Hardbaits. i simply suck with them.

[Darth-Baiter]

Yesterday i did well on the worm.  really well.  well enough that i self-pryed (from my greedy clutches) my rod from my hand and picked up another rod(s) that were rigged with reaction baits.  a Vision 110, some tiny Megabass crank, and a LV500.  Nothing, Nada, Zip.  i casted like i was musky fishing.  i even tried different retrieves.  i could see suspended fish arches on my electronics.  even my early morning frog tossing was just a lesson in casting accuracy.  nothing.

 

as the day went on, i picked up my slower fishing methods and got back to catching.  tex-rigged worm, and worm drop shot.  

 

at this point, i am not sure why i even own hardbaits.  should have bought google stock with hardbait money. 

[scaleface]

Crankbaits are among my top lures and I dont believe I have caught a bass on one this year . They just havent produced and other lures have . It seems to go in cycles for me . 

[PhishLI]

48 minutes ago, Darth-Baiter said:

at this point, i am not sure why i even own hardbaits. 

It just takes time and experience to develop an understanding of when to exclude certain presentations. You can be wrong a lot until you have an ah-ha moment, then the floodgates tend to open and you can do no wrong with a bait that has whipped your...

[LrgmouthShad]

Well, I guess you could say I suck with em too. I do not dare start to fish crankbaits or the like because that would be an immense bait monkey rabbit hole for me. Also I hate treble hooks. Exception is lipless cranks; I'll use those sometimes.

[gim]

5 minutes ago, PhishLI said:

It just takes time and experience to develop an understanding of when to exclude certain presentations.

 

X2 well put.

[king fisher]

1 hour ago, Darth-Baiter said:

at this point, i am not sure why i even own hardbaits.  should have bought google stock with hardbait money. 

Give me your hard baits.  I would put them to good use.  Bass where I fish love them.  

[casts_by_fly]

I can only fish them until may or so here. We have so much grass that anything with a treble is getting snagged most of the time. If it’s deep you can run a crankbait over the top of the grass and it it isn’t floating on the surface you can run a topwater around the edges.

 

I’ve always been more of a skirted bait guy.  I’m getting into plastics more now but I’ll default to a skirted bait most of the time. 

[LrgmouthShad]

30 minutes ago, king fisher said:

Give me your hard baits. 

I might be able to arrange something in the Flea Market, but I will need to replace a lot of the hardware on them. I have quite a few crankbaits but never use them. Mostly rapala.

[RDB]

2 hours ago, Darth-Baiter said:

Yesterday i did well on the worm.  really well.  well enough that i self-pryed (from my greedy clutches) my rod from my hand and picked up another rod(s) that were rigged with reaction baits.  a Vision 110, some tiny Megabass crank, and a LV500.  Nothing, Nada, Zip.  i casted like i was musky fishing.  i even tried different retrieves.  i could see suspended fish arches on my electronics.  even my early morning frog tossing was just a lesson in casting accuracy.  nothing.

 

as the day went on, i picked up my slower fishing methods and got back to catching.  tex-rigged worm, and worm drop shot.  

 

at this point, i am not sure why i even own hardbaits.  should have bought google stock with hardbait money. 

It may be less about your skills and more about the fish you are targeting.  Suspended fish can be very difficult to catch as they will often be inactive.  Unless I see bait balls or signs of schooling, I won’t spend much time on suspended fish.  With your bottom contact baits, you were much more likely around more active fish.  Just my opinion.

[Jmilburn76]

I rarely have any hard baits tied on anymore, Im not confident enough with them to be productive.

[J._Bricker]

There’s a time and a place for every thing in one’s arsenal. The bass wanted a t-rig and the dropshot and you stayed with what was working. I’ll admit there are a day or two every year I want the fish to hit what I’ve tied on and I refuse to change tactics from my pregame reaction bait strategy.
 

By the way if you were fishing Clear Lake, any chance those suspending marks were crappie?

[DitchPanda]

In the past month I've caught half my bass on a worm of some sort and the other half on a popper or wake crank. That said the hard bait bite is a short window in the morning...like 5:30 til 7:30... Then I may as well forgot about them until 530 am the next day. After that I've caught a few bass mid afternoon in a frog everything else has been soft baits.

[Bankbeater]

6 hours ago, scaleface said:

Crankbaits are among my top lures and I dont believe I have caught a bass on one this year . They just havent produced and other lures have . It seems to go in cycles for me . 

Same here.  I don't think I have caught 5 bass on crankbaits this year.  

