In this video, LTB’s Travis Moran fishes a brand new finesse jerkbait for prespawn bass. EXCLUSIVE to Lucky Tackle Box subscribers, the Bagley Shallow Balsa Minnow is ideal for drawing strikes from spooky fish this time of year. As always, Travis breaks down how to rig it, how to retrieve it and where to fish it. Makes sure to watch the whole video…Travis DOUBLES UP at 6:40!!

*Transcript below

Yes look at that. Oh look at that, there he is, there he is. Oh got him. Might be, that might be a striper. Oh no that’s a bass. That’s a big old bass. You guys that was awesome.

What is up? Travis here with Lucky Tackle Box. Guys the sun is finally shining. The lakes are starting to heat up. Wintertime might actually be over, and that means these bass are going to be moving up shallow to start heating up. Now when they do that, they can be challenging to locate and they can also be real skittish, for that first wave that comes up when they’re trying to heat up any kind of commotion and stuff can really scare them back into deeper water. So that’s why it’s important to have a little smaller bait like this Shallow Balsa Minnow from Bagley Baits where you can cover a lot of water. You can really cast this out quickly, but also it doesn’t make too much commotion. It’s a nice small little profile isn’t going to spook those bass. So you’re going to have a better chance of catching them. So guys, let’s head out and break down this technique so hopefully you guys will learn a little bit and be able to go out into your local water and catch more fish this spring.

Okay, let’s talk about this bait. First of all, it’s an LTB exclusive, meaning for all the subscribers you guys are getting this bait before it’s released to the general public. It’s not available online, not available at your local tackle shop til a few months after you guys get to try it out. And this is perfect timing because this time of the year is ideal for these shallow water fish as they’re moving up shallow. We’ll talk about that a little bit more, but this is the Shallow Balsa Minnow. Has a real lifelike look to it. And the action you’re going to like, because you just twitch this thing and you work this bait. It has that great action that’s going to draw in strikes. And to keep that action, it’s very important what line you use. I’ve got six pound line here. I use six to eight pound mono or fluorocarbon and if you have that thin diameter line that’s going to allow that bait to be able to really have the action. So anyway guys that thin like on a smaller, medium to medium light spinning rod and with your favorite spinning reel and you’ll be good to go. Alright, there we go.

Told you. That big one bit me right there. Now it’s a little bit later in the day. Look at that! Today is starting to get a little bit better.

Retrieval! Alright so what we’re trying to do as, we’ll talk about location here in just a minute, but the way I’m positioning the boat is parallel. I’m up shallow. My boat is shallow, so if you’re fishing from the shore this is a perfect technique as well because obviously if you’re [inaudible 00:02:58] you’re near the shallow areas. So I’m trying to cast this bait parallel along here so it stays in that basically one to five foot range the whole time. And I’m using just quick little jerks on semi taught line here. Okay. So I don’t want that line too tight or it’s just going to pull that bait through. I want it semi tight. So that way when that bait, it really creates that erratic motion. And then the next thing is, I’m just experimenting with my pauses. So some of these casts I’m going to just cast out in the whole time, just little twitches the entire time, that little erratic motion to keep that bait going and we’ll see if that gets any strikes.

Then everyone’s once in a while throw in a little pause. Twitch, twitch, pause. Twitch, twitch, pause. And see if that’s what those fish want because a lot of times, depending on the day, time of day, time of the year, these fish respond differently to different types of actions. So you want to try to figure out what it is and then when you realize, hey I’m getting the fish on pauses you want to make sure you throw in some more pauses and really get that cadence down. But one thing you got to keep in mind with this bait being a Balsa made of Balsa is that it floats. So on that pause, it starts to float a little bit. If you want to keep it down there, what I do is I’ll give it some jerks and then I’ll just slowing be reeling a little bit in between, so that bait will just kinda creep a little bit, but it’ll stay down at that depth. Then I jerk it a couple more times again.

So fish really become magnets for warmer water this time of the year. So you’ve got to think about it. There are going to be areas in the lake that are warmer than others. So first of all, where is the sun? Right now the sun’s behind the camera. So it’s shining down on all this bank right here. So that’s going to be a high percentage where that sun is actually shining the majority of the day. So focus on those sides of the bodies of water. Now the second thing is shallower water heats up faster. The reason being is that sun is penetrating the entire thing. So if it’s a foot or two feet of water, the sun’s penetrating through there and it’s not as much for it to heat up. So these fish will move shallow. The last thing is hard cover. So we’ve got a rip rap bank like this all the way along there, that sun beating down the rock, those rocks absorb that heat and we’ll hold onto it longer. So as the sun starts to go down, that will still remain the warmer part of the lake through the night because those rocks were able to heat up during the day. So if you can think about those little elements that will help you target these higher percentage areas this time of the year.

Really though, obviously you might look at the rocks and go, “Travis I don’t have those in my lake.” Well those fish will go to, there is always somewhere that’s warmer than others in your body of water. So when that sun’s going up, figure out where you think those shallow water areas that are warmer and those are what you want to target.

So when we come along this bank right now, it all looks the same it’s just the straight long bank and there may be fish all the way along it. But what you want to do is pick out some of those areas that are a little different than the other ones. For instance, there’s a bridge that we went by either side of that bridge can be high areas. There’s a big turn, a big sharp 90 degree turn in the rocks. That’s going to be a good area for those fish to tuck in a little cove and stuff. Just little pipes coming into the water, anything that’s different, those are going to be higher percentage areas. Then if your lake doesn’t have this kind of stuff, if it’s just a shallow little end of the lake, look for some kind of tree sticking up in the middle of that or something, some little road channel that goes across it. That’s going to be those areas, those higher percentage areas you really want to key in on.

Ooh my God I got two. Wait til you see this thing. Holy cow, I don’t even know if I could swing … Shoot dude. Dude I’m going to try to swing it. I don’t even know if that’s the right thing to do. We just bumped the rocks back there. Holy cow. Dude we’ve got to get some pictures of that too. I’m going to show that real fast here. Look at that. If that doesn’t show you that these little baits, these little jerk baits are the right baits to use this time of the year, I don’t know what does. The Shallow Balsa Minnow baby. These fish, when they go to these points, they are looking to feed. These fish were hanging out with each other and they saw one eat the meal, the other one came up and tried to take it from it. But dude, those are nice. That is too nice spotted bass. One cast, nothing wrong with that.

Alright guys, started at the point. We’ve worked our way in here. The sun is facing over here, so this is a nice warm little area, lots of rock and stuff to absorb that heat and this little Shallow Balsa Minnow was able to call them up. These fish are probably about 10, 12 feet deep. They’re suspended, but that little erratic action right up against the shoreline, those fish are looking up and looking to feed. That fish isn’t going to break any records right there, but it tunes you into what’s going on this fish this time of the year as water’s warming up. If you find an active spot, these fish are just going to be coming to you, keep fishing it. Guys, if you enjoyed the video, hit that thumbs up and if you’re not subscribing to the Lucky Tackle Box YouTube channel, you’re crazy. You need to hit that subscribe button so you can get updated and all the new videos that we’re putting out. Anyway, guys, thanks for watching I’ll see you out on the water.

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