Winter Tips: Jerkbaits
Jerkbaits belong to the family of lipped minnow lures. The original was the Rapala Floating Minnow, still made of buoyant wood. It became a sensation when introduced in North America over fifty years ago. It was a revolutionary fish-catcher and commanded a premium price at the time. Rapalas were selling for $5 apiece, and everything else, other lures sold for $1.25. So you see, even fifty years ago, there were high-priced, high end imported lures.
The Rebel Minnow, Cotton Cordell Red Fin and other minnows soon followed. These were injection-molded hard plastic minnows that could be mass-produced and sold for less.
Legendary lure designer Cotton Cordell recalls, “I didn’t have the money to buy Rapalas, so I built the Red Fin. I made the first Red Fin back when the government was busy impounding many new lakes. Ouachita and Sam Rayburn were two brand new lakes where I perfected the Red Fin, wiggling it through freshly-flooded treetops on these and other newly-made waters at that time. It proved deadly for largemouth."
“The Red Fin became an immediate success,” says Cotton. “People who were the first to use Red Fins on different lakes, what happened for a time was if you used a Red Fin, you caught fish. If you didn’t have a Red Fin, you caught nothing.
The Pause That Pays
The Red Fin was (still is) a floating minnow, best used on the surface.
“The most reliable way to use the Red Fin back then was cast out, wait a spell, pop it 3 or 4 times, and pull it under to swim 3 or 4 yards. Let it pop up to the top again. Pop it 3-4 times. Wait a spell. Pull it under for 3-4 more yards. Just keep repeating those steps. For some reason, the fish like it on top. They rarely hit it during the time it is pulled under. They mostly hit in the intervals it is paused and popped on top.”
The First Suspending Jerkbait
“I was also the first one to make a suspending minnow. Because of how fish wouldn’t hit the Red Fin when it was swimming, I figured a minnow that was just stopped that would suspend underwater, like one sitting on top, you could pop and pause underwater, just like on top.”
“It worked,” says Cotton.
Suspending jerkbaits have come far since Cotton created the first one based on how bass hit topwaters when paused.
Similarity to Popping Plugs
Today's modern anglers rarely use the forgotten floating minnow for topwater presentations anymore.
Most anglers today do use poppers though, and just like a topwater popper, pulls and pauses are how to work a jerkbait. The way you would use a topwater popper, by jerking it to make it pop or splash, and then pausing it to wait for a strike is exactly how to fish a jerkbait. Instead of making a splash when you jerk it, a jerkbait will dart and shoot out suddenly to one side or the other, like a panicked baitfish bolting.
As their names imply, you pop a popper or jerk a jerkbait - but that's not when bass bite them. It's almost always when you pause the retrieve with a jerkbait or popper. As the lure sits motionless, that's when bass will hit it. With either lure, with more active fish, you can pop-pop-pop and work faster with shorter pauses - and with inactive fish, you can wait a long time indeed between pops or jerks.
What time of year to use jerkbaits is also related to poppers in that, when the season's too cool for topwater poppers to work, jerkbaits will. Put another way, many anglers consider jerkbaits as cold water tools.
Beyond that simple explanation, there are infinite variations that make fishing jerkbaits a true art. With all models, when you jerk your rod, they dart to one side, then the other side. Jerking, sweeping, twitching or ripping as you start turning the handle. Jerking, sweeping, twitching, or ripping as you stop turning the handle. Reeling steadily, and for how long? At what speed? And always the pause...for how brief or long? There are no stock answers to any of these questions, but slower speeds, longer pauses and softer rod movements usually coincide with progressively colder water temps in winter. Make no mistake, the correct dart or jerk sequence needs to be discovered and done just right, but that is only the attraction. Remember, the hit is almost always gotten on the pause. It's a game of using the bait's built-in wiggle and the sudden darting jerk of the rod tip to excite and attract, then using the pause to get the strike.
