Fresh from a successful “eeling” evening for stripers, I commented to my buddy Rick Holbrook about the unusual fishing I’d be doing the next morning. The target would be super-sized striped bass feeding on out-sized bait, namely hickory shad. The point I was making was that while live-lining these mega-herring was productive, the purist in me wished for a suitable artificial. As if on cue, Rick slipped an exquisite, massive spook – the RM Smith Jackhammer – out of his bag and asked, “Will this do?”
Ogling the 9-inch, nearly 4-ounce plug, which looked more like a tree limb than a lure, I couldn’t help but think that this was the answer. And the color was perfect too, with a white belly fading to gray scale and a blackish head. I imagined a big bass eying this lure from below believing for all the world that it was an injured hickory shad struggling against the cooking tide. Of course the ultimate question was how this baby would swim, and the judge would be wearing seven stripes.
The following day was the perfect laboratory for the Jackhammer experiment because the most essential requirement was met – the place was stacked with stripers. Aboard my buddy Captain Jason Colby’s Little Sister, we began the night tossing eels into the roiled water at dark and we caught fish, good fish at that. However, the entire time we were catching with the eels, I was a bit distracted waiting anxiously for false dawn when it would be time to test out my new toy. The primary plan was to switch to live-lining the hickory shad we had in the livewell as soon as a glimmer of light peaked over the horizon. Little did I realize that I would have no need for the baitfish.
As morning was about to break, I snapped on the big spook and began walking it across the ripping current, and even though I could barely see, I liked what little I could. While certainly big, the Jackhammer glided effortlessly and alluringly across the surface. Experience and fishing with friends who are no strangers to the nifty-fifty club has taught me that the key ingredients for catching cows is moving water, structure and an offering big enough to get them to commit.
On the very first cast, a nice bass tail-slapped the Jackhammer almost completely out of the water. I missed that fish, but with jittery hands I punched it back out there and on the next pass came tight to what proved to be a 20-pound striper. Those bass clobbered the Jackhammer; it out-fished the eels and prompted my inquisitive friend to pepper me with about a dozen questions beginning with, “Hey, do you have another one?” I didn’t on that day, but rest assured by the next time we fished we were both jacked up on Jackhammers!
Spooks are among the most successful topwater lures no matter what the species or the environment. They are versatile, fun to work and to walk, and they have a penchant for catching fish when all else fails. But for some reason, among the striper-obsessed, spook is often code for finesse and small. Maybe it’s due to the roots of spook-type lures, the origin of which is freshwater black bass circles. Let’s face it, if you hook a really big bass on a spook that is a paint job away from what’s being used in the freshwater bass circuit, odds are that it is going to look like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone after just a few stripers.
That is not part of the equation with Ryan Smith’s Jackhammer. Ryan’s company, RM Tackle, has carved out a well- deserved reputation among avid anglers as an innovative maker of premium wooden plugs which have through-wire/split ring and hook underpinnings built to handle the bulrush of the nastiest fish which swim. All that and they’re wrapped in a skin that is gallery-worthy yet tough.
When asked, Ryan remarked that spooks were a favorite of his also. He had longed for that mega-spook that was not out there so he decided to build one himself. Conventional wisdom says that spooks are best when conditions are calm, again probably owing to the lure’s freshwater roots. I’d often heard that when the suds resemble a washing machine it was time to get out something which leaves more of an imprint such as poppers or a noisy swimmer. But the Louisville Slugger-sized Jackhammer is impossible for stripers to ignore no matter what the conditions. My first outing proved that point as the conditions could not have been more visually challenging with all that turning water and the low light, yet those bass seemed to know exactly where that Jackhammer was at all times.
No lure is a magic bullet! If there’s an Achilles heel with the Jackhammer, it is that it takes more effort to work such a big piece of wood compared to say, a featherweight plastic. I snap on the Jackhammer when I know that the baitfish are big, be it mackerel, herring, or bunker and my gut tells me that there are big stripers lurking nearby.
I have one eye on the calendar and long for once again spending some serious time this fall chasing cows that are feeding on those massive hickory shad. But unlike others, first on my line will not be a live hickory shad but rather the Jackhammer.