(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Long before Bass Pro Tour angler Bryan Thrift won the 2019 Forrest Wood Cup, he gained fame as the first angler to provide the ChatterBait with national exposure. He’d won an event on Lake Eufaula with it as a co-angler in 2005, but kept it hush-hush at the time. “The bait was so good I didn’t want anyone throwing it against me.” Shortly thereafter, however, he promised inventor Ron Davis that he’d give it some media love the next time he did well.
That opportunity came in his first event of 2006, a Toyota Series tournament on Lake Okeechobee that he dominated for his first pro win.
“The rest is history after that,” he said.
He’s remained loyal to the originators, with the rights now owned by Z-Man, and his two go-to vibrating jigs are the extremely popular Jackhammer and the slightly less-known Project Z. He likes the latter, with its pointed, minnow-shaped head, because it’s effective in the 6- to 10-foot zone. “I can fish it a little deeper,” he explained. While he loves it shallow in the springtime, and for schooling bass (often with a soft plastic instead of a skirt) in the fall, Thrift sets himself apart from many anglers by using these tools in the summer.
He picks his trailers based on depth. When the bass are shallow he’ll use something big and bulky, like a Damiki Knockout. It creates a lot of resistance, so you can wind slowly and it’ll stay up in the water column.
He doesn’t put it down come summertime. He uses these lures to fish ledges “just like you would at Kentucky Lake.” His choices here are typically the 5/8-ounce Project Z or the 3/4-ounce Jackhammer. Instead of using the bulky trailer, he likes a straight, minnow-type body. One of his favorites is the Damiki Armor Shad. For this purpose he’ll usually utilize shad colors for both his lure and his trailer.
He used to use straight 15-pound P-Line fluorocarbon for his deep presentations, reasoning that it gets down better than 20-pound, but he had trouble keeping fish hooked up. He solved that problem with a braid-to-fluoro combination – 30-pound P-Line TCB 8 Teflon-coated braid to a 6-foot section of P-Line Tactical fluorocarbon. The thin diameter of the braid helps his lure get down quickly and the low stretch benefits his hook sets.
His retrieve starts by letting it go all the way to the bottom, then he endeavors to keep it down there.
“The first thing I’ll do after it hits the bottom is I’ll pop my rod tip, just give it a sharp twitch,” he explained. “That’ll pop that bait up off the bottom 12 to 18 inches and then I’ll start my retrieve real slow.” After 10 or 15 cranks of the handle, he’ll let it fall back down to the bottom, counting down the descent. He’ll usually do that twice on a single cast. Sometimes they want a more aggressive approach: “You can stroke it just like you would a football jig or any other jig.”
If you want to learn some other aspects of Thrift’s ChatterBait system, including information about the hard-thumping model with an oversized blade that he’s working on, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
