It’s a popular, stealthy presentation often required to catch finicky offshore fish without the sounds and vibration of an engine or a tell-tale length of line leading the baits to tip them off, all the while covering water to find active fish.

Drift fishing has been called “a lazy man’s” way to hook-up, due to how sedentary it appears. And that’s true for those who want to keep the fishing simple. Note that I said “fishing.” V Catching while adrift in a boat can be as active as the angler wishes.

For example, drift fishing is a great way to scout new waters, for it forces you to slow down to a pace set by Mother Nature. It also leads you to cross – and investigate – water and cover that you may usually overlook, or even outright avoid, when under power making a beeline to where you think the fish are.

When on assignment for PDB on unfamiliar waters where I have no idea where to start fishing, I often motor out to an open area anywhere from 10 to 20 feet deep, shut down the boat, drop a line and drift with the wind as I pore over a chart or set up a plan for fishing the area. Sometimes I never get past the drift tactic, which often produces the fishing “fix” I need and the fish photos my editors expect me to produce.

Because the boat is moving, courtesy of the breeze or current or both, you don’t need live bait to produce the action needed to attract fish as you often do when fishing from an anchored craft. I usually start out with a jig just heavy enough to tap bottom at the drift speed the wind produces, and tip it with a rubber twister tail or a Berkeley Gulp! or PowerBait. If I have bait, such as nightcrawlers or minnows, I’ll try both until one produces. I place the rods in holders and relax, watching them for bites. Often, the fish hooks itself as the boat’s progress sets the hook.

On a fly-in fishing trip to Northern Ontario in a Cedar Strip Boat when my son was a toddler, we placed the lad on the bench seat between my wife and me. We then set up a portable fish-finder, clamped fishing rod holders to the gunwales and rigged rods with various presentations to fool the trophy-size brook trout that were said to be swimming below. To assuage the five-year-old wannabe angler while Mom and I experimented in attempts to hook-up, we baited his Zebco spincast outfit with a plain minnow below a couple of split shot and let him drop the line on the up-breeze side of the boat.

Any parent knows what happened next, and we spent the balance of the afternoon drifting plain minnows over open water, catching suspended squaretails that never even showed up on our screen.