There he is! I just barely twitched it that time. Did you see that? I made that real slow
little twitch and he just run the slack out of the line. That's the thing about this bait
is you can work it a lot of different ways. You can really jerk it hard or you can barely
twitch it but it's got such an action. That's a nice fish right there on the Shadow Rap.
Come here big boy, let me get my hands on you.
I just barely gave him that twitch, that bait swapped sides, and look what I caught.
Normally I like to throw a jerkbait in the early spring and pre spawn. It can also be
good right around the spawn. It can be deadly especially over the tops of beds and things
like that. Another time I like it again is in the fall. Anytime you're faced with cold
weather where you're starting to get a lot of shad die off. When those shad are really
struggling and starting to die off from colder weather that is a great time.
But like I said, a jerkbait is a good bait anytime you're faced with especially smallmouth.
Any lake in the country that you have smallmouth, smallmouth just love a jerkbait. Largemouth
are also very susceptible especially around the spawn, pre-spawn, and even post spawn
a lot of times when they're guarding fry and things of that nature.
That's probably some of my favorite times to fish a jerkbait.
I've been kind of just working this bait today with a jerk-jerk-pause cadence. I've only
been letting it sit 2-3 seconds and really jerking the bait with a lot of slack on the
line. That's one thing about this bait is I don't think there's a wrong way to fish
it. There's one right there! I just let that bait sit there for 2-3 seconds and I saw that
fish hit it and he just run the slack out of the line.
It's got such an erratic wide action that especially these fish can't stand it. It's
just sitting there in their face darting back and fourth and it's turning and rotating.
I think it will do two things; I think of course it's going to catch those aggressive
fish, but those fish that are really kind of unaggressive just can't stand that or resit
that action.
What I've been fishing this bait on today is I've been looking for these main lake points,
banks, wherever there's a channel swing or a little deep water coming up next to it,
and looking for these areas where there's little transitions of rock.
If you kind of look back down this bank it goes from bigger to smaller rock. You've got
some bigger chunk rock and limestone mixed in. I've kind of been fishing this bait
on rock changes and channel swings either just inside the creeks or out on the main
lake.
That's where these fish are set up. The water is pretty cold out here today. It's about
43-44 degrees and these fish are set up on these stepper 45 degree
rock banks wherever the channel touches or just swings aways from the bank.
This is a Teams Lew's 6'8 Medium Light action rod and it has a real soft tip. That's one
thing about jerkbaits is I can see this has got a real flimsy tip, but yet it gets into
backbone. What that does is it helps me move that bait and I'm able to jerk that bait pretty
hard but the tip takes up a lot of that so I don't really move the bait very far. I've
got it on a Lew's Tournament Lite reel and I've got it paired up today with an 8 and
10 pound Sufix Pro Mix line. This bait is weighted so perfectly that I kind of like
that mono because this bait will just very slowly sink on this line.
What this does is this also gives me a little more stretch. I think that mono helps me whenever
I hook those fish and they're pulling hard I'm able to use the rod and that mono to kind
of take up one of that shock. It helps me fight those fish.
Another one on the Shadow Rap!