Jerkbaits are one of your best bets when bass fishing to catch you some quality fish pretty much anywhere. But just where exactly do you fish them?
In brief, jerkbaits can be fished around grass, docks, ledges, dams, and shell beds. Adjust your baits diving depth depending on what depth the fish are holding. A jerkbait should be worked above the fish, not under them.
I found myself wondering exactly where I should be throwing a jerkbait for bass fishing so I decided to right a comprehensive article about where to fish a jerkbait. You’ll find the details below.
1. Docks
Obviously, you can’t be going around skipping a jerkbait under docks. But deeper docks in clear reservoirs are GREAT places to throw your jerkbait around especially during the pre and post-spawn seasons.
Casting a jerkbait along the sides and out in front of docks during the spawning season is a great way to load up on some big females that are either just moving up on beds or just moving off of them.
A jerkbait mimics shad and pre-spawn fish are constantly trying to fatten up before moving up onto their beds. Couple this with the fact that docks are almost always a transition point during the spawning cycle and you get a dynamite technique for catching fish during the spawning season without depending on your sight fishing skills.
Fishing docks with jerkbaits isn’t necessarily limited to the spawning season. Docks hold fish year-round and when the conditions are right, you can catch them on the outside of docks casting along the sides and out in front of them. Overcast and windy situations are best since fish will roam around and feed more during these conditions.
2. Dams (Rip-Rap)
Fishing along dams or rip-rap is a great place to throw your jerkbait. Bassmaster Elite Series pro Hank Cherry won the 50th Bassmaster Classic on Lake Guntersville and one of the key players in his gameplan was targeting main-lake rip-rap throwing a jerkbait.
The water temperatures at the Classic were relatively cold and a common-known fact is that cold water warrants the use of a jerkbait. Cherry’s jerkbait was imitating shad because he noticed that there were schools of shad roaming the rip-rap and that’s what the bass were keying on.
You can watch the video below and also go to Bassmaster’s website to learn more about Cherry’s specific retrieve, set up for his jerkbait, and the specific jerkbait that he used but you can watch the video below to see what kind of cover he was targeting exactly and also his exact retrieve with his bait.
3. Ledges
Ledges are great spots to target fish using jerkbaits. One of the biggest keys to ledge fishing with jerkbaits is dialing in the specific diving depth of your bait to make sure that it’s getting down to the fish.
Summer bass fishing on the Tennessee River is dominated by ledge fishing. Although jerkbaits may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about ledge fishing, they can play a vital role in catching some of the biggest bass in a school fairly fast.
While most ledge anglers will target fish with the traditional approach using a deep-diving crankbait or Carolina rig, giving the fish a different look such as a jerkbait can pay big dividends when fishing overly pressured waters like Lake Guntersville or Lake Chickamauga.
A jerkbait will sit above the fish most of the time which gives them a more natural look of potential prey at the surface. That’s not to say that popular ledge fishing baits don’t work but giving the fish a different look sometimes will throw them off and trigger some serious action on ledges.
4. Grass
The jerkbait fishing tactic hasn’t been applied to grass until recent years but it’s beginning to prove just how deadly a technique it can be.
Big grass lakes around my home of Florida have begun to be taken over by the presence of the jerkbait. A shiner-colored jerkbait worked just over the surface of the hydrilla, coontail, eelgrass, and other submerged grasses has been deadly for imitating the shiner; Florida’s big bass candy.
Lakes such as Toho, the Harris Chain lakes, as well as lakes such as Lake Seminole or even Okeechobee have proven to be great lakes to throw the jerkbait.
A recent FLW (Fishing League Worldwide) Tour event on the Harris Chain of Lakes saw nearly half the field lock through to Lake Griffin where they threw jerkbaits and rattling crankbaits over submerged eelgrass and hydrilla. The jerkbait seemed to be catching the bigger bass in the massive schools that were out there during that tournament.
5. Shell Beds
Shell beds are great locations to load up on schools of quality fish and can mainly be found on river systems and tidal fisheries.
The first places that come to mind when I think of shell beds are both the St. Johns River in eastern Florida as well as the Tennessee River lakes such as Kentucky Lake.
The St. Johns River is a complicated tidal fishery where many tournaments are won fishing shallow shell beds with baits such as lipless crankbaits or Carolina rigs. Jerkbaits are new to the scene here but the 2020 Bassmaster Elite Series event here showed the top ten was dominated by jerkbait users.
Patrick Walters finished tenth throwing a jerkbait, and fourth and third place in the tournament were occupied by local pro Cliff Prince as well as jerkbait specialist Kelley Jaye who both employed the use of jerkbaits.
Top Baits of the 2020 Elite on the St. Johns River
Also Noted:
Shad Spawns
We all know that the shad spawn can be the real deal to not only catch numbers of fish but also catch fish of the big, tournament-winning variety.
Jerkbaits are great shad imitators and can help you get rich quick early on tournament morning by filling your live well with some big bass that were chomping on spawning shad.
A lot of times it will help to throw a white or brightly colored jerkbait to imitate the shad well and help to get the attention of the bass in the dark hours of early morning. Shad normally spawn very early in the morning and not very long into daylight.
Schooling Fish
Tossing around a jerkbait in deeper water while targeting a school of fish is a very effective way to catch a bunch of fish in a hurry.
Similar as to how a jerkbait performs during the shad spawn, your jerkbait can imitate the shad that are many times the exact bait fish that those “wolf packs” of bass are targeting.
Shad are bass candy; simple as that. So if you find a big school of shad, there’s a good chance you’re going to be around schooling bass.
The jerkbait is one of the best shad imitating baits out there and it shows whenever you’re jerking it through a mega-school and catching big numbers and also some quality fish.
Conclusion
The jerkbait, though it may seem one dimensional, can actually be used in a variety of different ways.
Grass, docks, ledges, dams, and shell beds are all proven areas to throw a jerkbait around and consistently catch fish.
I hope this article has helped to show you exactly in what kinds of areas you can fish a jerkbait and reap the results.
