Mastering Lipless Crankbaits: The Essential Guide

All right. Let's talk about lipless crankbaits, vibrating lures, rattling baits, Rat-L-Trap, whatever you want to call them. They're, basically, the same type of bait. And these have been around for a very long time. I've been fishing them with much success, gosh, dating all the way back to the '70s when I was fishing the heddon sonic, if some of you were around to remember that one. But as time has gone by, the success of these lures, pretty much every bait manufacturer out there makes one now, and for good reason. They work really well.

So, today, I'm going to just do a brain dump on you and tell you five main tips that's going to help you become much more successful using these baits, starting with how to choose them because that's probably one of the more difficult parts of the whole thing, because everybody makes them, right? I mean, you've got the Wameku shad, the Aruku shad, you have Rat-L-Traps, you have the one knocker, you've got a variety of the ones called Vibes, like Yo-Zuris. I mean, how do you choose them, right?

So here's my best advice for you. Stick to like three to five brands, and the reason I say that is because each manufacturer makes them a little bit different. Some of them have steel shot in them, some have tungsten, which gives it a different sound. Some of them don't have any BBs in them at all, so they're a silent vibrating lure. And then their shape can give them a little bit different action. So you don't want to stick to one particular brand but spread it out amongst three to five, and then focus on just the 1/2-ounce size. That's like 80% of your fishing with these baits is the 1/2-ounce size.

Now, I go smaller, 3/8 to a 1/4 ounce, immediately after the spawn, like the first couple of three weeks right after the spawn. Fish tend to go after smaller baits at that time. And then also in the fall, when the baitfish is a bit smaller, the bass really key on smaller baits, so a smaller size bait really works well. On the other end of the spectrum, when the bass are really deep, like in summer or in winter, then I may heavy up to a 3/4 ounce or even 1 ounce, so I can jig it off the bottom. But those are all edge-caught cases. Really like 80% of your fishing with these baits is going to be with a 1/2 ounce, so start there.

As far as color choice, yeah, again, wow, a million of them, right? They all make all these different colors. I don't even know, like Rat-L-Trap makes, I think, over 40 colors now. I don't know, I lost count. It's crazy, right? So how do you choose? Well, narrow it down to, basically, three categories. One is baitfish. Your baitfish is going to be like your shad, perch, or bluegill. Those work universally all over the U.S. Perch a little bit better in the north, shad a little bit better in the south of the U.S., but they work interchangeably wherever you go. So key on those three types.

Another category would be crawdad. So there's three shades of crawdad or three color types of crawdad. That's going to be your red, your green, and your brown crawdads, right? Red works really well in spring, otherwise, it's going to be your brown and greens for the rest of the year. And then, finally, you want to pick a color that's got some chartreuse in it, like a firetiger. That works really well when the fish are really keying on bluegill, but in particular in the fall, especially when you're fishing smallmouth, they really like a lot of chartreuse in their baits, so that works really well in the fall. That's it. Don't go hog wild with a bunch of other stuff. That's going to give you enough of these baits that you're going to catch fish on them.

So, next step is what do I throw it on? There's a lot of different rods and reels and line combinations, but to get the most success, what I do is I use, typically, a regular crankbait rod, right? So that is a moderate power medium action rod. That's got a lot of bend and flex in it. And the reason for that is these baits have treble hooks on them. And any time I'm throwing a treble hook bait that the fish can throw them, either jumping out of the water, they can throw the hook, or just fighting back, they can rip free of the hook. So if you've got a rod that's got a lot of give to it, acts like a spring whenever the fish surges, then that helps keep the fish pinned. So a rod like that works really well.

Pair with that fluorocarbon line. I typically use12-pound fluorocarbon line, all fluoro and no braid. And that's because fluorocarbon has some stretch in it. If you add some braid in there, well, then you only got a little bit of stretch on your leader, and that's not enough. That's not going to give you that little bit of give that you need, again, when the fish surges. That works together with the rod. So all fluorocarbon, straight up, all the way. That way, you've got the rod giving and the line giving a little bit, and that's going to help keep the fish pinned.

Your reel, 7 to 1 gear ratio, right around that range is fine. You don't really need super high-speed reels. You can go up a little bit more to 7 to 5. The real police aren't going to come chasing you down. But around the 7 to 1 gear ratio is pretty good for overall crankbaiting with these baits. Now, the exception to that is if you're fishing in heavy weeds, for example, hydrilla, even milfoil to a certain extent. But with this, we'll talk about presentations in a second, but if you're bringing it across these weeds, you get it hung up on those weeds. You want to rip it out of the weeds, and that change of action can trigger the strike. Well, when doing that, you need a little bit heavier equipment.

I'll use a medium-heavy power rod, fast action. That's kind of your general all-purpose jack-of-trade kind of rod, 7-foot-1. You can throw worms with that, jigs with that, topwater spinnerbait. You can throw a bunch of different baits with that, and you can fish these Rat-L-Traps with them too. That little bit of extra stoutness helps when you rip it out of the weeds. And here I'll up it to 15-pound fluorocarbon line along with that, because you're getting it in the weeds and you're ripping it out as a type of presentation, and we'll talk about in a second, but a little bit stouter rod helps with that presentation.

