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GETTING A JERK ON THE SEASON
What a winter! I'm an old fart, and I can't remember a season on this latitude when hard precipitation fell so often or when cold temperatures were so persistent. Reminds me of a lifetime I spent one winter northwest of Chicago.
But there is something we can do to waylay cabin fever: As soon as we get a few days in a row of warm, sunny weather, numerous big, hungry bass, who have been even more burdened by the climate, will move to the shallows to fill their grumbling guts. And those who know how to fish a suspended jerkbait can have a big time.

This is an interesting and highly productive technique that can yield more lunker bass in a short burst of tolerable weather than most of us catch the entire summer. The presentation is uniqueand a little trickywhich is why, I suppose, more fishermen haven't jumped on the jerkin' wagon.
The simplest, and I believe the most generally effective, method is to cast one out, twitch it hard twice, and let it set for a time. Preforming this in a way that hooks the most bass, however, is not as simple as it sounds.
First of all, try to position your boat so that you are twitching the rod tip across your body. This means that if you are right-handed, you will be jerking your rod tip to the left. For most people, this means fishing out of "the wrong side of the boat;" the side that feels most awkward. But fishing out of the "wrong" side makes it easier to get the quick start and quick stop presentation that is so important to this technique.
Don't take up all the slack line before you twitch the rod tip. Just before you twitch it, drop your left hand from the reel crank and preform the twitches with only your right hand on the rod. What you want to do is slap the slack out of the line by twitching your wrist. Slap it quickly and hard. Slap it twice quickly with your wrist, not with your arm, then let it rest while you take up the slack.
You don't want to move the bait through the water like you would with a crankbait, or even a twitch-bait. The idea is to make a lot of commotion is a small area. Bass don't want to move much when the water is cold, but any Rogue that does a spastic jerk dance in front of their noses is a goner.
Right after you finish the double twitch, put your left hand back on the reel and take up the slack slowly while moving the rod tip toward the bait. As you take up the slack, don't reel the line tight. Let the line maintain a downward bow. During this all-important "pause"

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