Go-To Wake Baits
Stefan still likes fishing vintage
models of the Bomber Long A,
which has long been a popular
wake bait. However,
he’s mostly shifted to
newer alternatives
that are easier to
cast, come in more good
colors and are designed to
easily stay up on the surface
during the retrieve.
Two favorites are the
Berkley Surge Shad and
Jointed Surge Shad.
“The thing I really like
about the Surge Shad is,
No. 1, it casts great, but it’s
also got a reflector on the bottom
[Berkley calls it a
FlashDisc],” says Stefan. “I personally
feel that really helps
trigger fish and draw the fish up. It has
great sound, it casts really good and it
has great movement.”
Most of the time, Stefan throws the
standard Surge Shad on a straight
retrieve, but he’s always experimenting
with the jointed model, too, because it
has a little different action. When he’s
targeting a spot where he knows there
are fish, he’ll sometimes sling the jointed
model and mix in twitches or soft
jerks – not enough to pull it far under
the water, but enough to create rings
on the surface. When the bait comes to
a stop, the tail keeps moving.
“That’s a very good triggering
mechanism,” Stefan says.
Go-to colors are pretty typical for
stick-style wake baits and include
black chrome and white shad. Stefan is
also a fan of the solid black color called
maverick, which he says is a longtime,
somewhat clandestine favorite of
smallmouth anglers in the Upper
Midwest.
Summer Catching
While a wake bait is a tool for finding
smallies in spring, it’s a tool for
catching them in the summer. In fact,
it’s so good on clear natural lakes that
Stefan was at first hesitant to share.
“The thing that I love about topwaters
in general for smallmouth is you
get bigger bites, in my opinion,” Stefan
says. “I love fishing feeding flats.
Fishing a wake bait is a slow process,
but if I know I’ve got flats with fish on
them, I think I’ll get more bites on that
than I will if I’m throwing a faster-moving
topwater bait. And I feel like my
hookups are better.
“With a wake bait, I don’t know
what it is, but maybe they think it’s
already dying and they have it, so they
don’t come up and try to ‘kill’ it first. I
don’t get the tail slaps with a wake bait
that I get with a walking bait.”
On some Northern lakes, smallies
inhabit water from the bank to 40
feet deep in summer, so there are
plenty of situations to give a wake
bait a shot. Stefan’s favorite scenario
is to target flats in the 6- to 12-footdeep
zone. A good-looking flat will
have a mix of sand and rock, maybe
with some defined transitions
between the two. He also targets
clumps of cabbage.
If it’s calm, this is an all-day pattern,
and it can actually be better under a
blaring midday sun.
The Presentation
There’s no need to get aggressive
with the retrieve. A wake bait works
because the fish can track it as it
weaves its way softly across the surface.
“I would say the slower the better
for me,” Stefan says. “I think with
smallmouth there is something about
Berkley Jointed
Surge Shad
Berkley Surge Shad
just antagonizing them. I think you get
more aggressive fish in the summer
where you could reel it faster, but I
can’t say that I do reel it faster in the
summer because of that. As long as the
bait’s slowly wiggling or has actual
movement, you’re good. Any faster
than that and I feel like you’re actually
pulling the bait out of the strike zone
faster than you need to be.”
Be Careful of Conditions
There are some limitations inherent
with this style of wake bait because of
its subtle presentation and visual nature.
Here are some things to consider:
Clarity – Stefan likes 3 to 4 feet of
visibility at a minimum. Clearer would
be better for calling fish up from the
bottom in mid-depth ranges.
Wind – Even a light ripple or chop
on the surface can be too much for a
wake bait. It’s more effective when it’s
carving a wake across a glass-smooth
surface.
Barometric pressure – “In my opinion,
it’s not even worth throwing on a
high-pressure day,” Stefan says. “Those
fish are locked on bottom and don’t
want to come up. But if you have good
stable conditions or a warming trend, it
can be dynamite.”
Current – The Upper Midwest is
crisscrossed with some of the best
smallmouth rivers in the country, and
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