How to Fish a Jerkbait During Prespawn or Late Winter

what's going on guys this is gene Jensen and in this video I want to teach you everything I know about der traits all right so before we start if you guys liked this video be sure to hit the thumbs up subscribe if you haven't subscribed yet hit that little bell 40 you can get notifications of all my new videos check out my new website flute master comb for all of my merch let's get this thing rocking rolling talk about how to fish a jerkbait probably not the best way of storing them but what's going on guys I want to tell you about jerk baits it's that time of the year when I use them the most it's not my any other time of the year besides winter time and early early spring I have no confidence in them so this is the time of the year I love to pull them out and at least give them a try give them a good you know a good going through for the day but sometimes it works for me sometimes it doesn't but when you get on a jerkbait bite you can absolutely slam in some of the worst conditions and so I want to get you mentally prepared to be able to go out and catch a fish on a long skinny 5,000 hook Turk bait so let's get started let's start off with the equipment that I use when I'm throwing a jerk bait I got a couple of different rods that I use depending on how I'm fishing the jerk bait I'm going to tell you why but I'm also going to tell you that there's only really one rod that you need for a proficient of jerk bait and that's a medium moderate action rod you can get by with that no matter what kind of jerk make you throw and I just have a little bit different oddball things that I like to do with it with certain type of jerk baits anyway so a seven foot seven foot three some around they're medium moderate action jerk bait rod or crank cranking rod is what it is a seven three two one maybe a six six to 1 gear ratio reel I don't think ratio really matters much when I'm when it's warmed up and I'm jerking really hard I want to be able to bring that line in pretty quick and it's nice to have a high speed reel that I can just hit the handle and it and it brings in that slack line but really seven three two one six six two one is about the ballpark that I would use but that's not the super important thing line now there's my old old jerkbait video I talked about how I like to use monofilament because a monofilament doesn't doesn't pull the bait down too fast when it's super super cold I've done a lot of testing and a lot of really really paying attention to what my bait does in the water and with monofilament it holds that bait up way too much and it doesn't fall at all and I've learned that I really like a bait falling so I'm gonna go with the fluorocarbon line this is Seaguar a braised x but it's a high quality fluorocarbon we've got 12 pound test maybe ten maybe eight pound test but I don't know 10 or 12 is used what I end up using but anyway so that's the equipment another rod that I'm I'll fall in there is is this one right here and this is a medium moderate but it's got a lot of flex to it and I mean it's just got an absolute it's got probably twice as much flex as this medium moderate it was a prototype that 13 sent me to try out and I they sent me to try it out for a different type of bait that it was made for and I found out that it's a really good jerk bait rod but you really have to lay into them hard you got to have a really thin wire hooks it has no backbone whatsoever it's a noodle of a rod and I wouldn't recommend it for for anything but a light light hook jerk bait and when that bites really really light and they shake off really easy it's nice to have a rod with a lot of flex that's why I like it this is a six sixty one gear ratio reel this is a continent boss again twelve pound test fluorocarbon it's just that's just a great rod but anyway let's get into the baits one of the things that I have found out is that you can't settle on one brand and one style of jerk bait I don't care if it's $25 jerk bait I don't care if it's a three dollar jerk bait there's going to be a point in time where they're gonna want one over the other or vice versa I carry a ton of bet jerk baits in the box each day and I try a ton of them out and just let the bass tell me what they want there are some guidelines though and it has to do with water clarity it's been raining a lot here in Georgia they were flood conditions this Lakes up as high as I've ever seen it it's very very dark stained water so I'm not going to go with a clear bait I'm not going to go with a natural-looking bait I'm going to use bright colors so this one right here is a is known as a clown it's a classic color it's got a lot of flash to it this is a Strike King it's camera or KVD anyway it goes 10 feet is it is there deep diving dirt bait and it's it's exactly what I'll use during these at these conditions if it gets to money I don't fish a derp bait that bass just can't get up can't get out and get to them they can't find them they don't it is don't hit good when it's cold and muddy that's probably the worst conditions but um I really really go with some of the brighter colors I've got one right here that I tend to use a lot up north you know this one's got a little chartreuse in it I might use that one but this is the one this is a really good dirty water jerkbait color and it's another strike king colors got a chartreuse side you can't see through it it's not clear so it has a good silhouette the bass typically can find it pretty good in muddy water but I usually go with a some type of a clown color and if I find clear clear water I can go with those clear natural-looking baits my favorite color or maybe somebody can find it all gotta tie it on over here one of my favorite colors for just all-around you know clear to to stained water as this one right here and I think this is a striking color but it's something