teach you the basics.

For me it's the cut-bank side of the river with a water depth of 4-8 feet over cobble about the size of softballs to bowling balls or larger (no ball jokes here please) with a well defined tailout at the end to push the fish towards until the water gets too fast/shallow that they can't back up anymore and decide to rip your tadpolly's head off.

Beezer

I agree Beezer.

Theoretically, you want to "trap" the fish and make him bite your plug.

Do this by starting out a the top of the hole and rowing the boat back and forth across the width of the hole. Go slowly downstream in a zig-zag fashion working towards the tail.

Hopefully, the fish will see the plug once or twice, get pissed and head downstream a little.
Then, by the time you get to the tailout, you wil be forcing him to strike because he doesn't want to head downstream any further.