Spring 2025
page
18
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Revolution Sonar On Ghost Motor
Two of my favorite suspending jerkbaits are the Lucky Craft Lightning Pointer 98XR, and the Pointer 78SP. Both cast far, act and look realistic, and suspend perfectly horizontally when paused. They also show well on FFS, especially the Lightning Pointer with its broader body. For deeper fish in exceptionally clear water, I use the Lucky Craft Staysee 90.
WORKING A JERKBAIT
The key to invoking strikes with a jerkbait is all about the suspended pause. A hard jerk causes the lure to displace water and push it outward, creating vibrations that the bass can feel in their lateral line. The action also appeals to their sight. The jerkbait’s horizontal attitude when paused looks real, convincing predatory bass to engulf the bait.
The key to creating the perfect suspending pause is to make a quick jerk with your rod tip, then throw the rod tip back toward the direction of the jerkbait to throw slack in the line. This causes the jerkbait to make a hard turn toward a following bass and then allows it to be suspended horizontally and motionless.
Swimbait anglers use this tactic to get their swimbaits to turn 180 degrees to face a bass, which quickly engulf the lure headfirst. Watch the embedded video to see the retrieve I use when fishing jerkbaits in the pre-spawn (and the results).
The hard part is knowing how long to pause. It wears on your patience to wait long enough, and many bass are missed because impatient anglers’ fish jerkbaits too fast in cold water. When doing tank demonstrations with jerkbaits years ago, I learned that in cold water the longer I could stand to let a jerkbait sit, the more bass I would catch.
This is the value of incorporating FFS in your jerkbait repertoire. When you see a bass following your jerkbait on your sonar screen, and pause it, it is easier to wait for the strike!
FFS VIEWS
FFS importance in seeing what is happening and allows you to see your jerkbait up to 100-feet away in optimal water conditions with the proper FFS setup. In most cases 60-feet away is when most will see their lure, which is far enough to be effective.
In shallow water, the best FFS views are achieved with zero-degree FFS transducer mounts. On my Revolution Sonar FFS aiming system I use a zero-degree Scout view
mount and a zero-degree
forward view mount with
my dual Lowrance Active
Target 2 transducers. I
can display both views
simultaneously on my
Lowrance Pro-16 unit,
giving me optimal visibility
of my lure and the bass’
response to it.
Revolution Sonar (see the Summer 2024 issue, FFS Revolution) makes tracking hard jerkbaits easy and knowing how long to pause. Each LED light on the foot pedal represents six-degrees in a 360-degree circle. Three LED lights together on the foot control represent 18-degrees which is roughly the fan beam