
A new twist on an old winter technique helped Andy Messina get on a roll with a couple of tournament wins and a second-place finish.
During a two-week span this winter, Messina and his partners won a couple of buddy tournaments with five-bass limits weighing 24.7 pounds and 22.31 pounds and finished second in another tournament with a 20.88-pound five-bass limit. Messina disclosed that some of their bass were caught on Alabama rigs, but most of their catches in each event were taken on jerkbaits.
Catching bass on suspending jerkbaits has been a wintertime pastime for decades—my first Bassmaster Magazine article in 1991 described how to make a Rebel Spoonbill jerkbait suspend with fly-tying wire wrapped around the hooks. Today's jerkbaits have internal weights installed to suspend the lures at the stickbaits' maximum diving depths.
Messina usually catches wintertime bass on an Alabama rig. While watching bass with Garmin LiveScope, he saw the fish chasing his rig but failed to commit to his offering. “I noticed the A-rig was less effective for me as far as bringing bass out of the brush and exposing them," Messina says. "So I started doing the jerkbait thing and being more patient, letting it dive and sit down there in front of the target, whether it was a stair-stepping rock or log or something."
Messina's problem with a suspending jerkbait was that the lure sometimes couldn't dive deep enough to reach his Alabama rig targets. The Lake of the Ozarks guide solved the problem by choosing Megabass Vision 110 jerkbaits, which will slowly sink in frigid water. Messina replaces the Vision 110's original hooks with heavier Gamakatsu G-Finesse Short Shank #5 treble hooks and uses fluorocarbon line to make his stickbait sink quicker. The tournament competitor claims he can present his slow-sinking jerkbait to bass suspended in the middle of the water column or down to targets as deep as 12 feet for bottom-hugging bass.
The sinking jerkbait pattern produces for Messina in any type of weather. "A little bit of wind is nice just for positioning the boat and to break up the surface, but I have caught bass doing this when it is slick, calm, and sunny or a rainy day," he says. According to Messina, the pattern is most effective in water with "at least 2 to 3 feet of visibility" and at water temperatures below 47 degrees.
Messina's top color choices for his jerkbaits are a fire tiger hue and a natural shad pattern. "I try to rotate one bright color and one more natural color because I have definitely noticed when bass are on the bright color versus the shad color or vice versa day to day," Messina says. The guide admits he is unsure why bass seem to prefer one color over the other but notices he leans toward the more natural color when conditions feature a slick surface and sunny skies.

The Missouri angler employs his jerkbait tactics along rocky 45-degree banks or flat pockets strewn with laydowns, partially submerged logs, or sunken pieces of docks. “I can’t say that bass like rocks more than wood or steel more than rock,” Messina says. “As long as bass have something to be by and you can accurately put the bait right in front of it, I think that's the key."
The sinking jerkbait produces for Messina along banks on the main lake and in the backs of creeks. As winter progresses and the water gets colder, he targets steeper banks closer to the main channel.
When he finds the right type of bank, Messina slowly works the area for about 15 to 20 minutes. "If I don't see any followers or I don't have any action, then I will make a little move somewhere else," he says. "I don't fish a spot endlessly without getting any feedback."
Messina suggests the sinking jerkbait isn't a great search bait. "It takes a lot of time, but once you get around the bass, you can maximize what is there," he says.
Casting his jerkbait close to the bank, Messina starts his presentation by pointing his rod straight at the jerkbait to prevent a bow in his line. “I will do a couple of twitches to get it started and let the fluorocarbon start sinking the bait,” he says. “That helps to get it down a lot deeper.”
The guide employs the standard jerk-and-pause retrieve for his sinking stickbait. “I don’t do anything too crazy with the cadence,” he says. “I do jerk, jerk, pause.” Messina usually pauses his jerkbait for less than 10 seconds, even in the coldest water of winter.
"If I have the perfect lineup on a cast and I know my bait is sitting right above a brush pile or tree, I might let it hang a little longer than that 10 seconds, but for the most part, I try to keep it moving. If you get a bass interested, it will chase down the bait. The A-rig has shown us that bass can swim pretty fast (in cold water) if they want something.”
Messina opts for a 7-foot medium-light action spinning rod with a fast tip and a 3000-size spinning reel spooled with a main line of 15-pound braid and a 40- to 50-foot leader of 10-pound fluorocarbon line for his jerkbait tactic. He favors spinning tackle over baitcast gear to avoid backlashes, which he notes causes nicks in his line and can increase the chances of line breakage.
Messina claims that the sinking jerkbait trick usually triggers only six or seven bites a day, but he has caught "quite a few 5- and 6-pounders doing it." The tactic also produces him some victories or high finishes in winter tournaments.