Lipless Crankbaits?

[coloradobassin]

Can a lipless crankbait be effective for smallmouth? If so what time of year do you throw them, and where do you throw them. Also is there any specific brand or style that work better then others? Any advise is greatly apprecaited.

[Hanover_Yakker]

Koppers Live Target Gold Shiner

[Crestliner2008]

The March/April edition of "In'Fisherman" magazine has an excellent and in-depth article on the use of lipless cranks and blade baits for smallies.

[tipptruck1]

Heck yea they can. I fish a clear water spot from shore. If I can not get them with a white spook. I can get them with a chrome like spro aruko shad.

 

The one thing I have noticed with small mouths vs Large mouths. Large mouths will bite any retrieve. Were Small mouths tend to like short ripping or quickly reeling the bait. Then pause for the bait to sink. When is sinks is when I normally get a bite.

[Teal]

I feel like a lipless crank can be good for most species all year long. Get two or three colors that your confident in. Strike King, Rapala and Xcaliber make good ones.

[J_Pearson]

Definitely! Spring and fall are traditionally great lipless bites, but any body of water that you've got a lot of grass and the fish live relatively shallow can be great for a lipless smallie bite year-round. A fairly quick retrieve and ripping it off of grass just gets crushed. There are a tremendous number of quality lipless baits on the market today, and as for colors chrome, a sexy-shad pattern, or a ghost-minnow variety basically covers everything.

JP

[Snakehead Whisperer]

Can a lipless crankbait be effective for smallmouth? If so what time of year do you throw them, and where do you throw them. Also is there any specific brand or style that work better then others? Any advise is greatly apprecaited.

I throw them pre/post spawn and in the later part of fall. I primarily fish for river smallies if that makes a difference. I am partial to the 1/8oz. Rat-L-Traps.

[MarkH024]

I've tagged a number of smallies on SK RES. Chili craw and orange craw are great producers.

[Bluebasser86]

They're killers for smallmouth in the fall in the few lakes around here that have smallmouth. The smaller shads that just hatched during the summer school up and get in the backs of cuts and pockets or up on flats and the smallmouth get in wolf packs and send shad flying everywhere! They hit them so hard it'll make your wrist sore by the end of the day sometimes. I like the Excalibers XR50 in Ghost, silver blue, or silver black. 

[flippin and pitchin]

When the water temps hit 55 degrees in the spring and the grass is still down. I will cover flats that are 5 to 9 feet deep with a YoZuri Vibe or Drum in a dark crawfish pattern. Same in the fall when the temps get down to 55 degrees. A baitfish color then. Those are my peak times.

[bassman78]

That's one of my go to lures I'll fish on the Niagara River from prespawn til fall.  It's such a versatile bait.  In summer you can cast it let it sink to the bottom then jig it back to the boat and that will bring on some massive strikes.  Spawn just burn it through the flats.  Any dark/shaded/patches of weeds, anything that stands out in the water, kill the bait just after it passes and you will usually get hammered.  Colors depend on what time of year and the color/clarity of your local water.  Here we have 20+ ft of visibility on calm days.  I like the chartreuse shad color most of the year and a blue gill color scheme for spawn.  Last fall it seemed thats all they wanted was a screaming lipless crank.  My buddy was throwing a square bill and getting half the fish I was that day.  Just throw em, experiment with the presentation, jerk em, burn em, retrieve pause, whatever you can think of.  Just mess with them until you find what works for your water.

[Ratherbfishing]

Yes, absolutely!  Last summer in Canada that is just about all they would bite.  They wanted chrome with red hooks.  Almost nothing else would do.

[clayton86]

It's almost all I throw in the early spring Xr50 like mentioned before. I like the real craw series mostly the red one I let it sink then slow roll it over rocks letting it bounce and deflect off the rocks.

[lmbfisherman]

I used a SK - Craw type color lipless crank.  I used fished it through shallow water/rocky bottoms, sometimes they wanted a "fast retrieve" others time a stop (1-2s) and go retrieve.  That is what worked for me for smallies. 

[roadwarrior]

Two years ago on the RoadTrip at Pickwick Big O and our two soldiers caught

144 smallmouth  the first day, during the flood.  All the fish were caught on Rage

Tail Baby Craws and Red Eye Shad. I still carry several brands and the XCalibur

Xr50 has been VERY good to me. However, I haven't thrown anything but a Red

Eye in two years!

[Bronzebacksrule]

I agree. Any day except when the water is super clear and/or hot, I will try a number of casts with a lipless crankbait as a search tool.  I typically use the Red Eye Shad in sexy shad or the crawfish pattern.  One of the keys is to retrieve it and rip it every now and then, then pause. I often get bit on the pause.

I've caught smallies on it in spring and fall as well as summer on the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers.

KVD has a great video on it from Bass Pro.

[bugman]

Here up North I throw the SK red eye shad about half the time when smallie fishing on spawning flats. I like to use the pull a few feet then reel in the slack retrive. Most of my bites happen as i'm reeling in the slack. This works very well in 3 to 15 feet of water that has sand and rock bottom. 

[roadwarrior]

I own a lot of brands, but they are all obsolete. The Red Eye Shad rules!

Anything works ripping through grass, but the unique forward fall puts this

lure is a class of its own.

 

 

 

  

[je1946]

For smallies I like the LC LV500 in spring craw followed by the Red Eye Shad in red and chartruse craw.  they are very versitle baits U can fish them at all speeds and up in down in the water column, they cast very well even into the wind, and the smallies love em.

[vtbassin]

Koppers Live Target Gold Shiner

 

 

Great video of some great smallies Hanover!   Is your net handle custom made?   It looks very easy to use

[Hanover_Yakker]

Thanks - the video is actually Jeff Little of smallmouth fame.  The net he has is a custom DIY where he took a standard net and bolted it to a "polio" cane.  However, Leverage Landing Net patented the same design in a folding stowable net.

 

You can watch the promo video here:

 

 

Their site is: http://www.leveragelandingnet.com

 

They have various sizes.  I won one of them in 2011 from KBF, but I gave it to a co-worker for him and his dad to use on their G3 boat.  They love it.

[vtbassin]

Thanks Hanover -- those look great.

[coryn h. fishowl]

When the water temps hit 55 degrees in the spring and the grass is still down. I will cover flats that are 5 to 9 feet deep with a YoZuri Vibe or Drum in a dark crawfish pattern. Same in the fall when the temps get down to 55 degrees. A baitfish color then. Those are my peak times.

Koppers live target lipless craw.

[YoungProdigy19]

Lipless cranks are a great tool for smallies. Just pay attention to the conditons and water temp. Beginning of the year you should use a slow retrieve and thr pauses should be longer. But as the year continues and it gets warmer, you shoild have a more steady retrieve with little to no pauses. Its a common miss conception, lipless cranks and jerkbaits can both be fished effectively year round if you know how to use them.

[BiteMe73]

To answer your question absolutely. The smallie I'm holding in my avatar is my PB at a hair shy of 5 pounds. She was caught on a Redeye Shad. It is my only fish I;ve ever caught on a lipless. Up until that moment I had never had an luck with lipless cranks.