[FrnkNsteen]

3 hours ago, J._Bricker said:

There’s a time and a place for every thing in one’s arsenal. The bass wanted a t-rig and the dropshot and you stayed with what was working. I’ll admit there are a day or two every year I want the fish to hit what I’ve tied on and I refuse to change tactics from my pregame reaction bait strategy.
 

By the way if you were fishing Clear Lake, any chance those suspending marks were crappie?

I agree with this^^

 

There is an old saying that says don't leave fish to try to find fish. To me, the same goes with don't quit lures that are working to try something else.

 

It's obvious they were wanting the slower presentations, so I would have stuck with that. Try your hard baits on days they AREN'T hitting your plastics and may prefer the reaction bite.

 

Had a day up on our summer trip when the smallies were barely touching anything plastic. They wanted swimming craws with lots of action like Chigger Craws or Rage Craws, cranks like OG Slims and paddletail swimbaits like Keitechs and Cane Thumpers. We dropped the senkos, tubes, and Neds and switched over to moving baits and a had good day!

[padon]

i catch probably 4 times the fish on jigs or worms every year than i do on hard baits. ive always been that way.i wish i was better with hard baits because i can cover so much water. it takes a while to fish a grass bed with a jig or worm when you could fish down the edge with a crank or something.i keep working on it though.

[PotatoLake]

We are about to hit crankbait prime time in my neck of the woods. I’ve always had them chew when they start corralling shad in the flats. I’ll usually throw reaction on windier or cloudier days in the summer. If it’s postfrontal bluebird stuff I’ll slow down with the free rig. Always make sure you’re hitting cover, fishing a start/stop/sweep retrieve or digging the bottom. That helps.

[LonnieP]

I love fishing with crankbaits. I always have at least 3 tied on.

[Bird]

Haven't thrown a hard crankbait in years....... better options here.

[Basser2021]

10 hours ago, scaleface said:

Crankbaits are among my top lures and I dont believe I have caught a bass on one this year . They just havent produced and other lures have . It seems to go in cycles for me . 

Same for me. I rarely have that much success on cranks during summer anyway

[Bluebasser86]

I've had a little more success than normal on cranks this year during the warmer months, but that isn't saying much. I go months without taking a cranking rod out of the box, and that's just fine with me. 

[Mbirdsley]

I love fishing cranks. However, sometimes that’s not what they want.  
 

I have one lake that I fish the only time I am successful with anything resembling a crank is a shad rap in march and April. After that it’s t-rigged 6 inch Ochoes, flukes, and wacky rigs pitched into the pads 

 

So far with a milder summer it has been the year of the crank bait in Michigan though. 

[WRB]

Unless you have have forward scanning sonar or live scope the fish you see on the display are behind you, so cast back into the wake.

The lures mentioned are all excellent but they will not change the activity level of the bass. Inactive or neutral active bass will not chase faster moving lures. Active bass will and that is key. 

The easiest method to learn how to use diving crankbaits is by trolling them along breakline at the depth active bass are located. Change the cadence (retrieve speed) by using your rod and reel or simply make lazy S pattern trolling, slow turns every 50 yards or so that slows and speeds up the lure.

When you catch a bass trolling stop and cast the area.

Turn the reel handle while keep the rod tip down and at a angle so the rod tip bounces. Make 1 turn, then 3 turns, the 1 turn , 2 turns until the react at that pace, then repeat adding a few rod pulls.

Set a few days aside and do nothing else for about 4 hours. Activity levels change every few hours and general at the depth the suspended bass are at, just closer to that breakline depth. 

Tom

 

[GetFishorDieTryin]

Take 2 baits you want to learn and the next time you fish those are the only baits you're alow yourself to use.  You either get confidence in the bait by catching fish or you learn how not to fish it.  It can be frustrating but I found that to be the fastest way to build confidence.

 

[TnRiver46]

I also suck with most hard baits, but a jerk bait always seems to get bit for me. Sometimes the floaters are better than suspenders 

[gim]

13 hours ago, PotatoLake said:

I’ll usually throw reaction on windier or cloudier days in the summer. If it’s postfrontal bluebird stuff I’ll slow down with the free rig.

 

Yes, this is so true.  I try to time my outings on the cloudy or rainy days if I'm able to as well, so the odds favor a more aggressive approach with faster reaction lures.  Unfortunately I'm not always able to do that nor do the fish cooperate, so finesse slower tactics are required.

 

Case in point: Friday looks sunny and on the warm side, so plastics under docks or in thick weeds will be the tactic of choice.

Saturday looks rainy here with incoming low pressure so I'll be throwing moving lures as fast as I can, trying to provoke reaction strikes.

 

Back to back days with completely opposite approaches based on the local conditions.