Read this in a forum post recently: "I caught one LM bass yesterday in 48-degree water while swimming a Rapala Husky Jerk 10 (HJ10) jerkbait. Water was lightly stained but overall pretty clear, considering it had been muddy the past few weeks. My question is: Does anyone just swim jerkbaits? If so, with what kind of success?
"The reason I ask is because I fished a particular area for about an hour and a half with a jerk-jerk-pause 5-30 seconds, and also a jerk-jerk-jerk-pause 5-30 seconds, with no bites. It wasn't 'til the very end of my retrieve that I began to swim the HJ10, and the bass crushed the lure. I then switched to a brighter color, I downsized, upsized, and switched to various moving baits, all with no luck."
Most of the forum responses that angler received came from wise-acres, so I decided to pursue an online investigation of my own. Found one writer who pointed out, "Jerkbaits--aka minnow baits--are similar to soft swimbaits in many ways. Both closely resemble prey fish on the retrieve. They catch predator fish everywhere, and they're easy to fish. But when bass are in a tentative mood, you need to elicit reaction strikes by manipulating lure action, and well-designed jerkbaits provide endless retrieve options."
According to pro angler Mark Fisher, "Real minnows dart around, stop quickly, and often hang in suspension. Quality jerkbaits mimic this action, while most soft swimbaits sink toward bottom on the pause. A suspending jerkbait remains in the strike zone and creates a collision that often triggers bites. Another benefit is that treble hooks catch nippers or lazy bites, whereas fish need to eat single-hook swimbaits to get pinned.
"The beauty of minnow baits is that anyone can cast them out, reel 'em in, and be successful," Fisher continued. "Just remember to experiment with a variety of retrieves until you start getting bit, then repeat what's working."
Another fisherman offered this suggestion: "Just cast the jerkbait out and retrieve it, using a combination of sporadic turns of the reel handle, coupled with well-timed twitches of the rod tip. This kind of wind-wind-jerk-pause cadence makes the bait swim enticingly just below the surface."
As this fisherman explained, however, it takes more than making a couple of casts to get the rhythm down. "Actually, the average person likely will spend several hours twitching and jerking at all the wrong times and frothing up the water so bad that any fish which might have been in the area surely will have left or decided not to eat anytime soon," he said. "You might even resemble Frankenstein chasing villagers down a hillside before you finally get the cadence."
While doing my online research, I came across a couple of videos that may help explain these details a bit better. Here are the links:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9N3FODGuLQ
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09AJL_iPV6A
(My apologies to anyone who was trying to read this post while I was trying to get the video links to work right. Believe me, I was sitting here cussing Windows 10 and blogger every bit as much you likely were me. Hopefully, everything is right now.)
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