What is the best way to fish a chatter bait?

How To Fish A Chatterbait
5 Min Read
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When it comes to the world of fishing and catching fish, any sort of help is always welcome. The best way to fish a Chatter bait is an excellent technique for those who are looking to find fish, like bass. 

Chatterbait is named appropriately and recognized because of the noises they make when in use by fishermen and anglers all over the world. 

There are lots of different types of baits and lures that can be used to snag your fish, but what do chatterbaits do that make them so good? 

Follow our guide to find out more.

What Is A Chatter bait?

Chatter baits are one of the most popular lures used by anglers worldwide. They have been around for decades and are still very effective today. The name “chatter bait” comes from the sound they make when retrieved, which resembles chattering teeth.

Chatter baits are designed to imitate live baitfish such as minnows or small fish like shad. The equipment comes in many shapes and sizes but all share some common features:

  • A soft plastic body with a hard head attached at an angle (usually between 45°-90°)
  • Some sort of hooking system that allows it to be easily unhooked after being caught on the surface
  • A tail fin that helps keep it afloat
  • An eyelet hole through which water can escape when the lure is pulled through the water
  • A weight that keeps the lure down in the water

The best way to learn how to fish a chatterbait is to practice. Much like with other parts of fishing, the best way to get better at something is to stick at it until you’re happy and comfortable doing it.


What Types Of Fish Do Chatterbaits Catch?

The best way to know if a particular type of fish will bite on a certain type of lure is to try it yourself. If you don’t catch anything, then chances are there’s no reason to believe that it would work. However, if you do catch something, you’ll know whether or not it works.

There are two main types of chatterbaits:

1. Soft Plastics

Soft plastics are made from flexible materials such as rubber or vinyl. They usually come in bright colors and are often shaped into various forms. These are great for catching trout, crappie, catfish, and other freshwater fish.

2. Spinnerbaits

Spinnerbaits are similar to soft plastics in appearance, but they tend to spin much faster than their counterparts. This makes them ideal for catching larger fish like bass, perch, and walleye.

How Does Chatterbait Work?

When a fisherman pulls his line back through the water, he creates a current that pushes the lure along. As the lure moves through the water, it generates noise that attracts nearby fish. Once the fish has taken notice of the noise, it swims toward the hook, which will have some sort of bait on it.

If you’re looking to catch bass with your chatter bait, you’ll likely need to accompany the lure with some sort of ground bait around the space in the water that you’re fishing in.

Because the chatter bait almost mimics smaller fish, enticing larger fish from their shallow cover or whatever type of cover they’re hiding under, you’ll find yourself catching fish that may not have originally been available to you.

Ground Bait

If you’re using a chatter bait lure to get certain types of fish out of their hiding places and into the open, ground bait is something that you can use to your advantage.

However, we recommend that you check with the laws and rules of the area that you’re in because of the potential effect that ground bait might have on the quality of the water and create dirty water.

Ground bait is where you place a certain type of bait in the water around where you think the fish are going to be and where you’d like to draw them. After doing this, cast your line out to this area and you’re bound to get a bite or two at least! 

Pairing this with the chatterbait lure makes sure that you’ve taken as many measures as you can to get the fish to come and take the bait.


Different Ways To Move A Chatter bait

Different Ways To Move A Chatterbait
best way to fish a chatter bait

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Chatterbait is one of the most versatile baits when it comes to being able to move it around. Because the lure is mimicking a small fish, you can almost choose the behavior that you wish to impersonate.

For example, if you think that the fish in the water would target a slower fish, you can drag the lure through the water slowly. This almost tells the fish that the lure is an injured minnow that’s there for the taking.

Alternatively, you can jerk the lure through the body of water in a sharp motion. This displays the lure as a healthy fish, just waiting to be caught by a predator of some sort. By varying these sorts of techniques, you can facilitate for different species of underwater creatures and will widen the types of bites that you might get. 

On top of this, you can also use the jigging technique. Jigging is when you throw a lure up and down in the water. The way that you do this is by jerking the rod upward and then letting it fall downward again. This causes the lure to rise and fall in the water.

This gives the impression that something is swimming underneath the surface of the water. It’s possible that you could even add another element to this by adding a piece of meat to the end of the line.

By keeping the lure at this sort of level in the water and jerking it around quickly, you’re encouraging some of the bigger fish to chase them across the surface and bring them closer to your vision.


Final Thoughts

Chatterbait is a really good method for when you need to catch some fish that might otherwise be hiding at the bottom of the body of water. Because of their noises and the way they move on the end of your line, they tend to provoke a lot of fish into exposing themselves and going after what they think is prey.

Like with the rest of fishing, practice makes perfect when it comes to mastering the art of dragging a chatterbait lure through the water. Shallow water can make things a bit harder because there’s less room to work with, however, bass fishing is made a lot easier with these plastic trailers. 

Although there are a few different variations of chatterbaits, the fundamentals stay the same and often have the same effect on the fish in the water. We hope this guide has helped you to understand fishing with chatterbaits a little bit more!

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