By Vance McCullough – AC Insider

According to BASS and MLF BPT Results, it’s officially bladed jig season!  The Strike King Thunder Cricket is getting lots of mentions in recent AC Insider recaps, and we’re hearing a lot of “Chatter” regarding the technique, so we checked in with one of the best in the game with a bladed jig, MLF BPT Pro, Bryan Thrift.

Early in his career Bryan Thrift earned the moniker ‘The Chatterbait Kid’ due to his prowess with the yet unknown lure. Both Thrift and the Chatterbait are well known now. Here, he offers a nugget of advice.

Choice of trailer – size, shape, material – is key to fishing with a Chatterbait, as it is with any jig. For one thing, the trailer will affect the lure’s running depth at a given speed.  When Thrift gets dialed-in on a trailer he likes, he wants to stick with it, even when fishing grass that tops out at differing heights or that is irregular and scattered, as it can be in early spring.  He has a trick for controlling depth without having to use a different trailer or changing the weight of his Chatterbait.

“You can actually change the depth this bait’s gonna run at the same retrieve speed, just by changing your line size. I do that a lot. If I’m on a great Chatterbait bite and I’m fishing different type areas with it, I’ll have one rigged up with 20lb fluorocarbon and I’ll have one rigged up with 15lb fluorocarbon. What that does is it’ll let that bait with the 15lb
line run about a foot-and-a-half deeper just because the line diameter is so much different.

“So, you can get your bait a little deeper and still be able to wind it at the same slow speed you’re winding it with on 20lb line in shallower water.”

Sportsman’s Warehouse has a great selection of the bladed jigs…start here