Mille Lacs “Night Bite Cranks”

I need to stalk up on some stick baits for the upcoming fall bite and was wondering which baits and colors you guys view as your favorites. Which ones are the ones you’d drive 50 miles to the bait shop if you had to before you hit the water!!?? I always loved the 13 Husky Rapala but I’ve only got three left.

Dirk,

Without a doubt, my hands down favorite is the Smithwick Suspending Super Rogue in a variety of colors but for Mille Lacs, I like the Chrome/Black Back color.
See my review on this bait.

http://www.fishtheriver.com/prod_reviews/index.asp?staffid=44&prodid=9

This bait will produce numbers as well as big fish.
The Rebel minnow is back into production now and is a great fall bait as well.

I will agree with DeeZee’s recommendation. Some of my best nights last year were on Smithwick’s. I would also have Shad Raps in 5’s , 7’s and 9’s. Depending on the depths you will be working all 3 could come into play. I caught my largest on a Chartreuse 7 and the Crawdad , Shad and Firetiger are always in my goto box. Some guys prefer Perch because of the natural prey color but I seem to favor the others.
Dino

As the water got colder last year, we migrated from #7 Shad raps (mostly in the Perch color) to larger, stick shaped lures like #14 HJ’s and the largest size of suspending Yo Zuri’s. I can’t say enough about the Yo Zuri suspending lure. It was fantastic. My tackle box has considerably more of them going into this fall season compared to a year ago.

We caught fish in both the shad and perch colors. My biggest walleye ever came on the silver shad color.

HJ’s worked well too.