Type of Gear to Throw Jerkbaits On
Braid is slowly but surely becoming a more popular and pervasive line choice for bass fishing. Still, it isn’t common yet to hear someone recommend braid for fishing jerkbaits. I do. Either spinning or baitcasting with 10, 15 or 20 lb braid (depending on small/light to big/heavy jerkbaits) with a 5-6 foot leader of mono or fluoro (whatever test leader matches the quarry and conditions). Note you don’t often hear of mono being recommended as a leader for braid, but mono’s great for jerkbaits or topwaters.
Different Types of Jerkbaits
We just mentioned using a different grade of gear for light/small versus heavy/big jerkbaits. So that's our first difference - size.
Most of the world uses the metric system, and many of the high-end jerkbaits being imported into North America today come from Japanese vendors. Lure sizes are measured in millimeters:
- Anything below 100 millimeters (down to 75 mm or so) can probably be considered small and/or light jerkbaits. You may consider these as ordinary or average size jerkbaits, and they are going to be more popular up north where you have smallmouth and northern strain largemouth - or anywhere anytime you are after average size bass.
- 100 millimeters or more can probably be considered big and/or heavy jerkbaits. These tend to be more popular across the south, where bass run larger - or anywhere anytime you are after above-average size bass.
Buoyancy is another difference. We talked of shallow floating minnows that pop to the surface when paused, but few anglers use them these days.
At the other extreme, there are sinking minnows that you may countdown to reach deeper water, but few anglers today use them either.
Another kind are deep-diving, fast-rising jerkbaits that may be jerked through cover and will rise up out of snags when paused, often getting hit as they rise free of obstructions. This is similar to what many deep floating/diving crankbaits do, except in a long, slim minnow body with a jerking retrieve. Again, relatively few bass anglers deploy these kinds of deep-diving, fast-rising jerkbaits.
That leaves us with what most anglers use today - slow-floating, slow-sinking and most desirable of all, suspending jerkbaits that are the most popular kinds today.
Suspension
Suspension is a result of the gas trapped inside the lure body, counterbalanced by the body weight or ballast inside. The gas inside the body is influenced by air pressure and elevation. Water temperature is another influence, and if you've ever taken a dip in your favorite fishing spot, then you know there are hot and cold spots all over. Since a lure may also spend much time out of the water, air temperature also influences the gas inside the lure. So for any given combination of air pressure, elevation, air temperature, water temperature, a certain suspending lure is only going to suspend at a certain depth. Change any one of those factors, and the lure will suspend at a different depth. If you stop a lure, and it is not at the perfect depth for it to suspend, it is going to float slowly or sink slowly. So suspending lures don't suspend most of the time, but will rise or sink very slowly, and many anglers (and bass) consider that entire range from slow-floating through slow-sinking to all fall loosely under "suspending" action.
Body Posture
Some suspending (we use that term loosely) jerkbaits gravitate toward a nose down, tail down or maintain a level body posture during the pause in the retrieve.
You may hear all kinds of advice for when a nose down, tail down or horizontal posture is best for bass. Ditto for when a slow-sinking, slow-rising or true suspending model is best. You may even use special heavy metal adhesive tape to stick on the lip, under the head, tail or belly of a jerkbait, use lighter or heavier hooks or wrap heavy metal wire on hook shanks in order to induce a head up, tail up, horizontal, truer suspending or sinking, or to slow up a too fast-riser - and all those things may matter - or not. Most important of all, if you think they matter, they do.
Actually, what is most important is if a jerkbait catches fish, regardless of whether it sinks, suspends, rises, pauses tail up, head down or horizontal.
Pareto's Law
Pareto's Law states that 20% of some/any group is statistically going to produce 80% of the results (and vice versa). This is true of jerkbaits too. If you take 10 jerkbaits, I don't care how much they cost you, or if they sink, float, suspend, cant head down, tail down or horizontal, 2 of them are going to catch most of your fish, 6 may only ever be average, and another 2 may hardly ever get a sniff.
