Bank Fishing With Chatterbaits | Bass Fishing Lures

Hey, guys. Michael Neal here with bassresource.com. Wanna talk to you about fishing a vibrating jig from the bank. And a lot of times I see bank fishermen trying to throw as far out in the middle as you can. Yes, sometimes that's a great thing, but a vibrating jig is a great way to catch fish that are up close to the bank. And especially if you've got something like what's right behind me here, a sea wall or a line of reeds or anything that those fish are gonna be holding on on the bank, riprap, a rock, anything like that, make sure you try and parallel that stuff. You've got a perfect opportunity when you're standing on the bank to do what the guys in the boat oftentimes try and do from the same types of locations. When you're fishing from the bank, I think rod selection is gonna be very important. You don't want something that's gonna be really long. A lot of times you're gonna have to deal with trees around the bank or you're gonna wanna try and make super accurate casts.

This 7'2" Denali Kovert, it's a medium-heavy. To me, that would be the go-to rod from the bank. It's long enough where you can still make long casts. It's got plenty of backbone, but it's got a soft tip and is short enough where you can still make those super accurate casts as well. Gear ratio, I would stick with the same thing I stick with no matter where I'm throwing a vibrating jig. And that's a 6 to 1 gear ratio. Whatever your...it could be 6 to 3, 6 to 2, 6 to 4, whatever your favorite brand of reel is. Something in that is gonna be somewhere around the same inches per turn as the one that I throw. Line, I would go with 20-pound Sunline Sniper. You're gonna want something kind of heavy. You're gonna be fishing around a lot of cover from the bank. Those fish are gonna try and bury you up and whatever is right in front of you. You gotta have some line that's gonna be strong enough to get those fish out. And as far as colors, you know, you can go with green pumpkins more in the summertime or...especially ponds, I would focus more on the green pumpkins. There's oftentimes not as many shad or minnows in those places. So, I would stick with the more bream imitators.

And if I'm fishing from the bank in the spring or the fall, I would throw more white. Summertime, I would focus on the bream patterns. But there's a couple of ways in the spring if you wanna try and focus on the areas that you can see beds, if you can see fish activity and know they're in that area. If you've got the beds here, maybe try and go out just a little bit deeper, a little bit further out if you can, or just focus on those light spots. Either focus on the fish that are coming to it or make repeated casts to those fish that you think are spawning, which will be on those light spots. And there'll be some males that'll be guarding fry there a little bit after they get done spawning. So, there's sure to be activity there. In the summertime, try and look for bream beds. You know, that's oftentimes a thing that gets overlooked from guys that don't fish from the bank, but you can see them. And a lot of times, those bigger fish will sit just out in front of them, just out of sight, but they're still there. And the guys that are fishing the bank from a boat will actually go over the top of them. So, if you can just visually see where those bream beds are, fish just a little bit deeper and don't cast necessarily parallel down the bank and cast a little bit further out. If there's grass out deeper, that's also a bonus. You can try and reach that out there from the shore.

But in the summertime, you wanna slow down your retrieve. You wanna try and maintain contact with whatever cover you're throwing around, or if you're fishing down the bank early in the morning, you know, some of those fish will slide up and get on those vertical type ambush places whether it's sea walls, grass lines, reeds, anything like that. And then the fall is when they're gonna start keying in on that bait again. They're gonna start chasing it. So, look for the places that have balls of bait. You'll be able to visually see them with your eyes up swimming around on top. You'll see fish chasing them, whether it's bass, white bass, whatever else. And go back to your whites again then also because that's what they're gonna be keyed on. And throw small trailers, something like a 3.5-inch Cane Thumper that time of year. Trim your skirt up a little bit and try and make that thing as small as you can, but still be able to cast it. Three eighths ounce is great for that time of year. I recommend a half, probably the rest of the year, especially in the summertime. But fishing from the bank, you don't wanna get this thing too deep. If you do, you're gonna stay hung. There's no weed guard like a regular jig. So, you have to kind of maintain contact with the bottom, but you want the lightest weight that you can get away with when fishing from the bank.

Wintertime, I would look for the deepest water that I can find and probably yo-yo my bait that time of year. It's a little bit different presentation. You wanna throw it out there and let it hit the bottom. Go all the way down completely slack. And then you wanna get your rod, you know, probably about the 3:00 position and just very slowly pull it up to 12:00 and just as fast as you can feel that bite turn. You don't wanna outrun your bait, you don't want it to move very fast, you want it just crawl along the bottom. That time of year, I like something like a Pro Swimmer to slow it down. Red is a great starting point. Shad are still also great that time of year, but red by far where I would go to. So, you know, a vibrating jig has been great across every tournament circuit. It's great anywhere in the country from the furthest west, furthest east, all the way up to New York, Texas, and Florida, and everywhere in between. It's just a great imitator. Match the hatch for what you're fishing for, gets you a good rod that you got a lot of confidence in, gets you some good line that you know those fish are not gonna break you off, they're not gonna get you around the reeds or rocks or whatever you got around you.

Check out these tips from BassResource.com. Hopefully, you'll catch more bass from the bank with a vibrating jig.