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It's bladed jig season and the largemouth bass are chasing them on the lakes throughout the Youngstown-Warren area.
Actually, every month seems to be right for my assortment of bladed jigs, popularly known as Chatterbaits -- the brand name that has become synonymous with the lure genre. As Kleenex is to facial tissues, Chatterbait is to bladed jigs.
They are jig heads and hooks outfitted with a thin gauge hexagonal metal "blade" that catches water as the angler reels, creating a hard vibrating action.
Bladed jigs' vibration transmits two ways: down to the skirt and trailer as a hard wiggle that attracts game fish and up the line to the hands of the angler. They are too tempting for bass, pike and walleyes to resist and very addicting to anglers.
From April through October, whenever I push the Bass Cat from the dock, regardless of the lake, I always have a Chatterbait tied on. Sometimes I rig up two Chatterbait rods, in case I want to make a pitch with a different color or larger size.
My first bladed jig fish came many years ago from Lake Milton's Ellsworth Road bridge. I was fishing up in the river section that day, starting at the bridge, where a fat three-pounder smacked the white-skirted Chatterbait as I reeled it across the rip-rap.
Since that first fish, I've enjoyed great success chunking and winding Chatterbaits on Mosquito, Pymatuning, Shenango, Berlin, Wilhelm, Chautauqua, Lake Erie harbors, the Ohio River and the Muransky Companies Bass Classic venues Evans and Pine lakes.
Bladed jigs are versatile and can be deployed in a variety of presentations. They are great for covering lots of water across expansive flats, for rip-rap on causeways and breakwaters, and for working around shallow cover, such as willows, brush and rock piles.
Chatterbaits are especially effective in lakes with aquatic vegetation. Though the hook is exposed, the blade acts as a weed guard of sorts, pushing the greenery away from the hook in the turbulence behind the blade.
Bladed jigs are manufactured by a number of bait companies. Invented by a South Carolina angler, the first Chatterbait quickly caught the attention of Z-Man, and found great success in the marketplace. Variations of the bladed jig design include Strike King's Thunder Cricket, the Booyah Melee and Berkley Slobberknocker. Z-Man also makes a super premium bladed jig branded as the Jackhammer.
They all excel in three critical areas: They enable anglers to cover a lot of water quickly, they are easy for predator fish to locate when they are in chase mode, and they tend to keep fish pinned until anglers can get their hands on them.
Game fish mistake Chatterbaits for small fish, especially shad, perch and bluegills. They are the primary forage in most of the lakes in northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.
While bladed jigs can be fished with no trailer, I find they are much more appealing (to me, anyway) with a trailer threaded on the hook. When I'm looking to imitate a shad, I add a white or pearl boot-tail swimbait or a Strike King Rage Menace on a white-skirted jig.
For perch and bluegill eaters, I use a green pumpkin or black-and-blue skirted jig, to which I add a Reaction Innovations Skinny Dipper in the sungill color. I usually shorten the soft plastic bait so the boot-tail extends only an inch or so beyond the skirt.
My Chatterbait set-up includes a medium-heavy 7-foot-3 casting rod and a baitcaster spooled with 17-pound test fluorocarbon. The stout outfit is necessary because the strikes often are vicious, as the bass and other predator fish want to kill the lure.
I estimate more than half of the fish I've boated this year have been tricked by my bladed jigs. And I would wager that at least half of the fish I'll catch before I put the Bass Cat in winter storage will come aboard on a bladed jig hook.
I can't imagine going to the lakes without them.
Jack Wollitz is the author of more than 1,800 newspaper columns, 300 magazine features and a book, The Common Angler, published in 2021. Email Jack at jackbbaass@gmail.com.