Vibrating baits draw muskies
In many instances, chatter-style baits excel in taking bass, trout and panfish. So it's only natural that larger baits featuring a chattering metal lip would catch larger predators like muskies and northern pike.
"The trend right now in the muskie world is big blades, big vibration. People are leaning toward baits like the double-bladed Cowgirl," said Muskie Innovations owner Brad Ruh, who markets the Muskie Chatterbait.
"The Chatterbait is easy to cast, easy to retrieve. It has lots of vibration. And that's the key to the Chatterbait, the vibration. It has a unique vibration because the blade doesn't spin, rather it kicks back and forth," he added.
Muskie Chatterbaits come in nine colors, utilizing both painted and metallic hammered blades. The bodies feature both a skirt and a soft-bodied twister tail. Fueled by the arbitrary bite of the blade, the skirt breathes and the tail dances.
"The vibration of the lure makes it fish bigger than it really is," Ruh said. "Muskies have a long lateral line, and they rely on that to feed."
Muskie Chatterbaits are relatively shallow-running lures. Ruh targets structure and cover options with the baits.
The basic retrieve is a straight swimming one, making it well-suited for inexperienced anglers. But it also functions with a touch of deviation.
"Cast and crank is the number one retrieve," Ruh said. "I've also experimented with rips and pauses. Because the blade doesn't rotate, it acts more like a blade bait, so you can actually pump it as such."
Lure designer Joe Renosky of Indiana, Pa., has incorporated the chatterbait-style blade into hard bodies, such as he ChatterStick.
Adapting a special hex blade in front of a minnow shape has resulted in a stickbait with similar swimming characteristics as the chatterbait.
"There are a lot of minnow-shaped baits on the market that have a repetitive action," Renosky. "With the ChatterStick, there is no lip. The blade, which is located on top of the lure, gives it a very erratic, nonrepetitive action".
In contrast to Ruh, whose muskie-fishing roots often prescribe casting, Renosky's eastern setting is one more of a trolling approach.
"As with any trolling situation, depth control is an important part of the deal," Renosky said. "ChatterSticks are fairly shallow runners, so I impart a weighting system to get the bait down to the level I want to fish."
He uses a 1-ounce snap weight, clipping it to the line about 40 feet in front of the lure. Watching the angle of the line to the water guides him to the amount of let-out from the snap weight.
When working in water in the 15- to 20-feet range relatively close to outside weed edges, he keeps the let-out fairly short, in the 10- to 30-foot range. When covering open basin areas, typically he allows more let-out, allowing the lure and weighting system to sink to the down to about 30 feet.
Trolling systems that employ snap weights are very sensitive to trolling speeds. Speed up and they rise up; slow down and they drop.
Renosky has had his best success trolling ChatterSticks at about 2 mph, though they can be pulled as fast as 5 mph without blowing out. While this is slow in most muskie-trolling circles, he said this speed seems to provide the most erratic action and trigger the most strikes. And the slower speed makes dropping baits down in the desired zone easier, with less line out.
ChatterSticks feature quality hook ties that are sonic welded to the plug. Renosky said he landed pike approaching 50 inches during Canadian forays with no hook-tie failures.
Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.
