Anglers everywhere have watched fish feed in a frenzy at one time or another. A bait school swims by and a hungry bass, crappie, walleye or other larger predator on the feed leaves his lair and you witness a spectacle to behold, as surface commotion and water splash causes bait fish to fly in all directions. Then just as suddenly, a huge fish swirls its tail and returns to the deep. Over in an instant! Yikes and wow! You begin to tremble a bit. Been there?
Such moments in fishing are among those instant memory flash points that we never forget. You wonder why when your lure was cast in another direction, why that fish made his move way over there, in a different place. Such wonders of fishing keep us coming back.
In the spring of year and at other times of the year too, the largest of predator fish need to feed more often than their smaller counterparts. The biggest fish are often caught during cold fronts, they eat more often, that is that. The bigger fish seek efficiency too, they search for a school of bait. It’s the easy way to feed and they have it figured out. When we see it happen as fishermen, it is a spectacle, but the truth is, big fish feed like that very often, but not always on the surface where we can see them.
When LIVETARGET Lures came out with their BAITBALL SERIES, you can understand why these beautifully colored jerkbaits caught my attention. I ordered a few in different colors and was amazed at the quality of the construction. Perfect balance right out of the box, high quality lure components, sharper than sharp hooks, and perfectly functional in the design.
The overall effect was ultra-realistic with the multiple-minnow appearance and the translucent body, with multiple little minnows in the baitfish color of your choice.
Not long ago I fished with several Elite Series Bass Professionals, including Darrin Schwenckbeck, an exclusive jerkbait success story all by himself. Darrin taught me how to work a jerkbait about a half dozen different ways, but we always used the same style lure, a minnow style stickbait that would suspend.
When LIVETARGET came out with the appealing color patterns and the unique Baitball minnow profile, fishing a jerkbait became a whole new adventure of more frequent fish-catching.
LIVETARGET offers the Baitball idea in several different style lures too, including a rattlebait that is perfect for casting around and through light weed beds.
Cast it, jerk it down, pause it, twitch-twitch, jerk it down and reel, and repeat. Vary the frequency and casting distance to change the effect of the dynamic internal rattles that sync in sound with the hooks that rap up against the body of the lure to create two distinct underwater echoes that seem to fish-calling clatter sounds. Minnows mating? Not sure.
When you stop the lure to pause, it stays right there, as if it was injured and beckoning to a finny predator. Whatever these lures sound like to us anglers with an underwater mic doesn’t matter much, because it doesn’t take long to see that the fish think it’s a signal to gobble-up an easy meal.
Not sure how LIVETARGET came up with the idea, but the results have been surprising and is still a big secret among many tournament anglers. Throw it around points and shoals, tree trunks and other cover to see the appeal this lure series offers to resident fish. I like to fish it often, since you can cover so much water so very quickly, looking for those fish that are on an active feed.
The LIVETARGET Baitball Series has changed the way many anglers think about a jerkbait. It also explains how this company has won “Best Lure of the Year” so many consecutive times at the ICAST Show.
Check out the LIVETARGET Baitball Series line-up:
http://www.livetargetlures.com/freshwater/emerald-shiner-jerkbait
Try one and see.