That's why whether a certain jerkbait catches fish is more important to me whether it sinks, floats, stands on its head or does tap dances.
When I find a jerkbait that catches fish, I use a permanent black magic marker to put a dot on its head, so I know it is a good one. Since the undersides are light-colored, I often mark under the chin. Other jerkbaits that only catch a few, but never truly excel, I mark them the same way, but in the mid-section of the belly. Those that hardly catch any, mark near the tail, and after a few poor trips, don't use them anymore.
Most guys will try to add weight like we talked about earlier or modify the poor producers in some way so they can keep on using them. They probably wont work. If you do feel a need to add weight to a jerkbait, do it to one with a black mark you made under the chin, not the tail.
That's probably one of the hardest things for most guys to do, spend anywhere from $3 to $30 on a jerkbait, and then not use it. You'll only waste your time if you do.
Running Depth
We've covered differences in size (small/average versus large), differences in buoyancy (floating, sinking or suspending), differences in body posture at rest, and we've hit on the most important difference - whether a jerkbait will innately catch a lot, a few or hardly anything for you. It doesn't matter what brand or model or price it is, according to Pareto's Law.
Running depth is another difference. The deepest jerkbaits only get about 10 feet deep at most. In comparison, that's about half as deep as crankbaits. Crankbaits max out around 20 feet deep.
So you have limited depth options with jerkbaits compared to crankbaits.
Basically, there are:
- floating minnows which are topwater-oriented (hardly anyone uses these today)
- jerkbaits that run less than five feet deep (better suited to spring and fall transitional season temperature)
- jerkbaits that run five or more feet deep (key tools for winter fishing)
The ones that run only a couple feet deep have limited use in winter. The ones that get 5, 6, 7, 8 feet deep are most useful in winter. Not many jerkbaits get near 10 feet down.
Most jerkbaits say on their packaging how deep they run, and consider that as the maximum. Realistically, they will not always go as deep as the manufacturer's stated maximum most of the time - but they will be close enough.
Preferred Structure
Think vertical, anything where the jerkbait can be in the strike zone at 5, 6, 7 feet deep and then to have deeper water within striking distance is an ideal situation. This could be a shallow shelf, an uprising, a crack in a wall, Anywhere you get to run the jerkbait down and pause it a few times atop the shelf or hump or shallow area before it gets pulled out over the deeper water. Then reel in and cast again.
Narrowing It Down
The best thing you can do to narrow down your jerkbait selections and to identify what you should be using is to go fishing with someone in your area who is a jerkbait expert. Be attentive to what that person says in terms of lures used and rod, reel and line used for your area. The jerkbaits and tackle favored in Florida will be different than in Minnesota or in Arkansas or anywhere else.
Summing It Up
To summarize, if you think of fishing a popper underwater, with the same gear you'd fish a popper and the same lure actions, you will be fine. Again, the gear I pop with in Florida is not the same I use in Arizona.) As with a popper, a key is always to instantly let slack back into the line after popping. Also, you can pause a lot longer with either a popper or jerkbait than most anglers will wait, but it’s amazing how long an interested fish may procrastinate before it bites.
Visualizing and fishing a jerkbait like an underwater popper will cover 90% of the situations. At other times, you can just drag it along with the rod tip, and reel in the slack between drags. You may also simply reel in and stop, reel in and stop. There’s no wrong way to work a jerkbait in winter so long as it goes slow with frequent pauses.
In terms of depth, look for places that let you work the lure a little while it is within cover, and then have the lure moving out, transitioning into deeper water on the retrieve.
