Lure Rattles

Just about any lure on the market now can be purchased with internal rattles, or quickly modified to add a rattle to it. Why? Sound and vibration are key aspects of your lure presentation, helping your lure to attract fish even when visibility is poor. It may also mimic the sounds made by some underwater prey, such as the movements of a panicked crawdad.

The basic rattle used by most lures is a small internal chamber containing one or more ball bearings able to move and click about inside when you move the lure. (Note the brass BB inside the clear popper plug, above.) With soft baits, many anglers use the "brass-and-glass" combination of glass bead and metal slip-sinker on the line to provide a clicking noise. Another approach is to add a rattle insert, a small rattle chamber that can be pushed right into the body of a soft bait. It may not seem very loud, but remember that even small sounds carry a long way under water. You may find a rattle actually puts fish off in some conditions, or that some rattle sounds work while others don't.