similar to this you can you know it's clear but it's got a lot of it's got a dark back to it it's got a yellow side it just looks natural just a really good clear water jerkbait anything close to that color but if I can you see that's the light through it fishing Clearwater if you don't see the light through it fish didn't standard or muddy or water and you'll be set alright so when modifying jerk baits and this is critical because no matter what brand of jerk bait it is they're gonna need to be modified depending on what the water temperature is the warmer the water the less they they suspend they tend to float up more the colder the water they'll sink more so the water temperature has a lot to do with what how these baits perform and how they suspend and you really want a suspending or a slowly sinking jerk bait when it's really really tough and that water temperature is in the 40s and below you want that jerk bait to be able to either suspend perfect or slowly slowly sink and so how do you get a jerk bait that floats to sink that way all right let me get one you guys can see pretty good let's get this bright one right here so this one right here I want a jerk bait when I jerk it and it stops I want it to nose down at about a 45 degree angle I want it to suspend just like this I don't want it to suspend straight up and down I don't want it to suspend definitely don't want to disperse it this way I wanted to suspend down so I'm gonna throw a bait off to the side that's on the end of the line I'm going to jerk it a few times so I can see it and I'm gonna look and see what it does does it suspend nose down and if it doesn't there's some modifications I can do okay if it doesn't suspend nose down and it doesn't doesn't suspend if it floats up I'm gonna add the first thing I'm going to do is I'm gonna add a split ring a second split ring on to that split ring right there I'm just going to pull them in a spare when I've got in my box out and I'm gonna put it on and that'll give me a little bit of weight up front it can turn that nose down and hopefully it makes it suspend and if it doesn't there's another thing that you can do you can add another split ring if you want to but if it's really floating up high another thing you can do is you can increase the hook size and I've got one somewhere around here that I've done that too you can see what I did to it I put a giant hook on the front of it and it must have really been bad I don't know where I wanted to sink a lot I'm not gonna throw it in the water I'll never get it back but anyway so I just up sized one size of the hook if you're really having an issue with if you if you added a split ring you might want to add a second split ring but if it's really floating up on you you're gonna want to change that front hook out to a bigger hook if it's a size 4 you want to go to a size 2 if it's a size 6 you want to go to a size 4 Gamakatsu I think makes a size 5 if it in so it's kind of halfway between just adds a little bit more weight out of the front worst case scenario one thing you can do is they sell these things called suspend dots and this is what they look like they're just little sticky pieces of lid that stick onto your your your jerkbait and you stick them right in front of that hook and that will cause them to nose down and it makes it easy to to get them to suspend I used to prefer using those but I got several bad batches to where the adhesive on the back of the lid literally stayed on the paper and it never stuck to the lid so I pulled the lid off and it be just led with no adhesive so it wouldn't stick and so that really got frustrating and I just stopped by and I'm hopefully their quality control has gone up over the last couple of years maybe I'll go buy some more and see if it works but it really got pretty bad so I stopped using them and just I'll just add split ring after split ring to get them to drop down but you really do want them to either suspend or sink and you want to go nose down now when the fish are fairly deep now I've got a jerk baits that go ten feet deep but if I've got on fifteen or twenty feet deep and they're just suspended up off the bottom and I want that bait to get down a little bit deeper I'm gonna add another split ring just to get it to sink slowly another good time to do that is when the water is super super cold and you want that bait to just slowly sink down towards the bass so the bass are sitting on the ledge or sitting on a point or under a dock or whatever else and that bait stops and they're looking up at it and they're not gonna want to swim really fast up to get it unless it's coming down towards them meet the bass and if you meet the bass halfway it's gonna bite the dangers to that is you'll get hung up a lot especially a brush or anything that's around the dock or in the rocks and stuff like that so have a lure retriever handy all right this is a Tipton's golden retriever I'm not sponsored by them I've just used him for years and I truly believe this is the best one on the market because it gets everything including Alabama rigs out of trees there's my shameless plug for a company I have no clue about but it is any kind of a lure Retriever works really really good it is it's imperative that you have when I have this on on a dog leash and it's only about 15 16 feet long it really needs to be longer but that one really works really good and you'll save yourself a lot of money by having one handy with any kind of crank and you want to have a lure retriever handy I'll show you what I mean by this rod see how much it bends it bends over half of the almost a half of the shaft of the rod and it's just a really soft Bend and it's a that's a great jerk bait rod but it's a it's a medium moderate is what it is all right so where you got to fish a jerkbait rod in the winter time bass will school up in ditches they'll school up on on