Jerkbait: How to Fish It in Cold Water, the Cadence, and Which to Buy

A jerkbait is a long, slender, minnow-shaped plug with a short lip and two or three treble hooks, fished by twitching the rod tip and pausing. Each twitch makes the bait dart a foot to one side; on the pause it hangs still. That pause is the point. A bass that will not chase anything in 45 °F water will still drift up and eat a minnow that hangs in front of its nose, as long as the pause lasts long enough.

The bite is on the pause. Twitch, twitch, wait, and keep waiting: Mike McClelland gives an early-spring bass 12 to 15 seconds, sometimes 30.

Suspending jerkbaits are weighted to hang at the depth they were pulled to, neither rising nor sinking. That makes the jerkbait the bait for the coldest water of the year. FishUSA’s walleye guide works it from 36 to 58 °F (2–14 °C) and uses a suspending bait below 52 °F; Mark Menendez switches to a floating model at about 55 °F. Kevin VanDam’s six-season guide names the suspending jerkbait first for winter bass on vertical structure.

A soft jerkbait is a different lure: a soft-plastic minnow such as the Zoom Super Fluke, rigged on a wide-gap hook. Zoom says its deep belly makes it dart and glide, and that rigged weightless it skitters across the surface like an injured shad. Tommy Martin fishes it without weight because it looks more natural sinking slowly. This page is about the hard jerkbait, the plastic plug with a lip.

What do you need?

• A suspending jerkbait, 4–5 in (10–13 cm): the Megabass Vision 110, the Rapala Husky Jerk, the Strike King KVD, the Smithwick Rogue, the Lucky Craft Pointer. Floating versions for warm water and shallow cover; deep-diving versions for 8–12 ft.
• A 6 ft 8 in to 7 ft (2–2.1 m) medium rod with a fast tip and a soft backbone. Elite Series pro Kelley Jaye fishes a 6 ft 9 in medium. Mike McClelland wants a stiffer rod with a soft tip, because a rod that bends through the whole blank wears the arm out working the bait all day. Short enough to twitch without the tip hitting the water, soft enough to keep trebles in.
• A baitcaster, or spinning tackle, which Randy Blaukat tells learners to use with the Vision 110. Jaye fishes a 7.5:1 baitcaster against the usual advice of a slow reel, because most of the year he works the bait fast once it reaches depth.
• Fluorocarbon, 8–14 lb. Jaye runs 12 lb for smallmouth and 14 lb for largemouth and spotted bass, heavier than the 8 and 10 lb most anglers are told to use, because with the way he works the bait lighter line tangles around the hooks. Fluoro sinks and helps the bait hold its depth. Mono floats; Elite Series pro Mark Menendez uses it on a floating bait for Southern largemouth, for a subtler presentation, and fluorocarbon for smallmouth. Which line does what is on the fluorocarbon vs. monofilament page.
• Sharp trebles, and a check of the bait’s suspension before the first cast (see the sink test below).

How long do you pause?

The colder the water, the longer the pause. FishUSA’s walleye guide holds it 5–8 seconds at 36–42 °F and half a second to a second at 54–58 °F; for bass in early spring, McClelland waits 12–15 seconds, sometimes 30.

FishUSA’s cadence by water temperature, written for walleye:

The same rule holds in McClelland’s bass fishing, with longer numbers. He pauses a suspending bait 12–15 seconds in early spring, and sometimes 30. After the spawn, on fish in standing timber, he is down to 2–5. When fish follow without biting, FishUSA’s first change is the pause: add a second or two before changing the bait.

Make the twitches with the wrist, rod tip down, on a slack line, so the bait darts rather than pulls. Reel up the slack on the pause without moving the bait. Count the pauses out loud, so that when a fish eats on “seven” the next pause is seven as well. Which band your lake is in on a given week is on the bass water temperature page.

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Where do you throw it?

Clear water first. A jerkbait is a sight bait: the fish has to track it from a distance on the pause. FishUSA puts it down for a jig below 2 ft (0.6 m) of visibility, and VanDam finds it does not work as well in very stained water.

In winter, work it along the vertical structure VanDam names: rock bluffs, river channel drop-offs, standing timber and 45-degree banks, where bass can change depth without swimming far, and over any bait school the sonar shows. The how to read a fish finder page shows the suspended arches a jerkbait is thrown at.

On Bull Shoals and Table Rock, McClelland fishes it in winter on sunny days, when the baitfish rise in the water column and the bass come up under them. The best time to fish for bass page has those winter windows. When the fish first stage outside the spawning areas, McClelland works the outer breaks with a suspending McStick 110 that runs 5–7 ft. In pre-spawn, VanDam moves to the ends of the bluffs, close to shallower water, and to the northern banks, which are warmer; after the spawn, McClelland fishes standing timber with the short pauses.

It is not only a cold-water bait. Jaye made three Elite Series cuts on Toledo Bend with it on rock, piers and points, and threw it over grass on Toho while the field flipped.

Suspending, sinking or floating?

Pick by water temperature: a slow sinker from the low 40s down to freezing, a true suspender at 45–50 °F, a slow riser above 50. Mike Iaconelli sorts his cold-water jerkbaits by what they do when he stops them, and the sort lines up with the water temperature.

