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Suspending jerkbait

A suspending jerkbait is a palm-sized bait fished at whatever depth you work it. At 3/8-7/16 oz on a treble hook it wants a rod that is middling in stiffness and bends through its middle, printed as medium. Best in clear water when fish are hunting minnows and are shallow enough to see a bait pass overhead.

A slim, minnow-shaped hard bait with small treble hooks and a short lip. It dives a few feet when you pull it, then hangs in place when you stop. The stop is what gets eaten. A fish that followed it without committing runs out of reasons to wait.

How to Fish It

Two or three sharp downward snaps of the rod tip, then stop and count. Reel up the slack between the snaps, not through them. Lengthen the pause until you find what they want.

Rated for clear water only. A fish finds 3.5-4" of bait by sight, so anything dirtier and it goes past unnoticed.

It is sold 3.5-4", and length and weight move independently: though the range is narrow enough that weight is the one you are really choosing.

When to Throw It

Best in clear water when fish are hunting minnows and are shallow enough to see a bait pass overhead.

Wrong in dirty water, where a fish never sees the dart and the stop that make the bait work.

Keeping Trebles Pinned

Two or three small points ride on the outside of a 3/8-7/16 oz body, each holding in hard tissue by a fraction of an inch. None of them needs driving; what they need is that the pressure never spikes, so the rod bends down its length, because a stiff one levers small hooks straight out on a head shake.

3/8-7/16 oz rules a rod in or out before anything else does, and one profile here covers it: 7'0" medium, moderate action casting, whose card says what it is bad at.

  • 7'0" medium, moderate action casting

    Length
    7'0"
    Power
    medium
    Action
    moderate
    Casts
    3/8-7/8 oz
    Line
    10-17 lb

    A specialist that exists for one reason: keeping small hooks in a fish. Its 3/8-7/8 oz window takes that weight without being at either end of it.

    Cannot drive a buried single hook, because the tip gives before the point moves.

The One Fish It Catches

  • Smallmouth Bass

    Water
    freshwater
    Mouth
    bony
    Line floor
    10 lb

    Smallmouth bass pull harder than their weight suggests, so the line under this bait starts at about 10 lb. Smallmouth bass live on rock.

    Everything else this fish is caught on is on its lures page. This bait is one entry there, and not always the first one to try.

The Method It Belongs To

  • Jerkbait Fishing

    Where it sits
    mid-water
    Power
    medium or medium-heavy
    Action
    moderate or moderate-fast
    Difficulty
    intermediate

    You snap this bait down with the rod on every single retrieve, so a rod that gives is doing that work all day. The same give keeps small treble hooks in a fish that shakes its head at your feet.

    Snapping the rod upward, which pulls the bait toward the surface instead of down.

Where This Decision Goes Next