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LooksLikeSinbad

Alternative Lipless Crankbait Designs?

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I bought a couple from strikeprousa.com and from Cultiva that are more streamlined and shad-like. But neither rattles or swims well and they tend to turn on their side at high speed. They're now in a box in the garage where loser crankbaits go to die :cry: Action and rattle are important so I'm sticking with U.S. and Japanese brands like Lucky Craft, Xcalibur, Strike King, Cordell, and Bill Lewis. I like the new Strike King Red Eye Shad - as advertised, it does shimmy as it sinks so is a good bait for a yo-yo retrieve.

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The Shimano Complex Undulator has a potbelly type of design.....it also has a very wide action for a lipless crank - cool bait worth checking out.

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K's Labo also makes a bait with a very exaggerated belly, but I haven't tried that one out yet.

Another bait with a slightly different take is the Air Viper Risebacker.....also one of my favorite lipless vibes in life. They make (made) 3 different sound levels - - silent, low, and high. The silent one is one of my favorites, as it also has a very low fall rate - - great for fishing shallow flats.

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@ LooksLikeSinbad

Here is one of my very early lures made more than 10 years ago after a catalog picture .

If my memory serves me right , the original was a "Mann's" lure called "Pogo Shad" , but I haven't seen it since anymore , suppose , that it was quite short lived:? .

It still float's up with its tailfin just breaking through the surface , I am sure that the original hangs different or even sinks , never held one in my hands !

I fish it in a jerk-and-pause manner , the offset tail causes it to roll and vibrate at quite a high frequency and it goes down to one foot this way :yes:.

It has a hollow chamber inside the center of body with a BB , but since I lacked experience those days , that rattle chamber is not very loud being furnished of wood exclusively .

It is weighted heavily under its chin to stabilize its running , the cross-section is oval with the belly a little fatter than the back .

It is carved out of one piece of light teakwood , but I think to make the shaping easier , one could also screw a metal tail(homemade of aluminium or a fitting Indiana-blade) onto such a lure to achieve the same action , one can maybe even test and/or alter the action by bending the fin to different angles .

I guess a fin set at approx. 90

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I too love lipless cranks. I have now TOTALLY changed my search bait from rattle traps to a blank that Mike Vann sells here on the TU site. His lipless rounded shape from Mavrik Lures is now my #1 search bait.

I have several colors I like, but using the blanks with it's pearl finish it comes with is pretty good too. Maverik Lures # 353 falls better than a shimmy shad. He has several others, but try it.

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I'm really kicking myself. I was at a tackle show in Indy in February and they quite literally had an entire displays worth of Risebackers in the corner of their area. Was going to grab a couple b/c I had remembered String loving them, but I spent my "show allowance" on a new rod and reel.

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Back to "Alternative Lipless Crankbait Designs?". I made quite a few of these about 25 years ago - They swam like a lipless lure, with just a bit of action and a bit of a 'hunt' and the lip gave them some depth. The lure pictured is 2" balsa @ about 6 gms, excuse the condition, but it's the only one I could find.

Any thoughts, or experience with anything like this? pete

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Pete, I reallt like it.

When I started exploring the hunting action, I experimented with double lips, but not in the configuration that you are showing. I put both lips parallel, one front and one rear. Even tried the rear lip on the back of the body.

Never got it to do what I wanted though, but the action was plentiful. I will re-visit the idea one day, as I have learned a lot since then.

Even 25 years ago, you refused to sit and think in the box.

Dave

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@ hazmail

A very unique and unusual design(I'm always hooked on such , lol:lol:) , but I can't really imagine about its action:? !

Does the water pressure onto the two lips cause the lure to vibrate like those "Ratt' L 'Traps" , "Rattlin' Rapalas" , etc....... :??

And what kinda swimming motion you're refering to with "hunting" action :??

I imagine it to be ocassional sideward darting during a steady retrieve, but I don't know for sure:? !

greetz , diemai

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diemai/Dave- as I said I made quite a few at the time, but could not get enough action, but seeing now how productive some of the Rapalas etc are, with virtually no action, I am tempted to revisit these.

As you would imagine with these 2 lips, the lure is more a 'hydroplane' with a very slight wobble - because of the hydroplane effect it also tended to get a slight zig-zag (hunting) action, which at the time I thought was undesirable, but now something, we are all looking for.

I did vary the size and angle of the rear lip, which altered things a bit, as you can see the rear lip pictured is about 1/2 the diameter of the front lip. All in all it probably behaved a bit like a lipless crank bait/glider, BUT with some depth (can't remember how deep), I did not weight them, which may also, have been interesting. pete

Edited by hazmail
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"Hunting": when a crankbait is retrieved and runs slightly off track to the left and right at unpredictable intervals while maintaining a basically straight course back to the boat. Hunting is seen as desirable because it more closely mimics how real prey fish swim. You have to experiment with build details to get hunting action. It requires a bait that swims in the narrow window between "out of control" and "too straight and narrow to look alive". JMHO, it's easy to end up building more baits that are "out of control", so it's a questionable build target unless you couldn't care less about how many "duds" you get on the way to a few hunters. Deflecting a bait off cover, or twitching the bait during the retrieve gets similar results, so I don't worry about hunting and don't hoard/treasure the baits I have that do it. Throw to the gnarliest part of a laydown and twitch it out, hitting every branch you can! Nobody said a crankbait was supposed to last forever!

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@ Vodkaman

Thanks , just have to join in Pete's previous post , lol :yes:!

@ BopP

Thanks for further explanations , your describtion undermines , what I had thought , a "hunting" action would be .

Ocassionally one or another of my homemades in the past had turned out to swim that way , I considered them as rejects , since they lacked that rythmic wobble , that I was after .

Guess , that I should think over my attitude , lol :lol:!

greetz , diemai

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