Like most, I consider myself a master of all, but an expert at one method. My favorite method for freshwater bass and saltwater stripers is fishing a soft jerk bait. When the sluggo was introduced I jumped on that bandwagon big time. What a boom that was to my personal success. It not only greatly increased my freshwater bass success, it dramatically increased my striper fishing success. See a related article under striper fishing. My personal preference for tackle is a 6.5 foot medium to medium heavy graphite spinning rod with a fast tip. My line preference is 30 lb spiderwire, which has the diameter of 6 lb mono. I tie the spiderwire to a small barrel swivel with a uni knot, which I have found requires no glue. I then tie on a 6-12 lb test (depending on species, cover, water clarity) mono leader. On the business end is an Owner or Gamakatsu jig hook with 60-degree bend, cutting point in 2/0 to 5/0 depending on species and the size of the bait. I use a hitchhiker corkscrew bait holder, which is connected to the hook eye and screwed into the head of the bait. I've found this little device dramatically increases the number of fish per bait. I've sometimes caught upwards of 15 fish on the same bait, and that saves time.

Why spiderwire? My love is coastal striper fishing and I'm dealing with more current than most people. It's not just tidal current either, the current and eddies formed by waves crashing on the rock ledges I fish are going to put a lot of slack in your line. When I switched to spiderwire I double my catch rate and naturally made the switch in freshwater as well. There are numerous other benefits as well. I don't go through a lot of line and I doubt I have to retie the spiderwire/barrel swivel connection more than once every couple of weeks. The obvious advantage is that spiderwire let's me feel a bass breathing on my bait, so the strikes (no matter how soft) are always easy to detect. Since there is no stretch in the line, hook ups are as easy as smooth sweep of the rod. One benefit is that you feel everything a fish is doing on the other end during a battle and it really enhances the experience for me.

I vary the mono leader length based on the conditions, species, water clarity etc. For largemouth with some weeds or wood, I might go as heavy as 12 lb test, but rarely heavier. For smallmouth I usually use 8-10 lb test, but will go up to 12 if I'm fishing in heavy weeds, wood or rock. I normally use a shorter (12-14 inch) leader on largemouth, then I would for smallmouth (14-18 inch), even though I'm not convinced it makes all that much difference. I use unweighted hooks and hooks weighted with solder depending on the depth or sink rate needed. I weight the hooks using various diameter solder, by wrapping it around the shank from the hook bend to the eye. One advantage of the solder, if you wrap it such that the head end is slightly heavier than the tail, is that when you kill the retrieve the bait will fall in a spiral. My striper bait will fall in a 10-15 foot diameter spiral when I kill the retrieve, with smaller circles for the freshwater baits. This is a little trick that really drives them wild.

As for retrieves, like any bait, I try to let the bass tell me what they want that given day and under the conditions presented ie; weather, water conditions, time of year and structure present. Usually water temperature and the time of year will dictate the speed. I usually will start with a fairly fast jerk-pause-jerk-pause retrieve up close to the surface. If they don't want that then I start experimenting. I will fish it in one long jerk and a long pause to let it spiral down. I might just dead stick it and move it only after a long 1-2 minute dead stop on the bottom, then a long hard sweep and stop and do it again. I will fish it slowly along the bottom like a plastic worm. Sometimes an extremely fast retrieve, with an unweighted hook will work real well on aggressive chasing bass. One little trick under those conditions is to rig the bait with a slight bow (not straight), which will cause the bait to skip out of the water and it sometimes drives them nuts.

Color? My favorite (hand pour my own) is a clear bottom layer with a little silver glitter and a top layer in smoke with some black glitter and maybe a little red glitter. I usually will use the lighter/transparent colors in clearer water and the darker colors in stained water.

I'm not a big supporter of rattles, but if you have confidence give them a try. The only time I really use them is in stained water or if I'm fishing weeds, but even then I rarely bother. Don't think this bait can't be fished in weeds either, it is remarkably weedless if rigged correctly. If the weeds aren't that think I rig it tex-posed as usual. If the weeds are think I will just skin hook the point.