01 / FRESHWATER / BASS
A jerkbait is the most versatile hard bait in bass fishing. Suspending for cold water, topwater for warm-weather blowups, lipless for ripping through grass. These are the picks that work in every season and every water clarity.
MEGABASS
The yen-priced cult favorite. It'll outfish your tackle box and you'll lose it before you're ready.
SMITHWICK
Cold-water religion in a long thin package. March bass tournaments have been won on this one bait.
RAPALA
$7 of balsa that's been embarrassing bass since 1936. Buy three. You'll lose two.
LUCKY CRAFT
The deep-diver in the lineup. Pulls strikes from fish that ignored everything shallower.
MEGABASS
Same body, deeper running, even more attitude. The +1 gets to the bass the Jr can't reach.
JACKALL
Tournament-grade slack-line darter. The pause is where it gets eaten.
RAPALA
Dies on the pause — literally rolls on its side like a wounded baitfish. The death-roll action is what separates it from every other jerkbait in the box.
HEDDON
The original walk-the-dog bait — since 1939. You jerk it, it walks, bass blow up on it. Eighty-seven years of topwater violence for nine bucks.
BILL LEWIS
The #1 selling lipless crankbait in history. The rattle is louder than your drag, bass hear it from thirty feet, and the yo-yo retrieve through grass is tournament 101.
STRIKE KING
Lipless crankbait you rip through grass and let fall. The rattle calls bass from twenty feet. The price lets you fish it where you'd never throw a $15 bait.
FIELD JOURNAL
Jerking 101 — the cadence that catches fishVIEW ALL
Hard Jerks.