Finesse Crankin'
By: Matt Little

Imagine yourself pulling into a creek on a crisp April morning. The
sun is just beginning to peek its head over the horizon illuminating
the mist that has congregated just above the water's surface. As you
stand on the front deck you notice that the water is stained from the
warm spring shower the area received the evening before. There is
fresh green vegetation growing along the jagged shores. The shallows
are littered with laydowns, flooded buckbrush, and sand willows. You
look down at your LCD after you thrust forward with your trolling
motor. The screen displays depths of four to six feet and the boat is
about 10 yards from the shoreline. You reach for your spinnerbait rod
and anticipate a day to remember. You make the entire run to the back
of the creek catching a nice keeper and a couple short fish. You
cannot help but think that the fish should be stacked up like poker
chips in a high stakes game. You threw at every twig, laydown,
opening in the grass, gravel spot, rock, and bare spot in 1000 yards
of bank with expert accuracy. You spent 8 hours trying to seine every
fish from the "perfect" stretch of creek. The day ends and your
results were fair, but not what you expected. This would be an
average performance on your local lake and you cannot help but think
that if this had been a tournament day you would not have faired very
well.

I feel that the right choice was a spinnerbait, but only for the first
pass. I think that the ability to "seine" fish from an area that
should hold lots of fish is only one bait away. The "limit-filler",
"fish-catcher", "butt-saver", etc. is a crankbait. Not just any
crankbait, but one that most anglers do not even own. I am not talking
about the extremely shallow baits like Manns Baby-1 Minus, Storm
Subwart, Bandit Footloose, etc. I am talking about a mini-version of
the popular stand-byes. These bite-sized morsels will make even the
most finicky fish chase them. They barely scratch the five foot range
and run best in 3-4 feet of water. They can measure a measly 1.5 inches
and weigh as little as 1/8th of an ounce. My favorite is not even
marketed for bass fishing. It is the Norman Crappie Crankbait. My other
favorite is the Bagley Honey-B.

These little crankbaits are something that I have kept to myself for
sometime. I also notice that most professional fisherman do not admit
to using them. I noticed over a decade ago on the BASSMASTER
television show that perennial favorites were always picking up a rod
with a crankbait that was extremely small. The baits looked like a
marble with a lip and hooks. I never really thought much about it.
When I was growing up I had an obsession with fishing narrow creeks,
streams, and run-off areas. These tiny bodies of water were perfect
for ultra-lite fishing with tiny crankbaits. One brutally hot summer
when I was 16, I started putting 2 and 2 together. I took notice that
I could go to Lake Eufaula and fish a single cove near my grandfathers
farm and catch bass all day long. Tournament boats would come in time
and time again and not get a nibble. But I would walk up and down the
bank and catch fish after fish with my little baits. I would not just
catch dinks, but I would catch the occasional 3 to 4 pounder. I knew
then that these little baits were fish catching machines.

As I got older I started to fine-tune my presentations with "finesse"
crankbaits. I upgraded the tiny treble hooks to a #6. I sometimes only
used one hook so that the extra weight would not ruin the action of
the crankbait. I learned that these little jewels could be fished in
any cover because they are surprisingly weedless. They can also be
retrieved at an accurate depth by simply changing line size. This
means that the bait will stay in the strike zone longer because they
are not spending half of the cast getting down to their depth and back
up again. Also, because they seldom dive deeper than 5 feet, you can
use heavier line if you need the extra strength. I also found that the
baits worked better in stained to muddy water. The water clarity would
move the fish shallow and in the baits strike zone.

Finesse cranking can help you locate fish in an area quickly. Have you
ever been skunked in an area, but you just knew that there were fish
there? I bet you didnt throw a tiny crankbait. I remember prefishing
for a club championship while using an 1/8th ounce firetiger crankbait
to locate fish. I just wanted to see if fish were there and were
willing to chase my bait. In one area I think I ruined it for myself.
On my first cast I caught a 2 pounder. I thought that this might be a
fluke but I got a 14 incher on the next cast. I told my partner that
the fish were here and we should probably find some other areas. While
he was getting his lifejacket on I made a cast out into the middle of
the creek to make sure all the kinks were out of my line. As I burned
the crankbait back to the boat, I had three hits and caught a nice 3
pounder. There is nothing like sticking 6.5 pounds of fish on 3 casts
while prefishing. The next day during the tournament I caught about 8
fish from that little area, and they were all about ź of an inch too
short. Just my luck!

I suggest that you go out to your local tackle store and get you a few
finesse crankbaits. Hide them in the recesses of your tackle box so no
one sees them. Take them out under a vail of secrecy and use them with
caution. You just might find yourself a new "go to" bait.

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