Above that comes the floater. Menendez says water temperature decides between a suspending bait and a floating one “every single time.” The suspending bait goes in cold, clear water. From about 55 °F (13 °C) he throws a floating model, worked harder and faster as a search bait, because by then the fish will chase.

Rapala built the Shadow Rap for the top row. It kicks almost 180 degrees on each snap with little forward travel, so it can be worked nearly in place over a fish. Its fixed weight sends it fading head-down on the pause.

What if it will not suspend?

Test it in a sink and tune it, because the word “suspending” on the box is a promise with no standard behind it. Field & Stream’s Joe Cermele points out that some baits sold as suspending hover only a second or two and others bob back to the surface like a cork. Menendez says two baits of the same brand and model can differ, which is why he tests every one. He does it in his kitchen sink, in cold tap water, with the hooks already changed, since any hook swap goes on before the test. Iaconelli does the same in a tub at home rather than losing fishing time on the water.

Then the fix, in order:

1. A bait that sinks: go lighter. Swap one treble a size smaller. Menendez would rather err a little light than heavy, because a bait that slowly sinks loses the appeal of the pause.
2. A bait that rises: add a Storm SuspenDot on the belly, a small, round self-adhesive weight (80 to a pack, $7.99). Cermele’s method: one dot, test, add another, until the bait hovers after it dives. On a Smithwick Rogue Jr. one dot under the chin holds it in medium current to 3 ft; a second dot behind the front treble turns it into a slow sinker for 5 ft and deeper. SuspenStrips are the same thing in strips. Lead golf tape works too: Cermele pays about $20 for 60 in (152 cm) and cuts it into small strips, though Iaconelli prefers the Storm stickers.
3. Where the dot goes matters. Weight toward the lip makes the nose drop and the bait dive faster and deeper; weight toward the tail does the opposite and keeps a bait shallower over cover.
4. Or change the hook. McClelland turns a floating Spro McStick 115 into a near-suspender by replacing its No. 5 trebles with 2X-strong No. 4s, the heavier wire doing what the dots would. For clear-water smallmouth, Jaye runs a smaller treble in the middle and larger ones at each end, a size down for the shy fish without changing the balance.
5. Glue it. Menendez Super Glues the strips once the bait hangs right, so the fix survives the day.

What not to do is in Cermele’s own failed experiment. He drilled a belly and loaded it with BBs, and the bait dropped nose-first with no action left. Add weight in dots, not in a dose.

Which jerkbait, and how deep does it run?

The depth on the maker’s page is a range on the recommended line, and the line changes it a lot. Megabass rates the Oneten at nearly 7 ft on 6 lb test and about 4 ft on 15 lb.

For deeper fish the same families go down a class. The Strike King KVD Deep Elite 300 (4¾ in, ⅗ oz) is rated 10 ft and more. The Rapala Husky Jerk comes smaller too: the HJ08 is 3⅛ in and ¼ oz and runs 4–6 ft.

The Megabass Vision 110, the “Oneten,” arrived from Japan in the 1990s with a weight-transfer system. Tungsten balls slide to the tail on the cast for distance and forward on the retrieve for balance. Wired2Fish’s review calls it “one of the most sought after jerkbaits of all time,” and Cermele calls it arguably the best suspender out of the box. It costs $24.99, and the price is Cermele’s warning: losing one to a submerged stump hurts. His own go-to is the Rattlin’ Rogue, $8.99 at Lurenet. The Rapala Husky Jerk is neutrally buoyant, rattles and costs $8.49 to $9.99 by size on Rapala’s site, well under half the Oneten. The KVD and the Pointer sit between them at $16.99.

Which color for your water?

Which mistakes cost fish?

• Pausing too short. In cold water, make the next pause longer than feels right.
• Reeling instead of twitching. A reeled jerkbait is a poor crankbait.
• Trusting the box. “Suspending” has no standard; test every bait in the sink and tune it.
• Weighting it like a sinker. Dots, one at a time, on the belly. A dose of lead or BBs in the body kills the action, and too much on a floater ruins the roll it was bought for.
• A fast, stiff rod. Trebles tear out; a soft tip and fluorocarbon.
• Braid straight to the bait. It floats and lifts the bait’s nose on the pause; fluorocarbon, or a mono leader.
• Line too light for a hard twitch. Jaye finds anything under 12 lb tangles around his hooks.

Jerkbait, crankbait or lipless?

The jerkbait wins below 55 °F on suspended, inactive fish in clear water. Once the water passes 55 °F and the fish start chasing, the squarebill crankbait takes over. The lipless crankbait shares the cold pre-spawn with the jerkbait, ripped through grass, and wins where the water is stained.

For the fish that stay out on the ledges, a deep-diving crankbait reaches what a deep jerkbait cannot. When the water drops below 40 °F and even the jerkbait pause is too fast, a jig or a blade bait on the bottom is the last resort. The crankbaits hub sets the four beside each other by depth class, and the lures hub maps the rest.

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• Where they sit and what to throw at every band: bass, crappie, bluegill and walleye; catfish by species; trout: when to stop and where they hide
• The best hours at your reading, the cold front day by day, and the spawn calendar from ice-out to midsummer
• The three thermometer mistakes that make a reading lie (the first one is the surface)
• The 26-fish chart: who's spawning, feeding hard or shut down at your reading

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