structure changes when I say structure changes I'm talking about changes in the bottom points drops rock drops rock piles whatever I mean anything that's good they're gonna hang out where what's going to in an area that's going to cause that's going to be where the baitfish are gonna have to swim around and it's going to going to funnel the bait fish to them so they don't have to work very hard an outside turn in a creek channel is excellent where it swings real close to the bank and it's a steep side of the bank bait fish that are swimming that creeks channel are going to swing out swinging up against the outside edge of that creek channel and the bascomb you sitting there ready to eat them so that's kind of stuff you're looking for one thing adder bait is not good at is casting into the wind you'll get a lot of backlash just trying to cast into the wind so I'm really really careful it's been a pretty windy day I mean in a protected pocket right now but it's been a pretty windy day but you throw it out if it's a deep diving crankbait a 10-footer you want to crank it down about 8 9 turns and then skill it count to 3 seconds 4 seconds pop pop kill it now the typical jerk made action or typical way to fish a jerkbait is a pop pop pause pop pop pop pop pause pop pop pop pause and so on and so forth that's your typical way to fish a jerkbait now I want you to notice what I'm doing every time I pop it I go straight back to a slack line like tapping a drum just like walking a frog but even with more action tap goes straight back and what that does it allows that bait to jerk to the left and then jerk to the right and you're trying to mimic a dying baitfish maybe the water got too cold maybe it got wounded it just can't handle the wintertime it's an easy meal for the bass and so that's kind of the kind of stuff you're really trying to to mimic now say the water temperatures in the high 40s typically I'm going to pause for 3-4 seconds two three four five seconds somewhere in there but I'm going to start trying to figure out how long I've got a pause to get that bait that those fish to react okay so Sam over a point or over a brush pilot throw out past that point and press to pass a brush pile two or three turns down because this one dives about five feet pop pop a little light pop pause one two three I'm always counting how long I pause it one two three all right so as a water temperature gets even colder if the water temperature is in the low 40s high 30s even up into the high 40s sometimes I'm really gonna finesse this thing I'm not gonna fish fast I'm not gonna give it hard jerks I'm gonna try a few different little oddball things that I've seen pros do but I'm just gonna pop pop pause and I'm not gonna pop it as hard one's gonna tap tap and let it guide me in and when you tap it a lot of times you jerk base it just don't jump forward is all they do and if I want them to jerk a little bit to the side I'm gonna tap it just a little bit harder and play around next to the boat and see which what I'm talking about but it really is tap tap tap tap and every once a while I might try to make that nose go up and I'm going to come up just a little bit then I'm gonna go right back down low and tap keep the rod tip low watch your line this is the technique that you really really got a focus on what you're doing you've got to watch your line for any kind of jumping and you kind of jump in that happens you want to lay into them you just kind of want to lay you know later the jerk the rod off to the side and set the hook to the side but you really have to pay close attention to it because you are fishing on a slackline and if you pop it and you feel any kind of resistance that feels different than what it normally does lay into them okay you're going to miss a lot of fish these fish are gonna be really tough to catch but they're when they're on it they're on it so reel down tap tap let it sit one thousand two one thousand three one thousand four one thousand and I'm gonna pay attention to my line if that fish bites at eight seconds for the next 15-20 minutes I'm gonna be pausing that bait for eight seconds I'm really gonna pay attention to how long I'm pausing it but that's that's winter dirt bait fishing it is tough it ain't easy at all it can be it can be really really rewarding and and come about this time of the year until the fish move up to a pre spawn I'm really going to be I'm gonna have a jerkbait on I'm gonna be fishing jerk bait every day a jerk bait a jig an under spin until it starts to warm up and then I'm going to fish switch to a chatter bait and and a flat side it's crank bait and a lipless crankbait that kind of stuff but jerk baits gonna be tied on from now until they start until they move up to pre spawn so that's jerk bait fishing 101 guys I hope you enjoyed this video if you liked it hit the like button hit the subscribe if you haven't subscribed this video check out my new websites got all of my merch on there fluke master com I got hats I got shirts I got all kinds of stuff it'd be really cool if you guys to check that out but like I always say be sure to introduce somebody to fishing introduce you to my channel let me help you teach them out of fish more importantly get out on the water go out get some fish and have a great day we'll see

Channel: Flukemaster

Views: 61,150

Rating: 4.9401903 out of 5

Keywords: how to fish, bass fishing, winter fishing, how to catch bass, fishing tips, winter bass, how to, jerkbait fishing, jerkbait, largemouth bass, late winter bass fishing, how to bass fish, how to bass fish for beginners, how to bass fish from the bank, spotted bass fishing, how to bass fish in the winter, winter bass fishing lures, fishing for bass in a pond, how to catch bass in winter, fishing tips for beginners

Id: v3GUgii5iHM

Length: 17min 34sec (1054 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2020