Lure fishing presents a vast world of different lure families, and beginners can quickly feel overwhelmed when faced with their tackle box and decisions on the water. What should you do with this specific lure? How do you animate it correctly? What are the different effective retrieve styles? While lure names might offer some clues, understanding the core hard lure animations is key to success. This guide breaks down the essential techniques for each major hard lure family, transforming confusion into confidence.
Assortment of colorful hard fishing lures ready for various animation techniques.
Crankbaits
Crankbaits, as their name suggests, are designed to be “cranked”—that is, animated with a steady, linear retrieve using the reel. Variations on this basic retrieve can significantly enhance their effectiveness. The stop-and-go technique involves incorporating pauses into your retrieve, allowing the lure to suspend or slowly rise/fall, often triggering strikes from following fish. Another variation is burning, which means reeling the crankbait in extremely fast to provoke reaction bites from aggressive predators.
A specific animation highly effective with many crankbaits is bottom tapping. This involves letting your lure dive and make contact with the bottom, even to the point of digging into the substrate slightly. This mimics bottom-feeding prey and can attract fish holding close to the lake or river bed.
Spinnerbaits
Spinnerbaits can be subjected to the exact same linear retrieve animations as crankbaits, including the stop-and-go and burning techniques. However, their design also allows them to be effectively fished with a “falling” technique, especially along vertical structures like drop-offs, submerged trees, or dock pilings. The goal is to let the spinnerbait free-fall, allowing its blades to flutter and spin as it descends, closely hugging the structure along its entire height, enticing fish holding tight to cover.
Different types of hard lures, including a spinnerbait and crankbait, that can be effective with linear retrieve animations.
Chatterbaits
Chatterbaits, also known as bladed jigs, are somewhat like crankbaits, but instead of a diving lip, they feature a metal blade at the front that vibrates intensely under water pressure. The same linear retrieve animations, stop-and-go, and burning techniques used for crankbaits are effective. Additionally, chatterbaits excel when worked with small pulls or hops along the bottom. This action causes the blade to engage and disengage over short distances, an animation designed to imitate a scurrying crayfish, a prime food source for many game fish.
Jerkbait Minnows
Jerkbait minnows are elongated, fish-shaped hard baits equipped with a diving lip. As their name implies, they are prime candidates for jerking and twitching animations. These sharp, erratic movements of the rod tip cause the lure to dart and slash unpredictably, mimicking a wounded baitfish. Beyond jerks and twitches, they can also be fished with a straight linear retrieve, with or without pauses. Sometimes, retrieving them at very high speeds can trigger aggressive reaction strikes from predators.
Close-up of a trout caught on a jerkbait minnow, showcasing successful twitch and pause hard lure animations.
Lipless Crankbaits
Lipless crankbaits are short, deep-bodied hard baits without a traditional diving lip; their line tie is typically located on the back. They produce a very tight, vibrating swimming action, which is why they are often simply called “vibrating lures” or “vibes.” These lures can be animated effectively using a lift-and-fall (yo-yo) retrieve, where the lure is pulled upwards with the rod and then allowed to flutter back down on a semi-slack line. Of course, standard cranking (linear retrieve) is also highly effective, with pauses and speed variations adding to their versatility.
Swimbaits
Swimbaits are hard lures, often lipless, that are articulated into multiple sections. This design aims to create a more or less wide swimming action, depending on the number of segments (glide baits typically have two), during a linear retrieve. These lures arguably offer the most realistic and natural presentation among all hard baits. Pauses can be incorporated, and very fast retrieves can sometimes trigger strikes.
Glide baits, a specific type of swimbait, can even be lightly jerked to make them perform wide, lateral glides or darts, adding another dimension to their hard lure animations.
An S-Waver glidebait, a type of two-part articulated swimbait, known for its S-motion hard lure animation.
Poppers
Poppers are topwater hard lures characterized by a concave or cupped mouth. When animated with short or long pulls of the rod tip (akin to twitches and jerks), this cupped mouth traps an air bubble that bursts on the water’s surface, creating a distinct “popping” sound and splash. This commotion attracts fish from a distance. However, don’t overlook a steady, linear retrieve; it can often be surprisingly effective with poppers as well.
Stickbaits
Stickbaits are well-known surface lures famous for their zig-zagging action across the water. This retrieve, known as “walking the dog” (WTD), is achieved by a rhythmic series of short, downward snaps of the rod tip coordinated with reeling in the slack line. It’s crucial to experiment with the rhythm and amplitude of these rod movements, and especially to incorporate pauses, as strikes often occur when the lure sits still for a moment.
A topwater stickbait creating a zig-zag ‘Walking The Dog’ pattern on the water surface through proper animation.
Buzzbaits
Buzzbaits are sinking lures equipped with a propeller-like blade, yet they are designed to be fished on the surface. The most common and effective animation is a fast, steady retrieve without any pauses, starting the moment the lure hits the water. This creates a significant surface disturbance and noise, often provoking spectacular, aggressive strikes.
Propbaits share a similar design concept but typically feature smaller propellers and are buoyant (floating). This allows them to be animated more slowly and with pauses, offering a different topwater presentation.
Mastering these diverse hard lure animations takes practice, but understanding the fundamental techniques for each lure type is the first step towards significantly increasing your catch rate. Experiment with speeds, cadences, and pauses to discover what triggers bites in your local waters and enjoy the thrill of bringing these artificial baits to life.
