Berkley Flicker Shad & Flicker Minnow: Which One When?
You’ve got a tough choice to make: run the Berkley Flicker Shad or Flicker Minnow? Decisions, decisions. Both are excellent baits in their own right but each has their own design characteristics and features that excel in different situations. Things like water depth, target species, time of year, fish reaction speed, and size of baitfish all play a role in which you should fish. Below we go into more detail on each of these baits and when to run each. Let’s dig in.
Berkley Flicker Shad
Berkley has worked with the Pros to design multiple sizes of Flicker Shads to match the hatch. The unique action creates a “Flicker” that imitates a fleeing baitfish. This mid-diving crank has the perfect amount of “wobble” in the tail to produce strikes. This signature “Flicker” took years to design and revisions on the body style in relation to natural fleeing shad. Everything about this bait was designed to mimic natural shad. From size, colors, dive depth, and the “Flicker”, each bait is tank-tested to ensure proper movement and action.
Flicker Shad: When To Use It
The varied sizes and color options give you a great amount of flexibility in terms of presentation speed, depth, and appearance. The speed of the bait, the action it produces, and the depth it runs are three critical factors when deciding what Flicker Shad to run. Fine tuning these things is, hate to say it, mostly trial and error when you hit a new body of water. Knowing what size baitfish are schooling, what depth they are suspended, etc. are all important to selecting the correct Shad. Check out Berkley’s depth chart here for more information.
As far as target species to target with the Flicker Shad, everything from crappies to large pike can be caught on the varied sizes and color options. Again, pay attention to the size of the baitfish that your target species is feeding on, then adjust your bait size from there.
Berkley Flicker Minnow
The Berkley Flicker Minnow is a proven winner and was spawned from the roots of the Flicker Shad. The minnow version dives deeper with maximum flash and tail action. What is most impressive about the Berkley Flicher Minnow is its deep design curve. This body design allows for the minnow to dive faster, getting you the fish faster. Whether you are on the Great Lakes or a small waterway the Flicker Minnow will perform with the same aptitude – a fantastic feature.
Flicker Minnow: When To Use It
If you need a deep-running crankbait to hit suspended fish in deep water, the Flicker Minnow should be your bait of choice. Not only does it dive deeper, faster it stays in the strikezone longer because you do not need as fast of retrieve. With a slower gear ratio reel, you are able to cover deeper water while slowing the bait down. Deadly combination on large walleye and pike.
The Flicker Minnow comes, currently, in two sizes for you to fine tune your setup and hit the proper depth and retrieval speed. We’ve found that working the bait slightly slower produced the best results. This could be from the incredible mid-speed motion you get out of the Flicker Minnow. Rather than having the bait rapidly rattle back-and-forth, almost like its vibrating, a slightly slower wobble and increased time in the strikezone produces fish after fish in deeper water.
