Cranks All Year

Here is an article from Bass Resource on crank bait. Check it out!

“Because a crankbait is a reaction bait, you may think it’s a warm-weather lure, but a plug will catch fish all year. Gary Dobyns says that even during the coldest weather, he looks for shallow fish first. The worst tournament he ever had was where he ignored his rule and fished a worm twenty-five feet deep the first half of the day. He did lousy until he switched to a reaction bait and fished in less than five feet of water.

Cranks For Banks

Justin Welch is an Arizona tournament fisherman who has made crankbaits his favorite lure and a hobby that is becoming a reasonably lucrative side hustle. He cranks all year and always tries to find a shallow pattern first, even on the coldest days. “The first thing I do is go to a point and look to see where the bait fish are,” Welch says, “but if they’re being chased on the bank, you won’t see them on the graph.” So he’ll tie on a square bill like a Norman Fat Boy or a Strike King KVD 2.5 Wake Bait.

These are ideal baits for fan-casting to shore over a point – they’ve both got a good wobble and will go through or bounce off just about anything on the bottom without many snags. If Welch needs to go just a bit deeper, he’ll switch to a Norman NXS, a bait that digs the bottom like a craw or baitfish but bounces up and off when it hits a snag. “I love the NXS because it gets down to depth quickly. That thing dives so fast it almost feels like you have a fish on! I’ve seen mine go down to 21 feet on the graph. This time of year (winter), I like shad colors and the Norman Canary.”

Justin likes to paint his lures, especially Norman DD22’s and Norman Deep Little N’s. Purple shad has been a killer color for him lately. “It’s a pretty basic color,” he says. “I usually prefer basic colors.” As the weather cools off, he likes a pretty good wobble in his baits, which he can get from specific wobbling lures and his square bills. “The Deep Little N isn’t crazy wide,” he says, “but it excels in winter, and so do flat-sided baits.”

Justin has been painting many baits lately. He gets the Norman blanks from Lurenet and uses his ever-increasing air-brushing gear to custom-color them. You can see his creations on Instagram @justinwelchfishing (and buy them, too). Another of his favorites is the Luhr Jensen Hot Lips – a phenomenal lure that most people forget, he says.”

The full article can be found here.

Photo Credit: Original Author

---