The section of bank simply looked too good not to hold a bass, yet we’d thrown a variety of lures at it and still had only a single bump on a spinnerbait to show for our troubles. I pulled a suspending jerkbait out of my tackle box and tied it on as a last ditch effort. Suspending jerkbaits always seem to produce the goods on barra when they are in a shut down mood, so why not offer the bass that were hopefully residing in this river a similar technique.
My first cast was a sketchy one as I wasn’t yet used to the lighter lure and after quickly cranking it back in I put the next cast right on the money and began to go through the slow methodical retrieve of twitches and pauses. No response. Three casts later I was thinking that maybe there just weren’t any fish on this bank. My concentration had waned slightly so when the crunching hit came I wasn’t expecting it. Fortunately I reacted to the bite by simply lifting the rod as if I had struck it would definitely have ended in tears. The bass had literally creamed the lure going the other way and after a torrid few seconds I managed to keep it out of the sticks and had it next to the canoe shortly after. It was a very respectable fish that was released after a few photos.
This was to be the beginning of a remarkable session on jerkbaits that saw us catch numerous quality fish of a bank that had failed to produce on several other lures.
Roderick Walmsley
This story was first published in the Fishing World March2013 issue.
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