All right, speaking of retrieves, let's talk about those. There's, basically, five different retrieves that I use with these baits, starting with your regular chunk and wind, right? Just throw it out there and reel it back in straight. That's going to catch you a lot of fish. It works well. That's how I first started fishing them, and I still fish them that way today. You catch a lot of fish that way. But a couple of variants will help you sometimes if they're not quite biting it. One of them is to burn it back to you, like cast it out and reel it back really fast.

You want it to be just under the surface. You don't want it to break the surface. You don't want it to do that, but just get it under the surface and just beeline it back to you. This looks like a fleeing baitfish trying to get away from something. It often triggers a strike when you bring it right over a bass. For example, if they're just sitting in scattered rocks, boulders, smallmouth, for example, throw that over the top of those rocks and burn it way back. Well, suddenly this thing comes flying right by them, and they don't even think. They attack it. You get some vicious strikes that way. So that's a way to trigger strikes.

Another one is a yo-yo technique. Yo-yoing, you throw it out and let the bait flutter down to the bottom, and then you reel up the slack and you lift up on the rod, and then you guide it down with the rod. Bring the rod tip back down while you're reeling up the slack. Let it get down to the bottom and pause it, and then lift it back up with the rod and reel back down with the line, picking up that slack as you lower your rod, and so on and so forth. And you're, basically, doing this. You're bringing it back like this. And that wavering type of action, little erratic action, often is what it takes to trigger a strike. So try that.

Another type of retrieve is your stop-and-go retrieve. Cast it out there. Reel it back at a normal speed, moderate retrieve, and then give it a pause, and then start reeling again. You don't have to pause it for very long because 1/2 ounce sinks pretty quickly. So you don't need a long pause. So just reel it, pause, and start reeling again. That change of action, if a bass is following it and suddenly it stops, it's in his face, and he has to react to it, right? He has to either bite it or turn away. Typically, they bite it. But even if they don't bite, if it starts to fall, sometimes that triggers the bite. And when you resume reeling it again, but, again, changing direction, that often triggers a bite. So, that stop-and-go retrieve can be very, very productive. Try that out.

The last retrieve is when you're fishing it in the weeds, particularly if you have hydrilla. It works really well. It does work in other weeds to a certain extent, but with a hydrilla, if you're casting over the top of it and you're reeling it in, let it sink down and tick the top of those weeds, and then yank it out of those weeds really hard, like you're setting the hook. It's a hard pull. That does two things. Number one, it pulls all the weeds off of it. Again, this works really well with hydrilla. If you're using milfoil, good luck. Milfoil's kind of like velcro, and it's hard to get it off when you yank it like that.

But you can try and see if that actually pulls the weeds off of it. Sometimes that does work. But anyway, you yank it up, and the other thing it does is that it triggers a strike. Again, that change of reaction. Suddenly, this thing comes barreling out of the weeds at Mach 50, and those bass will react. They just, wow, whoa, and they hit it. It catches their tension, and they attack it. So they're ripping it out of the weeds like that is another good way to retrieve those baits.

Now, let's talk a little bit about modifications on these. One of the things I do is I change out the hooks. Now, when Rat-L-Traps first came out, man, they were notorious for having terrible, terrible hooks. I mean, awful. I really even sharpen them to get them even halfway decent. They're really bad. Now, since then, Bill Lewis has done a great job. They come with quality hooks. But even then, sometimes I swap them out for a size larger. A lot of times the bass, what they're doing, particularly smallmouth, but even largemouth and spotted bass will do this, they swipe at the bait. They come at it, and they whap it, and then they turn around to try to...what they're trying to do is stun the bait. So they hit it, flip around, and come back and will bite it.

Well, if you got bigger hooks, sometimes that catches them when they swipe at it. Or sometimes they nip at it. They follow it, and then they just do a little nip on the bait as it's going along. If you've got a larger size hook, particularly in the back, you'll catch those bass that you otherwise wouldn't. So I usually size up at least the rear treble hook. And unless I'm ripping it through those weeds, like I mentioned before, then you're just going to catch more weeds. But that's kind of what I do to get more bites.

Also, make sure that those hooks are sharp. Man, you really have to work on that because you're fishing it through rocks and stumps and everything else, and those hooks can get dull. So make sure you're checking those hooks. First of all, right out of the package, brand new, brand new, I always check hooks. No matter what the bait or lure is, or even if it's a brand new hook that I'm using for Texas rigging, I always check the hook point. If, especially, you're using treble hooks, if you've got two treble hooks on a crankbait, you'll find at least one that's a little bit duller than the rest. Typically, you find more than that. So touch them up, sharpen them up, make sure they're super sharp, and then while you're fishing them, make sure that they stay sharp. Keep checking them out, keep testing them, and see if you can sharpen them. You'll catch more bass that way.

Then, finally, I take out the split ring, and I use a snap. I use a snap on them. Because when you're trying to figure out what the bass want, again, going back to the very beginning, we've got different brands, so different types of baits, they have different sounds, different actions, and then different colors, you're swapping through a couple of them to figure out exactly what the bass want that day, it's a lot easier to use a snap, not a snap swivel, but a snap. I just tie a uni knot onto it, and I can use that snap to quickly change out baits and figure out what the bass want that day.

So with those tips in mind, you're going to catch a lot more fish using vibrating crankbaits. Hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this, visit bassresource.com.