Entry 162-5

Mark Menendez on Jerkbaits and Big Bass

Part 5: How I Learned to Fish a Jerkbait

Question: How did you figure out the technique you used for fishing the jerkbait?

Menendez: I went to the Lake of the Ozarks to fish a tournament back in 1989. On that lake, fishing a jerkbait was common in the spring. I spent two days trying to figure out how the locals were fishing that bait, and I just couldn’t catch a bass. I finally gave up on the jerkbait and started fishing a crankbait like I normally would. We had a six-fish-a-day limit, and I caught 12 fish that weighed a total of 50 pounds on the crankbait. I finished second behind a local guy who won the tournament with 51 pounds. He’d caught his fish on a Strike King spinner bait. The guy who won the tournament came up to me and said, “I can’t believe that you’ve figured out how to catch these fish. Did you catch them on a jerkbait?” I told him, “No, I caught them on a crankbait.” Before I left the lake, I bought three of those jerkbaits that those people there like to fish and put them in my box.

In 1991 and 1992 I started fishing Bassmaster tournaments and went to one on Lake Sam Rayburn my first year fishing Bassmaster. The tournament ended on Saturday, and after the tournament, I drove all night to fish a Red Man tournament on Kentucky Lake that started on Sunday. I live in Paducah, Kentucky. The first day of the tournament I fished all the tactics I knew to fish on this lake, but I couldn’t get a bite.

The water was clean. At about 10:00 a.m., I knew I had one of those goofy jerkbaits in my box and decided I’d give it another try. I cast the bait out on a point, and jerked it down to where it would suspend. My partner said something to me, and I turned around to look at him to hear what he was saying. All of the sudden, a bass hit my bait and started stripping drag. I caught a 3-pound largemouth. I began to think, “How was that bass positioned on the point?” I realized that the bass was suspended off the bottom over a break and that I’d let that jerkbait sit still in the water for awhile before that bass had taken it. So, I immediately ran to another point, cast the jerkbait out, cranked it down, let it sit for 5 seconds and caught another 5-pound bass. I had two fish that weighed 8-1/2-pounds.

I fished some more and finally caught another 2 pounder, but I had enough weight to get the last check given in the tournament. That convinced me that I needed to learn how to fish a jerkbait. So, I started practice fishing with it. I won the next two tournaments I fished on Kentucky Lake with jerkbaits. I won two more tournaments in the spring of 1993 fishing a jerkbait. In those two tournaments, I won by as much as 10 pounds over second place.

In 1993, Bassmaster had a tournament on Kentucky Lake. On the second day of practice, I caught five fish that weighed 40 pounds. Nobody catches 8, 9 and 10 pounders on Kentucky Lake, but that day I did. I had two bass in the 9-pound range, two fish that would weigh almost 8-pounds each and one bass that would weigh almost 7. The fish I had would weigh close to 40-pounds total.

On the first day of the tournament, I lost the flip and had to go to my partner’s fish. But, on the way down the lake, I asked if he’d let me spend 1 hour on a point that I knew about. I promised him if he’d let me fish this point that we probably wouldn’t crank the big engine until it was time to go to the weigh-in. The first bass I caught weighed 4 pounds; the second bass I caught weighed 8 pounds; the third bass weighed 6 pounds. The next fish I had on was bigger than the one that was 8 pounds, the next weighed 6 and the next 5. I had five bass that weighed 26-pounds, 1-ounce.

My partner was absolutely dumbfounded. He could see what I was doing, and I even gave him one of my jerkbaits, but he couldn’t catch a fish. He was fishing the jerkbait too fast, but of course I didn’t tell him that. I was in seventh place at the end of the first day, and Rick Clunn was in first with six bass weighing 36 pounds.

The second day of the tournament was canceled because of the weather. The wind was scheduled to blow 30 to 35 miles per hour out of the north, and that’s extremely dangerous weather on Kentucky Lake. On the third day of the tournament, we had a little rain that muddied-up the water, and I only caught one bass but it weighed 7 pounds. I tried to go to the spot where I’d caught that 40-pound bag during practice, but we had 6-foot waves, and I couldn’t get there. I finished in the top 12, and everyone out of the top standings had caught their bass on jerkbaits.

I think the biggest mistake anglers make in fishing the Wild Shiner jerkbait is that they fish it way too fast. Most fishermen want to fish fast, run and gun and cover a lot of water. We want to catch bass as fast as we can. Therefore, patience has almost become a lost art in bass fishing. But, jerk fishing is a slow, patient tactic combined with your ability to read your depth finder to find the fish.

Jerkbait fishing is an open-water tactic, and I think many fishermen give up on fishing the jerkbait when they’re not catching bass. Then they start running the bass and fishing structure they can see, rather than fishing slow, taking your time and letting your jerkbait sit still until the bass are ready to bite it. But, I promise you when you’re fishing cold, clear water that the Strike King Wild Shiner will catch the biggest bass in any lake. There’s no other bait and no other tactic other than burning a spinner bait that I know of to get bass to come up and take my lure than I can with a Wild Shiner. With the Wild Shiner, I can actually make the bass come to my bait, rather than have to make the bait go to where the fish are.

My favorite colors of Wild Shiner are chrome and black with an orange belly or a white belly. I also like the gizzard shad color. In extremely-clear water, I like a white-bellied Wild Shiner, but if the water is a little dingy, I prefer the orange belly.

Mark Menendez on Jerkbaits and Big Bass

Part 5: How I Learned to Fish a Jerkbait

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