How do you fish an open water crankbait?

[Scott]

How do you fish a crankbait in open water? Mostly rock bottom, but not very deep only about 10 ft. from shore!!!

[Rich]

You have a couple of options. I would throw either a lipless crankbait like a Rat-L-Trap and vary the retrieve speed to work the entire water column, or if I'm using a lipped crankbait I want one that would run 10+ feet deep. That way it will hit the bottom and stir up a silt trail like a crawfish. When fishing crankbaits, especially lipped baits, the key is contact. You want them to hit things and bounce off them, whether it is rock, timber, etc. When it bounces off objects it gives it an erratic movement which is what triggers strikes.

[macgyver]

Make it as erractic as possible, with pauses jerks twitches anything, along with Reb's advice.

Lizards

[gallenl]

Throw it and crank it.




sorry,flippin4it

[Stick-em]

try to find some stuff out there like rocks, stumps, or creek channels or something

[jglassguy]

All the posts are excellant, only thing I can add is if you
make contact with some object like wood and feel the crankbait hit, quit reeling for a few seconds and let the crankbait raise up, sometimes the bass will hit it after the pause

[Stick-em]

you might also try getting a crank that runs a little deeper than the bottom and run it down there it will stir up the bottom and attract fish

[MrMusky]

i have a chartruse and green two pieced crank bait. I cast it on the outside of a beaver dam and on the first cast on the lure i caught a 27 inch 5 pound piccerel. just slowly reel it until it hits the bottom. let it sit, the jerk, get the slack, and repeat. when it is sitting still you usually get a bite.

[jglassguy]

You can always fan cast an area and work it over.
Try throwing a lure and retreive it, the next cast go about 5 ft to the side of the previous cast and so on an on...you'll cover an area and hopefully if you do get a strike it will let you know what depth of water to target that day.......

[MikeD]

Can you add weight to get it to crank deeper? I've got a Rapala F-7 floating (Perch) 8). It swims about 3'. I would like to get it to crank across the bottom.

[jglassguy]

You can buy stick on weights to the bottom of any crankbait..you'll have to experiment with the placement tho.. I usually put about 3 along the belly and then see if it sinks or even better yet suspends when I quit reeling..its a nice plus when you want your bait to do something dif that what the manufacture had in mind...

[MikeD]

Why would Rapal make them foating? The only time fish float is when there dead. Why not make them all run 6-8-10 feet?

[bronzebackguy]

Actually massbass, I use a small rapala floating minnow as a top water sometimes. When a bass is hungry it looks for the easiest meal it can get, if a minnow looks hurt it will attack it first.

[jglassguy]

There are plenty of crankbaits that sink if
thats what your looking for, the AC shiner line has floaters and sinkers, as well as many other brands like the Lewis Rat L Trap
The Suspend Dots as mentioned before tend to take away some of the baits action if you dont center
the weights just right 8)