FRESHWATER / BUDGET PICKS
Budget Hard Jerks.
A useful hard bait does not need a prestige label. These picks give you different actions and depths without building an expensive tackle box. Check current prices before buying.
FRESHWATER / BUDGET PICKS
A useful hard bait does not need a prestige label. These picks give you different actions and depths without building an expensive tackle box. Check current prices before buying.
WORDEN'S
Pulsating hackle tail + spinning blade = the most versatile multi-species lure ever made. Five bucks. Catches bass, trout, panfish, pike, and your neighbor's respect.
JOHNSON
Weedless spoon that slides through lily pads and grass mats where bass hide and treble hooks die. Add a trailer and slow-roll it over the pads. The strikes are violent.
RAPALA
Balsa that's been embarrassing bass for generations. Carry a spare. You'll lose one.
ACME
Solid-brass spoon with a baitfish wobble and no line twist. It casts a mile, and the flash is visible from distance in stained water. Trout, bass, stripers all see it, and they all hate it.
LUHR JENSEN
Wide wobble, heavy flash, casts a mile. The Krocodile has been the go-to casting spoon for salmon, trout, and steelhead since before most anglers were born. Works in salt too.
PANTHER MARTIN
Holographic blade that shimmers and flickers in sunlight like a disco ball on a wire. The original inline spinner, with the blade mounted directly on the shaft for zero dead spots.
STRIKE KING
Lipless crankbait you rip through grass and let fall. The rattle helps bass locate it in stained water. Fish it near cover and accept that you may lose one.
BLUE FOX
Two-piece brass body that hums at a frequency fish can detect from twenty feet. The Vibrax is what steelheaders throw when Mepps feels too mainstream.
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.
HEDDON
The original walk-the-dog bait, kicking around since 1939. You jerk it, it walks, bass blow up on it. Eighty-seven years of topwater violence for nine bucks.
RAPALA
Rapala's answer to the Rat-L-Trap. BB rattle system, textured body, hard vibrating action. Cast it into wind, rip it through grass, let it fall, then repeat until your arm gives out.
HEDDON
Same Zara body with a cupped lip that makes it spit and chug instead of walk. Injured baitfish action on the surface. Bass eat injured things.
SMITHWICK
Cold-water religion in a long thin package. March bass tournaments have been won on this one bait.
RAPALA
Walk-the-dog action BELOW the surface. Works the 0-2ft zone where topwater spooks fish but suspending jerkbaits sit too deep. The weird one that outfishes both.
FIELD JOURNAL
Jerking 101, the cadence that catches fishVIEW ALL
Hard Jerks.MORE WAYS TO JERK