Though some anglers aren’t confident about using a ChatterBait, with Dave Mull’s direction, you’ll want to give it try.

ChatterBaits have been on the bass fishing scene for nearly 20 years, yet a surprising number of avid anglers still lack the confidence to use them. Often called a “vibrating jig,” a ChatterBait is basically a jig with a blade in front of it that makes it vibrate with enough gusto that the inventors joked that the lures almost made your teeth chatter.

They first hit the market back in 2004 when inventor Ron Davis of Greenwood, South Carolina started selling the ones he made in his garage. The lures looked weird and had a hard time getting accepted by the bass fishing crowd. Anglers experiencing success kept them a secret.

Then, in the spring of 2006, bass angler Bryan Thrift won the first contest he ever fished as a pro on a ChatterBait and let the proverbial cat out of the bag. It was on Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, and he was using one of Ron Davis’ ChatterBaits. Thrift was an early convert and had done well as an amateur co-angler, even winning an event the year before, but not telling anyone he’d used a ChatterBait to do it.

“Ron asked me to let people know if I did well with it again because they weren’t selling many of them,” Thrift told majorleaguefishing.com. “I agreed, and the next year, I fished my first pro event on Okeechobee and had a great first day. I caught two over 8 pounds with it and was in third place, so I talked about it.

“Usually, the first day of an event, nobody says what they’re catching them on, but I made a promise to Ron that I would talk about it,” Thrift said. “I also knew that nobody in the tournament had one, and probably couldn’t get one in time before the tournament ended. Ron called me that night and said, ‘What did you do? We’ve had a few hundred orders this evening.’ The rest is history.”

The new bait style had blitzkrieged its way into the bass anglers’ collective consciousness, and Ron Davis soon had far more orders than he could fill from his garage. Davis sold the rights to make the lure to Z-Man, a much larger South Carolina company. Z-Man still owns the rights and has several models and sizes of ChatterBaits available.

ChatterBaits work, and anybody who can cast and reel one in can catch fish with them—even the less expensive models. ChatterBaits are kind of the antithesis of the small “finesse” baits I usually throw to try to mimic timid minnows and crayfish going about their daily business. By comparison, a ChatterBait is an in-your-face, 18-wheeler driving through a bass’s living room, often provoking a reaction strike from the fish. Whereas I cast a spinning rod with an 8-pound test leader and 1/16-ounce lures most of the time, a ChatterBait lets me chunk and wind with a long baitcast rod, its reel spooled with 15-pound test Seaguar AbrazX fluorocarbon.

This spring, while fishing Tuesday night kayak tournaments, one constant was super strong wind, which made working and detecting bites with my favorite little baits extremely difficult. So, I threw a ChatterBait a lot. I could cast it a long way and feel the bait well when reeling it in. After my first seven tournaments, I’d caught more than half of my fish on it, including that one contest’s big fish.

The other component of a ChatterBait presentation is the soft plastic trailer you put on the back of it to add a fishy profile and some wiggle. I like the 4-inch Yamamoto Zako, which is shaped like a fish, and Z-Man’s similar 4.5-inch bait called a Razor Shad. I’ve also had success with a Missile D-Bomb rigged to assume a bluegill profile.

Because the ChatterBait body is a lead jig, you can fish it at various depths by varying your retrieve speed and using different weights of lures. In the spring, when lots of bass are moving shallow, the smallest, a 3/8-ounce head works great in 6-foot and shallower depths. As we move into summer, a 1/2-ounce size stays deeper, and they’re available up to 1 1/4 ounces for dragging through real deep water.

For information on the best and newest bait, tackle and equipment, turn to MidWest Outdoors, available by subscribing on our website.