Last I hit on some outstanding crankbait crappie bites using very small crankbaits painted up to look like sunfish fry. Ice fishing a couple years ago I found crappies were puking up tiny sunfish, maybe an inch or slightly less so I painted tiny crankbaits to mimic those. This bait is .75″ in length, the second smallest I paint. The wire hooks are standard paper clips cut off with a hook at each end….some of helps with size comparison. I set the rack in the sun to help dry them and couldn’t help but get a picture. These look like they’re alive looking at them n the rack….the camera doesn’t do them justice.
These guys are weighted to sink, not to be neutrally buoyant. On the cast they’re allowed to sink about 4-6 seconds, then retrieved at a moderate. Crappies loved them….so did pike, hence my making more. Paint wise its a simple white pearl base with the chartreuse and orange going on next in that order. I use a small, fine toothed comb to shoot thru to get the vertical bars using a thin transparent black which is allowed to also sort of “fog the sides. Being transparent black the fog is there but hardly noticeable until the purple to blue color shift/clear top coat is applied. As soon as the bars are on I shoot the black across the back. Then the top coat goes on. The eyes are 5mm and fill the sockets in the bait’s body. 4mm eyes don’t quite fill the sockets and I am convinced that the larger eyes play a part in the effectiveness of this pattern/bait size.
Here are some with a pumpkin green back with a green to gold to purple to blue color shift top coat. The color shift pigment is best applied to a black under coat but the green and gold come out with the green/brown undercoat across the back. If I move these into shaded sunlight, like just inside the open garage door the purple likes to show up.
