Favorite Lure Tweaks

Winter is in that stage where it’s starting to drag…and going to get tougher as the temps turn down…(I’m personally no fan of hard water)…

What tweaks do you use to improve your confidence, catch or effectiveness for bass fishing?

One of my favorites involves a Rebel Pop-R: tie my mono with a palomar then ‘move’ it on the line tie ‘down’ and tight against the cupped face. This allows the bait to ‘smack’ when twitched (sounds just like a bluegill surface feeding)…will be experimenting with tieing my own feathers on the rear treble this year and upgrading hooks…

Anyone else have something they’re willing to share?

On another note, anyone out there fishing the Bass-Orenos? What size, where/when and how? Would love a thread on this as well…

replace all factory crankbait hooks w/ owners.
replace the rubber bands on my favorite model spinnerbait with a hand tie.
replace the willow leaf blades on my smaller spinnerbaits w/ colorado blades.
add as many colors of tru-tungsten sinkers to my terminal tackle that they make.
custom paint a few lures just to have something different.

Change the front hook of my suspending jerkbaits to the next larger size. Give the lure a head down attitude in the water.

I also like to replace my willow blades with larger Colorado blades. Another thing I’ve done is replace some of the larger trebles on my pop-r’s with one size smaller. Last summer, fishing the Croix with AlvinMack, I noticed I was having a problem with the hook coming around and hanging up on the line where it ties into the lure. Changed them out to one size smaller and have eliminated that problem without costing me any bites! One other thing, that I haven’t yet done but need to, is sort my plastics box and clean it up! You know how you rig up a worm, make some casts, throw it back in the box, rig up a different color, make a few casts….well, let’s just say my plastics box is starting to have a “melt-down”.

I’m definately a fan of using a red treble for my front hook on hardbaits, especially jerkbaits, topwaters, and lipless crankbaits. I also add a feathered treble on the back hook of my topwater baits, that helped me out in a tournament on the Detroit river this summer when the smallies were missing on the first attempt. I’ve also been working my tackle pretty hard already just getting rid of old rusty or seldom used lures. Efficiency on the water is key and that means not having a million lures to dig through. I was curious about the above post on hand tying skirts to spinnerbaits. I know war eagles come twisted on with wire, but how do you guys do it? I can’t wait to try out some of the new crankbaits and softplastics I’ve picked up in the off-season. Good thing I’ll be out on Guntersville for a couple days next week.