A couple more crappie colors

Using the same bodies as those from the other day, I did some more baits based on great catching last summer/early fall. Pike liked these two color patterns. Unfortunately. The purple over pink is done in the mottled “crappie” pattern.

An interesting observation from last year was that baits having a stripe of white running right on the bottom of the bait, pretty much regardless of color, had more catches and more swings and misses. Curious about that.

Both colors shown here have the hi lite enhanced clear top coat but the sun’s angle when the pic was taken isn’t allowing the colors to come out much

Look good, Tom. Are these sinking cranks? You mentioned a slow retrieve the other day, so I’m guessing they are not floaters.

I get the blanks as shallow floaters. They have a ball and rattle chamber so I drive a small hole and add 5 #5 shot to the chamber and use a gel super glue to seal the hole. If needed I give a quick scuff with some fine wet or dry sandpaper to smooth the hole area out, then paint as usual.

They end up being almost neutrally buoyant. As they come they dive about 3 feet so I slow crank them down as far as they want to go [maybe 5 feet], let rest a second, then slow crank again which gets them down around 9 to 10 feet. Active crappies will rise up and nail these usually somewhere in the first cranking zone. They have an uncanny action for such a small bait, but their size is another reason for the slow retrieve. Too many people try these and have a fit when they crank them like a regular sized bass or walleye and on lines meant for those larger baits. Slower is the word with these and light line so they can work. I use #4 XL when casting these.

They sound like perfect little crappie crankbaits. You’re rapidly moving my thoughts to spring open water fishing!

I’ll just add that I’ve started using the little BFS baitcast outfits and they are a joy to use with tiny crankbaits.

I began playing with the tiny cranks a year ago. Last spring I had some success immediately after ice out by cranking a bait down as described and stopping it at a random level and just letting it sit there a few seconds, then giving it a twitch just before starting on a retrieve again. Crappies would hit it while it was at rest.

Tom, your next project should be to invent a suspending crappie jig.

They do make some very small suspending jerkbaits.

Nice job Tom. I like to play around painting my own lures. Love the idea of neutral buoyancy you did. I would never have tried it. I would think that may work in a lake i crappie fish at. What blanks are those?

John Walker wrote:

What blanks are those?

I found these on an ebay site. They’re Chinese so likely to be hard to find….and would they be hauling some bad stuff with them now?

Sheltsfishingtackle.com has some small, crappie sized bodies in the top-water selection. I’ve used those and drilled them, added the shot and made them very close to neutrally buoyant. Most all of what you’ll find in the small bodies will be top water bodies that maybe get to 4 feet I tinker with them and try to get a dive of four feet and when stopped stay at or very, very slowly, climb until the retrieve is started again and they dive further. I have some that are 7/10″ inches in length, are weighted with shot, are neutrally buoyant, and cast about 70 feet on 4 pound mono. I use a start stop retrieve using them and manage to get plenty of suspended crappies using them. Honestly, they’re a hoot to fish with when the crappies start to suspend a bit deeper than a jig plastic sees the most effectiveness without being right on top of them.