Ok, If you haven't already done so, please read the first article in this series as this one, builds upon the technique used there. Suspension baits, you've all heard of them, many of you will own various ones, how many of you fish them as suspenders in salt water ?

Hmmm, loads of you I'll bet.., NOT.

You are missing out but, getting the plugs running right takes alot of effort on your part and what works here, won't always work in other ocean environments. Sure, I could 'tune' you a 'tideminnow' to suspend, or rig you an 'Xrap' etc but that'll only work if you fish in a nearby locale based upon the whole global scene. A plug tuned here won't work in the Baltic for example.

So, that out of the way...

You don't need many lures, a half dozen will cover most eventualities. Not impossible to do yourself by any means but tricky and this may become part of the 'Lure Workshops' I'll be organising in the new year.

So, lets build on that first article without getting too complex just yet.

I will, in further articles, expand again upon what I will tell you here. There are many scenario's in which a suspending lure will be the right choice. You need above all, patience.

Scenario (rocky edge in to deeper water):

Requirements:

1 X suspending lure... (perhaps a MegaBass Vision 110 SW or a Rapala xrap 12) a fairly stiff tipped rod for the fast crank down or 'JERK' and a thin preferably 0.15mm or thinner neutral braid or.., a fluorocarbon mainline.

In this scenario, we are standing against the water, we have heavy ground close in but deeper, cleaner water out in front with sporadically placed weed strewn heads either just exposed or under water. There is a mild current and a little swell. Perhaps a gentle wind, good visability etc.., a typical summers morning with the light coming from low in the sky. Bass are known to be here at this state of tide.

Remember in the first article, we suggested the need to cast near to features. This holds true regardless of which article you are reading of mine. So..

Cast.., plug hits the water, its makes a noise...wait ! If no hit, crank down fairly swiftly after a few small twitches to just see if a Bass was watching but wasn't 100% committed. Ok, the plug is cranked down to say..4ft. You could.., as before in the article previous to this, JERK the plug and activate rattles etc just like before but.., you alter the attitude of the plug to 'bib down' doing this. Like I've said, you could try this but for now, don't.

Just crank down and STOP ! The plug is now, for the sake of this article, possibly 4ft deep already and around 5 meters from the nearest head just covering as the tide rises.

Depending upon the whole water column's depth and your desired 'Tune', your plug could either just sit there, doing nothing much or, it might with careful trim, rise extremely slowly over say, a 10, 15 or even 20 second window but, only for perhaps 1 or 2ft as opposed to hitting the surface. It may also be tuned to sink at a rate so slow you could boil a kettle, at home, and return to find the plug was still not on the bottom in as little as 10ft of water.

click on the image to get a full sized view..

So, you do this, and lets say, the plug we have tuned stays in near permanent suspension. If after your allocated time nothing has happened..

How do I know if a fish hits ?

The rod could be physically ripped from your hand so be careful..but if not, ..

Watch your line !, or, if dark, hold your line. You want a little bow or slack coming from the rod tip to the water but not too much and certainly, most important, do NOT have a taught line. Bass will open their mouth's creating a negative vortex which 'sucks' little baitfish back into the dark depths of the mouth of the Bass. Let that happen. It can't on a tight line and the presentation is totally un-natural !

Right, nothing has happened... start with a little pickup of the slack and twitch the lure.., pause again for a second before cranking 1, 2, 3, 4 and...STOP !  (Wait again for another allotted period), crank, 2, 3, 4, STOP etc, etc

You are, in effect, building what we call, a 'cadence', or a repeating pattern of working the lure. You might do 5 turns, stop, wait 10 seconds and repeat or, you might find that the Bass want 1, 2, 3 Stop...2, 3, Crank, 2, 3

In fact, it could be any combination of cadence that switches on the fish but...as a rule of thumb, just like freshwater Bass, our salt water Bass respond to longer waits and slower cranks proportional to the water temperature and, unlike freshwater Bass (of which i have zero data), at night, the same proportional slowing is a good starting point to bear in mind. The fish will tell you what they want at the end of the day so, best get a friend or 2 trying different cadences until you get hit.., then.., all switch to that cadence and see what happens ?

It may be that the cadence isn't the key and that last fish just signalled the arrival of a shoal of fish so, catch one and deliberately alter the catching cadence after a few hits or fish to see if the fish where being fussy or, there weren't any fish there during your earlier cadence experiments.

In future articles I'll cover using suspension in current and holding in current breaks, seams etc after a swing across a run. Ask any Salmon angler or river trout angler when the most killing fly time is ?

They'll tell you, most likely, the 'Dangle'.  The fly has crossed the run and just hangs...

Kaboom !

Lures, plugs, fished correctly and setup right will give great hang time in such situations IF you set out to do it.

More later and thanks for reading.