I'm assuming you mean hard jerkbaits, but you could probably benefit from soft as well. My favorite is an original bass assassin (5")-"shad assassin." The baby assassin (3") can be deadly on heavily fished waters, or on smaller water (streams and smaller rivers).
In water w/ decent visibility, I stick w/ natural colors--baby bass, shad patterns, etc. Try to find out the natural forage on whatever body of water you are fishing. In dingy water, I like to use baits w/ gold in them. I dont think they make this color anymore, but the absolute deadliest pattern I ever used was several years ago, and I haven't found any since then. It was a normal shad pattern, but w/ gold in the belly, and a red-tipped tail. That bait caught alot of big fish.
Try to keep one of these tied on in case you see bait busting on the surface-then bring it back pretty quick (skipping it across the top). They'll hammer it.
Normally you'd fish these pretty slow, working it w/ a little twitch every now and then. A trick I developed (by accident) was to fish these EXTREMELY slow. I backlashed and had to spend awhile (30 seconds? a minute? ???) picking the mess out. When I got it out and went to pick up slack there was a big fish on. These baits, in addition to their great action while twitched, have an AWESOME falling action. Going down through the water column, their bodies slowly work from side to side, and the tail twitches slightly. Its really hard to force yourself to do this, but take this bait out and throw it weightless, letting it sink all the way to the bottom (much like a senko). Anywhere there is cover this will work. Also, its great when theyre spawning. --Drives the big mommas crazy. If they don't hit it on the fall, give it one little twitch.
Hope this helps.
tight lines
-josh
