Vibrating bladed jigs like the Strike King Thunder Cricket and Z-Man Chatterbait are longtime bass fishing favorites because of their versatility. Trailers come in all shapes and sizes, and choosing the right one for the right scenario can make the difference between a great day of bass fishing and getting skunked. Despite near limitless options, Alex Rudd has 3 favorites that he always keeps in his tackle box. Learn a few of his best kept secrets, and be prepared for just about every bass fishing scenario.

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Video transcript:

Alex Rudd:
What's up, guys? Welcome back to the MONSTERBASS channel. And today, I've got a pretty cool video for you guys.

Alex Rudd:
So I'm out here in the beer barn. I'm working, getting ready for a trip that I'm about to go on, and I was pulling out my bladed jig stuff, getting it put in the kayak, and kind of thinking about what trailers do I want to take with me, so I'll be ready for whatever scenarios that I might run into, and I kind of started to notice that there's a trend. There's really three main trailers that I focus on taking with me when I go fishing with a bladed jig or a chatterbait, as many people call it. And what's cool about those trailers is each one gives the bladed jig an attribute that others don't, and it turns the bladed jig as a tool into something that's a lot more versatile than people think.

Alex Rudd:
So today, I want to talk to you has about my top three trailers that I like to put on a bladed jig and what they actually do for your bladed jig.

Alex Rudd:
So the first one is going to be the style of trailer that, without the bladed jig, it has no action. This is going to be stuff like a fluke or The Deal that I have here by Berkley or the Kamikaze Swimon that you guys have received in a past MONSTERBASS box. These kinds of trailers without the bladed jig, when you just reel it through the water, isn't going to do anything. It doesn't grab water in any way. It doesn't work in any way. It's just going to swim straight through the water. But when you put it on the back of a bladed jig or a chatterbait, like many people call it, it gets all kinds of crazy action.

Alex Rudd:
And really, what I like about this style of trailer is that it makes this bladed jig do something really unique, and that's have a hunting action. It doesn't matter what jig that you put it on. If it's got a blade on the front, that straight tail trailer in no way is going to inhibit the action of the blade because what'll happen sometimes is if you put a trailer that overpowers that bladed jig, that blade on the front of that bladed jig, which gives the bladed jig its name and all the sound and all the action it has, will actually get blown out by the turbulence of the trailer on the back. And so these straight tail trailers are designed to just be as passive as possible and to only react to the action of the bladed jig. And so I love these trailers for that fact. It allows this bladed jig to do exactly what it's supposed to do, make the noises that it's supposed to make.

Alex Rudd:
And another thing that it does for you is where it's more compact, kind of all in line, it helps you to get this thing through grass just a little bit better, which is something I'm probably going to run into where I'm going is a lot of grass, and so I made sure I threw those kinds of trailers into my kayak, so that I would be ready for that scenario but just a really cool option for a bladed jig when bladed jigs started to hit the market. You start seeing people really experiment with trailers like this, and then you started seeing a lot of companies come out with trailers like this for the sole purpose of having a trailer that without the bladed jig, it's nothing, and they're specifically designed for the bladed jig.

Alex Rudd:
Now, the next trailer that I like to use is some kind of broadsided creature bait. And the reason that I like a broadsided creature bait is it does a couple of things for me. Number one, it makes it able to skip that bladed jig a lot better. Just like a rock that you pick up off the ground, you want to skip across the water, the water and the flatter that that rock is, the more able you are to actually skip that rock well. With any bait that you throw, it is the same sort of premise, and so I love having some kind of creature-style bait. This is the Berkley Gilly that I can thread up onto a bladed jig, which makes it a lot easier to skip.

Alex Rudd:
Another thing that a bladed jig trailer like this one does is it gives you the ability to fish it around cover a lot better. And the reason for that is one of the things that a bladed jig does in its action is it rolls side to side. So when you're fishing it around stuff like wood or any kind of cover like that, that bladed jig is going to work from side to side. And so when you actually roll it up to a piece of wood, that hook will roll over, and it'll hook that piece of wood. Well, what this broader blade jig trailer does is it kind of acts almost like a guard in those scenarios, and it keeps that hook from actually rolling over into that piece of cover, and it helps it to come through stuff like wood a heck of a lot better.

