Yeah, fall is here in all its glory and with it, some of the baits that you may have put away for a while are back on the table for catching bass.
One of those is soft plastic jerkbaits. If you want to throw a curve ball pick up a pack of Field and Stream Sugar Stix Sugar Jerk’s.
This is another in the series of sugar infused baits from Field and Stream. Here, they incorporate a proven design for catching bass with their unique sweet twist.
The design of the Sugar Jerk
The colors, while not spectacular, are well executed as is the shape of the Sugar Jerk. A shad profile that uses a thin, split tail matched with a belly slit for easy rigging makes this a cinch to rig on either a standard EWG or with an unweighted swimbait hook. The former is always our first choice for fishing soft plastic jerkbaits because, in our opinion, the presentation is more natural with this type of hook.
The Sugar Jerk is a 5” bait that has the previously mentioned features as well as sporting a molded in recessed hook slot on top of the lure.
This makes it easy to tex-pose your hook point and provides a little more protection for the hook when fishing it in weedy areas.
We like to fish this type of bait on fairly light line, 6 – 10 pound, with casting gear mated to either a medium light or medium action rod.
The softer tip will throw the Sugar Stix a good distance.
How’s it fish?
The Sugar Jerk is on the heavier side for baits of this type which also helps get better distance on the cast.
That extra mass seems to be the key factor in making this jerk bait rate fairly high on the durability scale when compared to several of its competitors.
The side to side action of the Sugar Jerk is on par with most of its competitors but it does have one interesting quality that caught our attention.
The Sugar Jerk doesn’t fall perfectly horizontal when dead sticked. It wants to find the bottom in a nose down position. Due to its weight, this makes it fall a bit faster than most of the other soft jerkbaits that we carry which can be a plus or a minus depending on what the bass are wanting on a given day.
We have had them jump all over it some days while conversely, completely ignoring it on others. Not that this is uncommon for any lure but it seems a little more pronounced for this bait.
When they are hitting it, they completely destroy it while turning up their noses to other, similar baits. However, when they are looking for a more subtle action, they won’t touch it.
It seems to be feast or famine with the Sugar Jerk.
Where it shines
One area where this bait really shines is as a follow up bait when fishing top-water.
We all know that we should have something different tied on for those occasions when fish are short striking our surface lures. The Sugar Jerk fits this role to a T. Throw it our where a bass has boiled on but missed your topwater plug, give it just a second or two followed by a couple quick twitches and hang on.
We have caught a lot of bass using this bait in this capacity.
Does this all mean that we think it’s not worth carrying this bait? In a word, no. Like we said, there are those days when we have tried every other soft plastic jerkbait in the box and can’t buy a bite. Then we tie on one of these and can’t keep the bass off of it.
So in the end, it still boils down to having an alternative bait with a little different look, action, scent and profile for those occasions when the fish just aren’t cooperating by eating our first stringer.
It always pays to have a competent second stringer on the bench willing to step in, step up, take on the challenge and get the job done. As that alternative, the Field and Stream Sugar Stix Sugar Jerk is very qualified.
With fall here, we’ll always have a soft plastic jerkbait rigged and ready every time we hit the water. The Sugar Jerk may not get the start but, if our go to bait isn’t producing, you can bet that it’ll get the call for long relief.
| Field and Stream Sugar Stix Sugar Jerk | |
|---|---|
| Overall rating |   |
| An able performer | |
See ya’ on the water …
