Skipping Soft Plastics Under Ontario Docks
, 5 min reading time
Learn how to skip soft plastics under Ontario docks for largemouth bass: the gear, rigs, and casting technique that reaches unpressured fish.
Drive past any shoreline in Ontario cottage country — the Kawarthas, Lake Simcoe, Rice Lake — and you'll see the same thing: row after row of boat docks. Most anglers cast parallel to them and move on. The fish holding in the shade underneath never get pressured, because most anglers can't get a bait under a dock that sits six inches off the water. Skipping is the skill that changes that.
Skipping means bouncing a soft plastic across the surface like a flat stone, so it slides deep under low cover on its momentum. Once you learn it, a shoreline of docks becomes a hundred untouched targets.
Why Dock Skipping Works for Ontario Largemouth
Docks give largemouth three things they want: shade, overhead cover, and structure to ambush from. On bright days, bass tuck into the darkest pockets — under floats, beneath walkways, tight to the pilings. The middle of a large dock, where sunlight never reaches, is often the best water on the whole shoreline.
Most anglers cast at the outer edge and move on. The fish twenty feet back under a low deck almost never see a lure. That gap between the castable water and the actual cover is exactly what skipping closes.
Midday sun pushes fish under docks, so skipping doubles as a midday pattern. In fall, docks over 8 to 15 feet of water hold fish into October as baitfish suspend around the posts.
The Gear: Keep It Short and Low
Skipping is a low, sidearm cast, so the rod should match the motion: 6'6" to 7', medium-heavy, fast action. Shorter rods need less backswing and give you control on the hookset at distance under cover. Baitcasting is standard because thumbing the spool lets you control the skip and stop the bait on landing.
Run 30 to 40 lb braided line: it stays on the surface, doesn't stretch, and survives the pilings a hooked fish will wrap you around.
Back the reel's brakes off slightly from your normal setting. The spool needs to feed line fast at the start of the skip; your thumb takes over from there.
Three Rigs That Skip Best
Not every bait skips. Flat, compact profiles skip cleanly; bulky baits with appendages catch air and tumble. Three rigs cover almost every dock situation:
- Wacky-rigged stick worm. The king of skipping. A 5-inch stick worm hooked dead-center skips cleanly, and the two-sided shimmy on the fall is what gets bit under docks. Use a 1/0 or 2/0 wacky hook and an O-ring so the bait lasts. In dark shade, black-blue silhouettes against the lit water at the dock edge — the LOWLIGHT 5-inch stick worm is built for exactly that.
- Weightless Texas rig. A 1/0 to 3/0 EWG hook threaded through a stick worm. It skips almost as well and holds together when a bass drags it through a piling. In clearer water or around sand, the ANCHOR in pumpkin is the safe bet — green pumpkin is the colour Ontario largemouth have eaten their whole lives.
- Small jig or weighted wacky. For the deepest part of a big dock, a 1/8 to 1/4 oz jig head — or a nail weight in the worm — gets the bait down fast instead of parachuting forever. Add the weight when the water under the dock is deeper than about 8 feet.
How to Skip a Soft Plastic Under a Dock
The cast is a low sidearm swing, almost like skipping a stone. Keep the rod tip at knee height or below through the whole cast — the flatter the entry angle, the more skips you get.
- Start the forward swing slow and accelerate through it. Punch it and the bait sails; rush it and it digs in.
- Aim 2 to 3 feet in front of the dock, not at it. The bait should be skipping before it reaches the cover.
- Thumb the spool lightly on each skip to keep line tension even, then clamp down on landing so the bait drops straight at the first piling — that's where the first bite usually comes from.
Practice on open water first: pick a target like a floating leaf or buoy and skip to it until three out of five casts land where you want. Expect backlashes for the first hour. Everybody gets them.
Two mistakes show up every time: casting at the dock instead of in front of it, and skipping with a high rod tip, which turns the cast into a normal lob. Fix the aim point and the rod height and the rest sorts itself out.
Working a Dock Line Without Wasting Time
Approach quietly. Kill the trolling motor early, drift in, and fish the shady side first — that's where the fish sit at midday. Start at the outer pilings, skip deeper toward the walkway, and finish with the dark water in the middle.
Not every dock deserves five minutes. Fish the irregular ones over deeper water: cross-pilings, boat lifts, and connected swim rafts create more shade lines and ambush points. A bare straight pontoon over two feet of water takes one cast.
Watch for follows. Bass under docks often swim out to the edge of the shade to look, then slide back in. If a shadow tracks the bait out and turns away, skip back into the same pocket and let it fall on slack line. The second presentation — the one that dies right on the post — is the one that gets eaten.
And the etiquette: Ontario cottage lakes are full of private docks. Never tie to a dock ladder, never bang baits off the fascia on purpose, and don't step on anyone's property. You can catch the fish without touching their stuff.
A shoreline of docks is a shoreline of unpressured bass, and skipping is the cast that reaches them. Keep the rod tip low, aim short of the dock, and fish the shade like it owes you money.