Alex Rudd:
Another thing that it does for you outside of the skip and then keeping it from getting it hung up is just the flatter profile of that bait is going to make the bladed jig ride just a little bit higher in the water. So if you're fishing a bladed jig really shallow, when you're fishing around brim beds or around grass, you're wanting to keep it up above that grass or you're just wanting to run that bladed jig a lot shallower, that broader body on there is going to grab a little bit more water, and it's going to help that bladed jig to just stay a little bit higher in the water column.

Alex Rudd:
And then the last one is going to be a swim bait. A lot of people love to put a swim bait on the back of a bladed jig, and it's a great choice because a lot of these bladed jigs are designed to look like blue gills or to look like shad, and there's a lot of little swim baits that are designed to look like blue gills and to look like shad, which you can run this thing right up on the back of a skirted bladed jig, just like I did my broad one here or this straight tail one here. You can run them right on there. But one of my favorite things to do is to actually run it up on a bladed jig without a skirt on it.

Alex Rudd:
A lot of guys think, "Oh man, my bladed jig, my chatterbait, my thunder cricket, whatever it is, it lost its skirt. It is now useless." But one of the most deadly and little bitty sneaky kind of techniques that a lot of people don't talk about is actually fishing an unskirted bladed jig. So when the skirt falls off your bladed jig, don't think that it's done. Make sure you have a spot in your box for bladed jigs without skirts on them because when you run that little swim bait up on there without that skirt on there, number one, you're showing those fish something that they don't see very often, which is an unskirted bladed jig. That's just not a thing that a lot of fish see, and so when you have that bladed jig action, that bladed jig sound, and it looks like something that those fish have never seen before.

Alex Rudd:
So when I'm fishing around a lot of pressure, when I'm fishing around a lot of people who are fishing bladed jigs, that when I run just a single swim bait up on there just like I would up on a swim bait head or on a swim bait hook, that it's going to give me just a little bit something different in the water, something different for those fish to look at, and it allows me to give something to fish that are maybe highly pressured that they want to eat.

Alex Rudd:
Another thing that it does is with a paddle tail swim bait, just like I talked about a few minutes ago, sometimes, that paddle tail can actually overpower the action of that blade. When this paddle tail gets going on its own behind that bladed jig, it will actually knock this thing kind of out of sync with itself and out of sync and get the turbulence all messed up with the blade that's on the front of that jig. And that sounds like something that you don't want to happen, but in truth, it can help sometimes. It's the little things in the bait presentations that you make, those little quirky things about it that actually get the bass as curious as they can get because you got to think a bass is a predator just like any other predator. They look for the weakness. They look for the thing in an animal or whatever its prey is that can be exploited to be able to kill that thing. Bass don't want to expend energy if they don't have to. They want to be rewarded with a meal that's actually worth chasing down.

Alex Rudd:
And so what I've noticed is when I throw a single swim bait on the back of a bladed jig with no skirt, and I get that kind of quirky action that it gets, it almost doesn't work right. It looks like something that's wounded. It looks like something that that bass can take advantage of. And when you give them that look, especially in colder water months, it can really help to put a few more fish in the boat. Same thing for what I was just talking about a few minutes ago, the pressure that gets put on fish, fishing pressure and stuff like that or even a pressure change outside, a weather change. When those fish get pressure put on them, you got to give them something that makes it worth it for them to eat what they're going to eat, and that right there is one of those things.

Alex Rudd:
But as always, guys, thank you for watching. It's a quick video, some quick tips, but I think these are tips that you guys can go out, you can apply right now. You can use and you can go out and you can catch some fish, but as always guys, thank you for watching. Question- comments, please go leave them down in the comment section. I'll do my absolute best to go down there and answer as many as I can. If you've not checked out my channel, my name is Alex Rudd. I own and operate the Alex Rudd Fishing Channel. You guys can come check it out, doing all kinds of crazy cool stuff over there. But as always, you guys are sweet, and we will see you next time.