That's all for today, folks. Thank you for reading.
| Lipless Sinking Crankbaits |
If someone asked me what is my favorite hard plastic bait of all for winter bass fishing, I'd say that a long-lipped, deep-diving, suspending jerkbait that won't rise when paused is my definitive answer. There's no denying that big-lipped, deep-diving, suspending jerkbaits (that won't rise when paused) are often at their best in cold water in winter. Note that deep for a jerkbait means six to eight feet. Very few jerkbaits dive deeper than that. Ask me to pick a second hard plastic lure for winter fishing, and I'd choose a lipless crankbait without hesitation. There are dozens of different models and sizes of lipless crankbaits on the market. Many of them rattle loudly. Some produce a singular knocking noise. Others are silent and don't have any noisemaking parts inside. Regardless, the one thing that all lipless crankbaits do, they all vibrate their bodies like the dickens when pulled or reeled through the water. Note that during winter, as we've already seen with suspending jerkbaits with their pops and pauses, bass may react to or be triggered more by irregular lure actions, so a stop-and-go, a lift-and-fall or otherwise ripping and then pausing a lipless crank (using it like a jerkbait) may trigger more reaction strikes in cold water versus a straight, steady retrieve that's popular practice in spring, summer or fall. Also, since bass are often located in deep water in winter, a lipless crankbait is one of the few hardbaits that will sink and can continue to be effective (be vertically jigged) at depths of 20 or even 30 feet down using thin diameter braided line. This is beyond even the deepest jerkbait's effective reach. Note that different lipless models vary in ability to be vertically jigged or fished deep. Although most lipless cranks sink, they aren't all graceful at it. Some models may tailspin, spiral and foul the line in the process. That's not necessarily a reason to reject a lipless crank in spring, summer or fall, as you can simply start retrieving one as soon as it hits the water, so it doesn't get much chance to sink or spin. In order to be effective in winter, however, it's often best to let lipless cranks sink deep, not only when first cast, but at several intervals throughout the retrieve. So any that sink unattractively or those you find that foul the line frequently as they sink, they are fair weather friends you shouldn't take winter fishing with you. It only takes a few exploratory casts to find out for yourself how any lipless crank behaves. You'll learn a lot about different baits by studying how they sink, and after a brief tryout session, you should be confident of what each lipless crank has got going for it, and whether it's worthy to add it to your winter team roster or not. You'll see some models tailspin and foul your line when they sink, or they may sink way too unnaturally and artificially to appeal to fish as they fall. Then there are some lipless cranks that are specifically forward-weighted to run head down when retrieved, and this also helps them fall head down while sinking. These typically won't spin as they fall. Some even have a realistic, natural-looking falling action that causes them to swagger side to side as they fall forward, head first. These will tend to attract strikes (and can be worked with angler-imparted action) as they swagger side to side on the fall. What I'll do with one of these attractive lipless cranks that fall head-first, is cast toward deeper water, engage the reel and then simply let it pendulum fall in an arc toward me. The key is how far to let the lipless crankbait sink at first. When I let it get down to where I think the fish are, I'll give the crankbait one flip. This is an attention-getter. It signals something is not quite right. It's just like a shad in trouble that flips up on its side, making an attempt to right itself. I then let it fall again and give it two flips. Then let it pendulum fall in toward me again. All the while it is coming back to me in a pendulum arc, and give it three more flips. Just pop it quick, to give it a short, erratic, struggling movement. It moves at most one foot when you flip it. It's just an attention-getter that shows bass something is not right. I basically let the crankbait swing back in to me, through the fish, above any cover, over any structure, and pop it once, twice or three times. On its way back in, as it sinks increasingly closer to the bottom, if the crankbait bumps into brush or anything else near the bottom, that obstacle impact is a great strike trigger, and because it's falling nose first, its posture helps protect the hooks from snags. This may not seem like it would matter much, but the nose-down posture lets the body serve as a shield to help protect the trailing hooks from snags. Many times, the crankbait will get nipped as it bounces off anything in its path. Once it reaches bottom, yoyo it up and down as you reel it in the rest of the way back to the boat. I say boat, because using lipless cranks by letting them sink deep is not a good idea for shore fishermen. You'll simply snag the lures too often with this tactic when fishing from shore. From shore, use a stop-and-go, a lift-and-fall or otherwise ripping and then pausing a lipless crank (using it like a jerkbait) without contacting snaggy bottom. |