Erie Darters

[Ryan]

After hearing for sometime about how good Erie Darters can be for smallies, I decided to give them a try.  They look pretty interesting so I picked up a couple of packs of what seemed like good colors.  I took them up north a couple of weeks ago and also over to St. Clair, but only had limited success in each place.  In both situations, I did much better on tubes then on the erie darters.  I have a lot more experiance fishing tubes, but I still expected to have better results on the darters.  I fished them primarily on a darter style jighead with an exposed hook but also Texas rigged them.

Am I doing something way off of the mark or should I be fishing them differently?  Any advice or pointers would be great because I would love to gain confidence in these and add them to the arsenal.

Thanks.

-Ryan

[MadWags]

I have great success with them on drop shot. Purple Smoke.

[Bobber]

drop shot them but what works better is a nemesis goby or a case drop shot worm.

[MadWags]

Like the Nem, Gob alot

[TCook]

Darters are one of the best baits out there for our area. Rig the big ones on a jighead and work it like a tube or any other soft plastic and dropshot the jr's and dropshot darters.

[McCarter]

i bought a bunch of those a while back.  tried them every which way and had some success on them.  i had a killer day on cass lake a few years ago throwing one weightless with an EWG 3/0 Gammi and workin it like a soft jerkbait.  those things move some water.  I have used them as a trailer on a swim jig a few times as well.  But mostly i carolina rigged them.  they are like any other bait, they will catch fish in the right situation. 

McCarter himself

[motocross269]

They Suck....Send them all to me and I will properly dispose of them...

[Ryan]

Thanks for the tips guys.  I guess I will just have to keep experimenting until I figure them out.  It sounds like they are quite versatile baits though and they do look good in the water.

-Ryan

[dashaver63]

I used them on football heads in Eries rock piles. St. Clair would probably be better with a darter head or a ball head. Thats one more bait I forgot I had. Now I have to go rip apart my smallie tackle again and find them. They do seem to produce for me when those fish get snooty. The ribs on the side make the difference I think. I've also used sweet beavers on football heads and they have produced well for me also.

[LGMOUTH]

 Im with motocross, if you cant get them to work send them all to me

Seriously these are one of the most versatile baits out there today. You can rig them as someone else said, on a ballhead jig like I do, You can Texas rig them, dropshot them, use them as a trailer, use them as a flipping bait. I could go on and on. They will work anywhere as I found out down on Patoka lake this spring. They not only work awesome for smallies they are great on largemouth. Dont give up on them and they will produce for you. Mango magic and watermelon gold flake are my two favorite colors.

[Mike S.]

I knew LGMOUTH was going to chime in on this one.  He talked about them on the way to the St. Clair.  I gotta get me some.

[Dan]

and here they are http://www.poorboysbaits.com/catalog.cfm/darters/erie-darter-and-erie-darter-jr.:2108

[djkimmel]

You can get them at D&R Sports Center in Kalamazoo.

[wawaseebass]

Don also turned me on to the darters and they work very very well on Wawasee. We dropshot with them mostly. I also like the watermelon gold color.