wingshooter1002 said:
i have the two he spoke about in my box. the blue and silver and the black and silver. i have never had a fish hit one of them though. i havent given them much time to either. i did know how to present this lure so i didnt use it much. i have a better concept now. the jerk jerk pause. does anyone have any tips with this lure? i would surley welcome them.
The trick to jerkbaits is to get the right action you have to snap them on a slack line. You should be able to hear the limpness of the line swishing out each time you jerk it & ideally it shouldn't move toward you more than a few inches with each jerk, most of the energy should be making the lure dart sideways.
If you're just casting & cranking you're totally wasting the lure's potential. Not to say it won't catch fish as a skinny shallow diving crankbait, and maybe sometimes the bite calls for that vs. a squarebill, but the side to side action followed by a pause is really what these things were meant for.
Water temperature always determines where I start with the length of my pause - the colder the longer the pause, I'll start out going 30 seconds+ if the water is <40, 10-20 seconds usually until the water is over 45, 5-10 up until 50 deg, above 50 I play around with only a few seconds until I get it right. If I'm not getting bit where I think i should be i'll change speeds until I either move along or dial them in, but their activity level is usually similar throughout the lake so if I get the pause down right in one area it'll usually hold true elsewhere.
I fish suspending jerkbaits all year long, not just in the cold water season. Great lure for covering flats and other open areas with scattered structure quickly. I really don't like the floating ones anymore, some I've weighted down to get them to suspend, those are usually my favorites because the action is so erratic.
Great video on the technique - you can see the slack in the line really well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLkENvmvnO0
[youtube]qLkENvmvnO0[/youtube]
...only took me 4 tries to get the youtube video working...