Lipless crankbaits are almost made for grass beds. They work like magic.
Skim them over the top of the grass, if they get snagged a quick tweak of your rod a couple of times loosens it and often cause bass to bite.
In deeper water where it’s a little cooler use a yo-yoing technique where you use a combination of your rod tip to move the lure and pauses with a semi-slack line. The idea is to imitate a dying baitfish. The wobble and fall will wake up the slow bass.
Weather: These work best in windy and cloudy conditions and allow light, early morning and late afternoon.
Water Temperature: It should be warming, early spring or cooling, early fall or autumn. The bass has to chase down the crankbait lure so needs a faster metabolism, that’s not available in the cold.
Fish Depth: A crankbait’s range has a bottom limit of around 20 feet / 6.0 m so their best depth is between 6 feet / 1.8 m and 15 feet / 4.5 m
How to fish it?
The square bill is made to bang off rocks, submerged trees and stumps. The change in the swimming action causes the bass to attack.
They make great search bait for in and around the submerged obstacles.
As we said earlier they work best in early spring and fall (autumn)
Chatterbait by Jonstar is one of the most versatile lures there is.
It is a jig with a skirt at the back and a blade in the front.
Anyone no matter their abilities, professional or absolute beginner, will have success because it is so versatile.
It can be fished fast or slow, deep on the bottom or on the topwater. Chatterbaits are perfect in the weeds and around obstacles as well as in the open water.
Its blade makes a lot of noise and vibration which is picked up by the bass lateral line drawing them to the lure.
Weather: With weather, cloudy or windy conditions is when these baits tend to shine the best. On flat calm sunny days keep your crankbaits in the box unless it’s early morning or late evening. Low light conditions are often another good trigger for a good bite on crankbaits.
Water Temperature: Crankbaits are at their best as water temperatures are warming in the spring or cooling in the fall. Crankbaits require more energy for a bass to chase down and eat. This means in warmer water they are more likely to reach out for them, whereas in the wintertime when it is cold, they tend to not eat them as well. A bass’s cold-blooded nature with the water temperature either speeds up or slows down their metabolism. Thus, water temperature can be a major player in fishing crankbaits.
Fish Depth: When bass are holding deeper than 20 feet, it is extremely difficult to get your crankbaits down to them banging off the bottom. You can do it, but it requires extremely long casts and big deep baits. The best depths for fishing crankbaits is actually 15 feet or less. This makes bumping and bouncing off the cover less difficult with the right bait. Thus, how deep you are fishing is a big indicator as to whether a crankbait would be a good choice.
How to fish it?
Taking the name from its dive lip, the sharp corners of the “square-bill” are ideal for banging off cover like rocks, wood or docks without getting hung up. A disruption in the swimming action caused by crashing the bait into the cover is usually what triggers the bite. This crashing action and performance in cover is what separates the square bill from typical round bill crankbaits.
Designed for shallow water (6 ft. or less) and meant to be fishing in and around cover, the square bill makes an excellent search bait. Look to fish in areas with lots of cover, stumps, rocks or docks, working to bounce the bait off of the cover.
While the square bill is a versatile bait that can catch fish year-round, Spring and Fall are the primary seasons of usage as fish tend to be more concentrated in the shallow
