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Trolling
with jerkbaits
Trolling
is no doubt one of the most successful methods of lure fishing as a searching
method on big waters. The lures running behind the boat are on the effective
depth all the time, and there is no time spend for casting, bringing the lures
to the desired depth and moving to another spot with the lures out of the water.
Also rod-holders enable you to use two rods a man, and more baits out means more
possibility’s to experiment and a bigger change to contact fish. But trolling
can be tedious, especially for the angler who isn’t steering. Playing
around with lipped plugs Rarely
do I fish as guest, so usually I am steering, but being an impatient character,
I start to become restless if nothing happens for the best part of an hour. So I
give line to change depth, start to change plugs and do all kinds of things that
change the speed of the lure. On more than one occasion it happened that after
giving slack or when reeling a plug in to change, a pike would grab the lure.
As we already experienced with trolling for zander that moving the rod
forward and backward increased results. On a nice October day in 1996 fishing
for pike, after more than 2 hours trolling without any sign of fish, I started
to try this method out. I had a Grim Reaper Undertaker attached, in the medium
diving model. This lure floats quite low in the water, especially if compared to
the Rapala Super Shad Rap, and due to its lesser buoyancy it won’t rise like a
Polaris missile if you stop pulling it. This makes it possible to stop the plug
dead in the water, with the plug slowly rising in front of a might-be following
pike. I started to stop the plug dead now and then by moving the rod backward
quickly while trolling, then give it a gentle sweep forward. It only took 5
minutes before a nice pike reacted aggressively to this stop and go method. Soon
a second pike followed. Since then
I’ve used this method of trolling with success on more occasions. Trolling
with jerkbaits If
this method of trolling was successful, why not do it with the stop and go lure
per excellence: the diving jerkbait? In June 1997 - the season had just opened,
I was fishing with my brother-in-law on one of our favorite waters - I tried out
the jerking method with a Jerking Jack of Loz Harrop. Within a quarter of an
hour a pike grabbed the lure, but it was missed. Probably a small one, at least
I prefer to think that of missed fish. The next pike was hooked. Not extremely
big, but it was my first fish on a trolled jerkbait, and the method worked.
After
having tried some shallow spots by casting jerkbaits without much success, we
started trolling again. The sun had risen and was shining from a blue sky. The
fish probably had moved deeper. I steered the boat to a
depth of 10-14 foot and suggested that we should use deeper-running lures. I
connected a custom-made Hog Seeker to my line. I had asked Loz to put extra
weight in some Hog Seekers, so they would be suitable to reach greater depths.
This Hog Seeker proved to be excellent for the stop and go trolling method when
tried out next to the boat, and with 35 yards of line out could be pulled to
over 10 foot deep, as I felt it hitting the bottom.
Although nothing happened for a half an hour I didn’t notice the time
was passing as I was occupied with steering the boat with the left hand, and
jerk-trolling with the right one. Suddenly there was some considerable
resistance in a forward movement and I was in a fish. To our surprise a nice
zander had taken the pink Hog. My first zander on a jerkbait was a fact! Shortly
afterwards a nice pike scratched the Hog. The third fish that day on a trolled
jerkbait. Beside the jerkbait rod there were 3 other rods out, all with lipped
plugs. Those three rods managed one small pike in the same time the jerkbaits
counted for 3 fish and at least one missed take. That
experience was continued on other days: one jerkbait-rod out fished three
others. Also more zander were to follow to be caught on trolled jerkbaits. Technique Trolling
with jerkbaits is not new. Shortly after my first experience I read an article
about it in “Musky Hunter”. The Americans use it with success for catching
that hard to catch silver'ish cousin of our pike, especially in late summer and
early autumn. The technique is simple. The boat has to move slightly faster than
with normal trolling. Cast the jerkbait some 20-30 meters behind the boat,
engage the reel with the rod pointing backwards between the position 7 and
8’o’clock. Wait till the line is tight and move the rod forwards quickly to
the position 10’o’ clock. Now comes the tricky part: bring the rod back
afterwards whereby you bring the jerkbait almost
to a stop, but have to maintain contact with the lure. So you almost
bring the top of the rod backward at the speed the boat is moving. It doesn’t
matter that the lure doesn’t stop completely, the change of speed is enough to
trigger following fish. By the way: even when you are attending the other rod,
and the jerkbait is just trailing motion-less behind the boat, still a jerkbait
is grabbed. Of course you can bring back the rod fast to stop the jerkbait
completely, but you will miss a lot of takes in that way: You will only notice
fresh tooth-marks when changing the lure. Tackle I
only talked about divers, as gliders are not suited for this method. It is hard
from a moving boat to give them the zigzag pattern with short twitches, and
besides that they will run very shallow when trolled. For fishing deeper you
will have to reduce the speed dramatically and thus give away the big advantage
of trolling to search a lot of water quickly. Better use the gliders for working
a hot spot. I have good experience with both the Hog and Hog Seeker, and the
Jerking Jack of Loz Harrop as well with the original
Pig made by the late Dave Scarff. You
can use the rod you use for normal jerk baiting. I myself have three jerkbaits
rod build to my own concept: longer and lighter than the usual pool-cue-copies.
Two are one-piece rods of 232 cm (7’9”) and the third is a two-piece rod of
240 cm (8’). Behind the trigger-grip they have 18” of cork, what gives good
support for the underarm. These longer jerkbait-rods are - besides splendid for
casting and a dream to play fish on – also better suited for trolling with
jerkbaits. Because of their extra length the needed change of angle between the
forward and backward position during “jerk-trolling” is smaller then with a
6’ rod. Most anglers will no
doubt only posses short jerkbait rods build to the American concepts. In that
case it is better to use the normal trolling rods to try this method out. The
jerkbaits will probably be heavier than the optimal or even maximum casting
weight of the rod. No problem, the resistance in the water is much less than of
plugs with vanes. If you cast carefully, or just drop the lure in the water and
let the line go, you can bring the jerkbait to the desired distance. Longer rods
are also better for setting the hooks. Extra
weighted jerkbaits I
told you about some extra weighted jerkbaits. Custom-made services as delivered
by Loz Harrop gives you the opportunity to obtain some divers that reach greater
depths than the average divers do. These extra weighted models also enable you
to search deeper areas with the normal casting techniques. That means
opportunities in late summer and autumn to fish for pike in big lakes where they
have left the shallow margins. These divers have a slower rise, so they hang
nearly motionless in the water after the jerking-movement. This is, as I found
out, very appreciated by…. Zander. Last season I caught my biggest zander, 85
cm (about 12 lbs., we Dutch don’t bother about weight but are interested in
length) on a special Hog, that was weighted to almost neutral buoyancy.
Its length is 6” but it weights nearly 2 oz. I was casting at the
wind-swept side of a deep lake. The bottom runs steadily down from 3 foot near
the shore to 14 foot under the boat. When casting in a certain direction I
experienced some resistance. A cast slightly to the left or right and the bottom
seemed clean, but in that particular spot there were some weeds. Although it
felt that way, but there was never anything greenish on the hooks. After more
than 4 (!!!) missed takes I was connected to some kind of plastic-bag, that
started to live when close to the boat. Then there were short bumping movements
to the bottom and after some time I saw that I was connected to a big zander.
After landing, unhooking and taking pictures II fished the spot thoroughly and
missed another nearly undetectable take of another big zander, as was proven by
the scale pinned on one of the trebles. Last summer we have missed more zander
on that specific spot. But as the takes of zander are very gentle with stop and
go retrieves, and they are not enable to engulf the jerkbait, missing is a big
part of the game when trying to catch zander on jerkbaits. Diederik |
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