Let a jerkbait be part of the chaos in catching smallies.
Hard-bodied plastic and balsa jerkbaits catch river smallmouths during the summer. It’s different with soft plastic. That stuff seems to ooze into warm water, sending a low frequency signal to the lateral lines of bass, a situation I believe is appropriate to slow water fishing. Where fast-moving water adds liveliness to a river, bass often prefer jerkbaits.
That fast water creates a high frequency environment. The downward slant of the riverbed, the rocks, and the organisms in the flow determine how the water moves and what the bass sense. A jerkbait can be a part of all the chaos. It has a high frequency signal reaching the bass’s lateral line when a Senko might get lost in all the noise. The high frequency vibrations of a jerkbait will also reach the bass’s inner ear, while the low frequency vibrations of soft plastic don’t do that easily.
During summer, I don’t recommend a jerkbait in slow water, but it may work in moving water not quite fast, which calls differences between low and high signals into question.
My black Labrador, Loki, astonishes me when it comes to the animal brain, and from what I’ve read, the processing complexity is far superior to the computers we build. Ditto, the brains of smallmouth bass. Look at a depiction of a dog’s brain portrait-wise, and you won’t be very impressed, comparing that brain to a human brain. But offer Loki a shot of Kraken Black Rum, and he’ll reject it in a tiny fraction of a second. He seems to instantaneously judge the spectrum of that rum’s qualities. If he judged alcohol alone, I’d think his curiosity might linger on other qualities.
I believe the lateral line of a smallmouth bass means the fish’s brain prefers balsa over plastic in some situations, involving a power of subtle distinction like Loki’s, but I’ll be the first to admit that when fishing really fast, rocky water, the higher frequency vibrations of a plastic plug may be better. And yet, I’ve caught bass on a #5 Rapala floater in water like that, so the difference isn’t hard and fast.
I also hooked a smallmouth about 18 inches long in moving but relatively slow water on the same plug. It’s the way the water rippled at the surface over rocks 2 or 3 feet down, boiling up from that bottom, which makes the place one I never forget, characterizing that middle ground between slow and fast water. Enough vibration created from water passing over rocks made it seem just right for a balsa plug. That bass couldn’t disagree.
Balsa is not only a softer material than hard plastic, it’s quieter in the water. Lesser density means it floats faster and higher, but it also means it absorbs vibrations that hard plastic won’t, which it sends out into the water transformed by its own qualities. The vibrations are of lower frequency than plastic. Balsa functions in a looser fashion than a hard bodied plug does.
You can’t beat Rapala floaters for the purpose they serve, but when it comes to plastic plugs, you can spend a whole lot of money. Even for little plugs shorter than your pinky.
I fished with an old friend more than a decade ago, catching just a couple of river bass. He showed me his plug box, which, as I remember, didn’t take up much space, because most of the plugs were about 2 inches long. He told me about Japanese websites and spending $20 each for little ones he pointed out, filling rows of that box.
Whatever the plugs cost today, I’ve never bothered to find any of those websites. Rapala offers me plenty of choice. In addition to balsa, they make many hard bodied plugs. Some are little more than two inches long. The “Sinking Minnow,” for example. It’s a sinking plug, but it can be retrieved without getting stuck on bottom. Or try the Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow floater.
Dozens of options exist. When fishing smallmouths in small rivers, it’s usually better to opt for 2 inches, maybe 3, then tie on a 5-inch Smithwick Rattlin’ Rogue good for making a pike gnarl its teeth.
