More Bass With Stickbaits

Stickbaits first became popular about 40 years ago, when the Normark Corporation first brought a Finnish lure to the United States. It was the Rapala Minnow, a slender, wooden lure that had a foil finish and a seductive wiggle. Because of the popularity of this minnow shaped lure, other tackle companies brought out their own, and so today we have Storm Thundersticks, Rebel Minnows, Smithwick Rogues, Rip'N Minnows, AC Shiners, Bomber Long As, Frenzy Minnows, Viva Flight Minnows, Pin's Minnows, Lindy Baitfishes and the list goes on and on. While the deep diving stickbaits have their place, especially for trolling, and the sinking versions will catch bass as well, most of the time the majority of bass fishermen settle for a floating or suspending bait. With those two types of stickbaits, a bass fisherman can catch bass most of the year in a wide variety of depths. Floating stickbaits or minnows work well in cold water and early spring for a couple of reasons. First, minnow baits in general don't have a lot of action; they're subtle. Lures with a lot of action can turn bass off when conditions are not optimum, such as in cold water. The second reason is that many of the floating models don't have a rattle, another turn off when fish are picky. Also, you can fish the baits fairly slowly, and that is another good reason for using them. However, it should be pointed out that bass will fool you. Just when you think you have them figured out, they will turn around and do the opposite of what you expect. For instance, in early spring, bass can go nuts for a floating stickbait fished as a jerkbait with a rapid, quick cadence. This is a classic Southern technique for fishing a stickbait. This is especially true in the case of smallmouth. Smallies will chase crankbaits when the water is in the upper 30's, and a quick moving jerkbait, especially a big one, often will light up the smallmouth like nothing else. A stickbait is best fished like the minnow it portrays, darting in and out of cover, moving cautiously as it explores the slowly warming shallows. One method worth a try is to weight a stickbait with several large split shot about 6 inches to a foot up the line. Fish this with a slow drag and lots of pauses on banks with limited cover, much like you would a split shot rig. But, many times, the best way to fish a floating stickbait, especially the smaller ones, is as a topwater. Occasionally, when water warms quickly in the spring, you'll find bass willing to take a topwater. That's the time to take the floating minnow you're using and pitch it into the warm shallows near to cover or  in areas where you've seen bass. Twitch the bait a little bit, then let it set  until the ripples have disappeared. Then twitch it again. Pause. Twitch. Then pull it under and let it pop back to the surface and sit there. You get the idea, work the bait with a finesse approach and don't overpower it. If there's a bass around, you'll likely get a pleasant surprise. When the water warms later in the spring, you can be more active with your floating minnow. In warmer water, you can be about as active with a stickbait as a topwater. However, bass still find it hard to resist that twitch/pause routine. But they're also suckers for a hard popping motion. The key is to let it sit, then pop it again. 

Subsurface Presentations: Under many circumstances, a suspending jerkbait is the better choice if you plan on working the bait under the surface. Suspending baits do just that, once they're pulled down to their working level, they'll hang in place indefinitely assuming their buoyancy is correct for the water density. The long pause often is necessary to get a bass to bite. Sometimes a pause can be as long as a full minute between one twitch and the next. A minute can seem like forever when your fishing, but sometimes that's what it takes. More often though, the pauses will be just a matter of seconds. Part of what determines the pause is the water temperature and the mood of the bass. During the winter, it's common to have to wait longer for fish to hit. Suspending jerkbaits are a fairly new phenomenon, having been manufactured only for the past 10 years or so. Prior to that, fishermen did what they needed to do to make their Rogues or Thundersticks or Rapalas suspend in the water. In the case of the balsa baits, fishermen drilled holes in the bait and inserted split shot or lead slugs into it until the bait would suspend when pushed under water. Then, they sealed the holes with epoxy or other waterproof coating. For plastic baits, fishermen inserted lead shot into the hollow body. There were problems with both approaches because it was not all that difficult to ruin a 5 dollar bait. So fishermen experimented with adding weight to the hooks, ether with split shot or lead wire. On smaller stickbaits, this worked pretty well, but on larger baits it was difficult to get them to suspend. Finally, manufactures offered suspending stickbaits to fishermen. And, of course, all those experimenters continued to fine tune their new suspending baits to get them to dive deeper or to pull shallower or wiggle differently. Storm helped that effort by producing its line of SuspenDots and SuspenStrips, adhesive backed lead tape that sticks to a lure and lets you adjust its weight to suspend or dive better. But still, many fishermen continue to modify their lures to fish the way they want them to. One trick to use during the spawn is to take a Storm Thunderstick Jr. and weight the bill with SuspenDots until the bait will stand on its nose. Pick a natural color like perch or bluegill, and throw that bait into a bed. Let it sink, give it a little twitch and hang on. There is no bass alive that will stand for that kind of behavior from something it sees as a nest robber. And perhaps that is why stickbaits are so effective much of the year in so many situations. Bass see these minnow look alikes as something natural and alive and edible. So the next time the bite is tough, tie on a stickbait and load the boat with cold weather bass.