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Munkin

Crankbait surfacing action?

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As far as attitude goes, the tip of the lip has to be under the water as it

sits so that the lip starts to dig as soon as the handle on the reel is turned. This is the only prerequisite for attitude. It is not a result of bill angle. Regardless of the angle of the lip, the tip

of the lip must be underwater as the bait rests.

Do baitfish swim with their noses down? No they swim in a

horizontal fashion, unless they are changing depth.

So what? You cannot deny the effectiveness that crankbaits have had running nose down and digging. Take that "almost suspending" bait out when the water hits around 50 to 55 degrees and watch that same bait slowly sink.

So a sinking bait has it place...

I have weighted a 25/8 inch bait to its max without

creating a sinking bait and still get tumbling. My lure

catches fish... I just got back from Kentucky Lake and

nailed them on it. I can crank these baits at a fairly high rate of

retreive before getting blow out.

Sorry, I do not agree that a sinking bait has its place. It is not efficient. A tumbling bait hinders the baits ability for a long straight cast. My baits don?t ?blow out? period. I have done very well on both Ky. and Barkley lakes also. I lived in Hopkinsville for 6 yrs.

I understand your thinking of a ?natural look on retrieve? theory.

The design of the bait that you have is just not made for long casting

or deep cranking. However, I am not saying that it is a bad bait by any means. With the lip that you have on that bait it is not a shallow

bait either. The design is similar to a Bagley DKBII . (One of the older ones with the lead in the lip.) The DKBII never threw without cart wheeling. However, the bait can be modified so that it will be more efficient, but the bait will never meet my personal standards. A DKBII is an inefficient bait.

Maddox Bay,

Take some of your stock store bought baits to a clear pond or better yet a pool and do some studying. Some of your thoughts are in the right direction. But......... which thoughts :?:

LP,

Shifting weighted baits are just a bad attempt to get a poorly designed bait to throw straight. It is not the answer.

Skeeter

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WOW!!! This is what TU is all about. I learn more from threads like this than any other type. It is nice to see that their are guys who post what they do or what they would like to do and get ideas and direction from guys who have mastered the craft. I never take criticism personal, in fact I always take what I do and the help I get to make my bait better.

Tally

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Darn I guess i'm going to have to give all the money back I've won on DKBII's and DDKBII's and get rid of the lures too. No, maybe not, that lure is pretty efficient on one of my favorite lakes that has the big postspawners in bottom cover at 10 to 12 feet absolutely gorging on crawfish. That hard pulling wide wobbling DDKBII ricocheting easily thru that stuff as if it had no hooks on it has been the most efficent lure in my boat many days. Of course I'll have to feather my cast a little at the end which will probably cost me 6 feet of distance. But maximum distance and depth will cost you efficiency by the end of the day in this scenario.

There are more paths than one to efficiency. It is all about the right tool for the job at hand.

If the bass are holding at 19 feet I'd be quite pleased to feed them a steady diet of Skeeter's deep runners. If T-Bait and I are fishing the Ohio River, we are going to have a blast on our own lures where 93% of the time I'm going to stay in the first 8 feet of water, and yes, we'd be cranking our butts off and taking names and have little use for the crankbaits we we were using the previous week at Guntersville.

T-Bait tore their butts up on KY Lake on a lure that was not efficient because it will tumble at the end of a cast if you don't feather it a bit--that is not logical or efficient thinking.

Crankbaiting is one of the best depth-control strategies you can use. Bass hold at many different depths in many different lakes during the post spawn period (prime cranking time) and often utilize specific forage to maximize their own metabolic efficency at this time, in the many different environments they inhabit across the country.

To say that one way of doing things is the only way is silly. And there are several of us here who are fanatically serious about the details of our lures, and have had the ultimate satisfaction of customers who caught fish on our lures when they said they could catch them on nothing else.

Dean

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Easy kids...... remember that I stated that I was going to say what characteristics I thought a good crankbait should have. I stand by my statements. I make 4 baits that will cover the water column from 3 to 20+ ft. They all float, throw straight into the wind, and they all run straight. If a bait regardless of the size does not meet these characteristics then I will not thow it. I have done my damage on the fish populations in a few places myself, inclulding Ky. Lake. So if you fellas are happy with what you are throwing.... then I am glad for you. I think that I will stick to my baits. I am pretty happy with them. :wink:

Skeeter

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I understand where Skeeter's coming from and I think he's spot on regarding "classic" deep cover cranks. But I've caught too many bass over the top of deep weed beds with a Shadrap RS to disparage suspending crankbaits. And what would we do without suspending jerkbaits? Countdown Rapalas? Sinking lipless cranks? I feel shallow cranks are a whole 'nother thing that require distinct design criteria. For shallow cover, I'm looking for 2 tools: one for combing wood cover and one to ricochet through shallow rocks. In either case, float attitude, dive angle, body shape, rise rate, and bill size/shape/angle/material are all critical. There's hardly a design option that isn't "best" for some fishing circumstance. Some have narrow application, some wider (like Skeeter's deep cranks). If you're "producing" cranks there are obvious benefits to wide application cranks. If you doing one-off customs, it's quite a different environment.

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This is a great post, that has a lot of you guys thinking. You might not like what skeeter said, which he clearly stated was only his opinion, but its sure got you to thinking hasn't it? He's not posting to make you mad, he's posting to make you think, like a good teacher does in school. You might be mad but i bet you think about what he said on your next design.

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You guys have to remember, it was a pair of Poes 400s that started this conversation, not shallow running crankbaits or suspending crankbaits. I started my part with the following..........

But since you have read my posts and understand my definition of balance, then we will get into what I feel a deep running crankbait should do.

This is what my part of the discussion was about. But if anyone wants to start on shallow or weighted cranks then I am ready. :wink:

Skeeter

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Would like to throw in my 2 cents here but i'm not a crankbaiter but a jerkbaiter. I would strongly recommend a book Through the Fishes Eye

by Mark Sosin and John Clark. I have a first edition 1973 not sure if it is still in print. I suppose it was written for fisherman but the lure maker can learn a great deal from the book. It is not targeted toward any particular species but does cover a few idiosyncrasies to specific species.

I will give one example from the book that might draw some ire:

Reflective Coloration---Up to this point, no mention has been made of the fishes that are silver colored beneath a dark upper surface. The dark top is certainly understandable. But the silver sides would seem to be a poor defense. Actually, silver pigment cells (called iridocytes) reflect the surrounding colors of the water and the bottom. The enemy does not really see an outline of its prey, but instead a reflection of the water. It's almost like hiding behind a mirror.

From certain studies we know that underwater the body of a perch is so perfect a reflector, that except where the bars are present, it takes the exact shade of the water around. It is almost impossible to detect the fishes outline, and when looking at it from under the surface, through any extent of water, you see merely a few dark shadows moving along, such as might be caused by reeds or weeds.

I left some stuff out but makes you wonder about using pearlescence on the belly and sides.

Phil

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Wow! I finally got through this thread.

With respect to everyone's opinions, we must remember that is what they are. Each person has their own opinion about what works, what doesn't, and what belongs in their tackle selection.

My opinion is very close to Skeeters about the inherent design of crankbaits. They must cast straight without tumbling and that applies to the very shallow and the very deep. When I am deep cranking I want the maximum distance I can get on each cast to maximize my cranking depth. With shallow runners I want them to fly straight to the target and land ready for the retrieve. Tumbling with these baits can result in a wasted cast and that is not good when you are casting hundreds of times per day. Inaccuracy is also a large negative when fishing current, such as in shallow tidal conditions.

Did I mention that my head hurts from too much learning at one time? :grin:

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