Now you can ice fish lipped crankbaits

Looking around at some of the new products companies have already revealed for this next winter and found Clam has come out with a “crank weight”. You clip on the weight to the front treble hook of the crankbait so it will sink down. Than jig or rip the crank.

A product like this would allow a person to carry over summertime cranks into the winter, but I wonder how effective this would be. I feel anything over #5 shad rap would be to big for a winter meal, I could be wrong though. Also a weight hanging off the front of a lure could easily deter fish?

Interested to see video of it in action and reviews come this winter. What do you guys think?

http://clamoutdoors.com/store/new-for-2015/crank-weight.html

We brought these in last year. Bruce Mosher (Todays Tackle) is the inventor of these and swears by them. I do not believe I sold a single one as it is hard to get people to try something totally different. I have seen them action and do believe they work. Maybe they will catch on this year. Clam also purchased the ice buster bobbers from Bruce as well. He deserves this as he has worked very hard to promote his products.

I was unaware they were bought from Today’s Tackle. For those interested, here is a video I found from today’s tackle using the crank weight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4IzdsO624c

One more thing in my tackle box can’t hurt, right?

I put weights on the front hook of my crank baits for musky fishing all the time and have found out that muskies are not afraid of them. I don’t do this through the ice, I do it casting and trolling to get a little more depth out of the lure. This guy might be on to something.

this is very interesting. i will be trialing them this upcoming season. Thank you for the post and links! great work!

I bought a bunch late last ice season from a small tackle shop. He’s been using them with success for a while. I have yet to try them out but bought all the colors and sizes.

Does anyone know if Reeds or Scheels carry these?

Because I have been thinking about using the rippin’ rap, etc. for summer time fishing, I wonder if this verticality in the summer would be advantageous too???

Mark

Mocha wrote:

Does anyone know if Reeds or Scheels carry these?

I would guess so, since they are a clam product now.

I will call Reeds and report back.

No go at Reeds or Scheels. Bummer!

These look interesting to me. I saw them hanging out of a few Winnipeg walleye mouths going on a few years ago now, intriguing idea. Not sure how it works in practice, but it might be worth a look.

Joel

Something to try…I’ve tried experiments with cranks before, but there are plenty of lures that will catch more fish, winter ice fishing.

slipperybob wrote:

, but there are plenty of lures that will catch more fish, winter ice fishing.

THat’s mainly why i haven’t tried them yet…Go to lures worked too well to walk away from last winter.

Would love to try a couple but can not find a place to buy them

John’s bait and tackle right off I35 in Faribault. Swing in next time your driving through or call him up, he’d probably ship some to you.

I know where you can get these. Anywhere that sells bell sinkers!

Just buy a bell sinker in the weight you want and attach it to the split ring of the crank bait. Should do the same thing, more available, and probably cheaper.

curleytail wrote:

I know where you can get these. Anywhere that sells bell sinkers!

Just buy a bell sinker in the weight you want and attach it to the split ring of the crank bait. Should do the same thing, more available, and probably cheaper.

The difference is the length of the stem. These get the weight below the trebles as to not imact hook-ups.
But yeah, it’s a modified bell sinker with out a doubt.

I personally tried this last year because I know a few clam reps and they told me to try it and I thought it was pretty gimmicky. So I went up to Winnipeg and tried out a few of my own modified cranks and boy did they work! Caught a lot of fish on the Rapala DT series cranks along with a few shad raps of various sizes and colors. The only flaw I had with them was that often times the fish wouldn’t inhale the whole bait so the lip of the crank would catch on the bottom of the hole, and with Winnipeg not being a very deep lake, by the time you hooked a fish and got it to the bottom of the hole that fish was still large, in charge, and not ready to come up lol So I lost a quite a few fish from that, but besides that it was really fun to try something new and see how the fish reacted to it!