Hard baits
Sub-surface hard baits by what makes them move: crankbaits with a lip (squarebill, medium, deep, flat-sided), lipless crankbaits, jerkbaits (suspending, floating, deep), hard swimbaits (glide baits with one joint, multi-jointed swimbaits), spybaits, and the topwater hard baits: poppers, walking baits, prop baits, wake baits.
A hard bait is a moulded plastic or wood body with treble hooks; what it does in the water comes from one of five things: a lip, a flat face without a lip, a straight body twitched by the rod, a single joint that lets a wide body glide, or a propeller. Read a hard bait by that mechanism first, then by running depth.
| Family | Mechanism | Depth | Retrieve | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crankbaits (squarebill, medium, deep, flat-sided) | A lip: the longer and flatter, the deeper | 0.5–7 m (2–25 ft) | Steady reel, bump cover | Rock, wood, ledges |
| Lipless crankbaits (VIB) | Flat forehead, line tie on the back: tight vibration, sinks | Any: count it down | Yo-yo, burn, rip through grass | Grass flats, open water |
| Jerkbaits | Slim minnow body, small lip, moved by the rod | 1–3 m (3–10 ft); deep models 4–6 m (13–20 ft) | Jerk, jerk, pause | Clear water, cold water, suspended fish |
| Hard swimbaits (glide = one joint, multi-jointed = two or more) | Joints: one for a wide S-glide, several for a snake-like swim | 0.3–5 m (1–16 ft) | Slow reel; twitch a glide to turn it | Clear water, points, bait schools |
| Spybaits | Propellers front and back, a slow sinking body | 1–5 m (3–16 ft) | Dead slow, no rod action | Clear, pressured, suspended fish |
| Topwater (popper, walking, prop, wake) | A cupped face, a walked nose, a propeller or a waking lip on a floating body | Surface | Pop, walk, plop or wake | Warm water, low light, targets and schools |
Buzzbaits and spinnerbaits are wire baits, hollow frogs are soft plastics, vibrating jigs and spoons are their own families.
- Crankbaits — A body with a lip. The lip makes the bait dive and wobble; its length and angle set the depth, the body shape sets the wobble. Four builds, each its own page. A…
- Deep-diving crankbaits — A long, flat, low-angle lip that pulls a big body down to 3.5–7 m (12–25 ft): the offshore crankbait for ledges, humps and schools in summer. It takes a long cast, a…
- Medium-diving crankbaits — The all-round crankbait: a round or coffin lip that runs 1.5–3.5 m (5–12 ft), for points, riprap, channel swings and the middle depths most fish live in. Match the…
- Squarebill crankbaits — The shallow crankbait with a short square lip: it dives 0.5–1.5 m (2–5 ft), hits wood and rock and bounces off instead of hanging up. The bite comes on the deflection…
- Flat-sided crankbaits — A flat, thin body, often balsa, with a thin lip: a tight, fast shimmy instead of a wide wobble. The cold-water crankbait, fished slowly over rock in spring and late…
- Topwater hard baits — Hard baits that work on the surface. What they do on top comes from one of four things: a cupped face, a tapered nose walked side to side, a propeller, or a lip that…
- Poppers — A floating body with a cupped or slanted face: a short pop of the rod makes it spit water and chug, then it sits still. The most controllable topwater, fished to a…
- Prop baits — A floating body with a propeller: a single plopping tail (River2Sea Whopper Plopper and its copies) that churns on a steady reel, or one or two small props on a stick…
- Walking baits (walk-the-dog) — A cigar-shaped floating body with no lip: rhythmic slack-line twitches swing the nose left and right, the walk-the-dog that covers water and calls fish up from a…
- Wake baits — A floating body with a short lip or a flat face angled so it wobbles on the surface and leaves a V-wake without diving. Reeled dead slow, it imitates a baitfish or a…
- Jerkbaits — A slim minnow body with a small diving lip: it does little on a straight retrieve and everything on the rod. Snap it on slack line and it darts, rolls, and flashes in a…
- Suspending jerkbaits — Weighted to neutral buoyancy so that on the pause it hangs motionless at 1–2.5 m (3–8 ft), eye to eye with a trailing fish. In Canadian waters—from ice-out smallmouth…
- Water temperature and buoyancy tuning — Factory suspending (SP) jerkbaits are calibrated in freshwater test tanks at roughly 10–15 °C (50–59 °F) . Outside that temperature window, two physical forces shift…
- Nose split ring and loop knot — Almost every quality jerkbait ships with a small metal split ring attached to the nose line-tie eyelet. That ring is not decorative—it is a critical mechanical hinge…
- Jump the slack and rod work — The single biggest difference between novices and tournament jerkbait specialists is line tension at the moment of the twitch . Pulling a tight line simply drags the…
- Jerkbait colour and rattle selection — Because a suspending jerkbait sits motionless during pauses of 3 to 30 seconds, fish get a closer look at it than almost any other hard bait. Choosing the right finish…
- Jerkbait rod, reel and line formula — In Canada, anglers fish suspending and sinking jerkbaits across the full 70–130 mm (7–13 cm) spectrum. Choosing between spinning and casting tackle comes down to lure…
- Jerkbait treble hook sizes and feathered tails — Replacing dull or bent trebles—or swapping hook wire gauge to tune suspension for winter vs. summer—is one of the most important jerkbait skills, yet buying the wrong…
- Floating jerkbaits — Built with positive buoyancy so that when you stop the rod, the bait floats upward instead of hanging or sinking. Floating jerkbaits split into two distinct…
- Slow-sinking jerkbaits — A hollow-bodied bass jerkbait calibrated to a gentle 10–15 cm/s (0.3–0.5 ft/s) slow sink (SS) rather than a dead neutral hang or a rapid heavy countdown drop…
- Sinking jerkbaits — A compact, flat-sided, high-density fixed-weight sinking jerkbait ( S / Heavy Sinking / Fast-Sinking , 50–110 mm) that packs significantly more weight into a smaller…
- Deep-diving jerkbaits — A suspending or slow-floating jerkbait fitted with an elongated diving bill (+1, +2, MR, or DD) engineered to pull the minnow down to 2.5–5 m (8–16 ft) and hang it…
- Hard swimbaits — Articulated hard-body lures that imitate a whole forage fish—from 70 mm (2.75 in) fry and shiners up to 250+ mm (10+ in) cisco, gizzard shad, yellow perch, bluegill…
- Glide baits (single joint) — A two-piece hard bait joined by a single center hinge with a V-notched or beveled joint angle (typically 25°–45°). Because there is only one hinge, water pressure…
- Multi-jointed swimbaits — A fish-shaped hard body segmented into three to seven sections (two to six hinges) . Whereas a single-joint glide bait glides wide from side to side and requires angler…
- Lipless crankbaits (VIB) — No lip: a flat forehead and a line tie on the back make the body vibrate tightly on a straight pull, and it sinks, so one bait covers any depth. Rattling or silent; the…
- Spybaits — A slim, slow-sinking body with a small propeller at each end: on a dead-slow straight reel the props spin and the body rolls, a shimmer with almost no vibration. The…
- Choosing a hard bait: mechanism, depth, season — Pick the mechanism for the cover, the depth for the fish, and the size for the forage; colour last.