How To Fish The Old Bait Turned New

(Editor's note: This is part 2 of a 2-part story about the resurgence of the square-bill crank. Part 1 dealt primarily with the bait's history, while part 2 focuses more on present-day use, with tips on how to fish it.)

Many BassFans would likely trace the most recent square-bill resurgence to Takahiro Omori's win at the 2004 Bassmaster Classic at Lake Wylie, where he threw a Bagley Balsa B2. But recall the near back-to-back wins Rick Clunn posted in 2000 at the Beaver and Mississippi FLW Tour events. That's a more correct estimation of when the bait re-entered the spotlight – at least within the upper echelons of the sport.

"Those tournaments are what got Lucky Craft to ask me to help them make the RC series baits," Clunn said.

Notable there is Clunn was to design a plastic square-bill, which was a big departure from the traditional wood models.

"Ten years ago I would have never said that plastic will replace wood," he noted. "I'll always have a romance with wood, but like I said, (wood baits) are inconsistent and they always break. It was always a psychological factor to me when my last grade-A bait broke on the second day of a tournament and I had to fish another day with a substandard one.

"In fact, I never went into the last day of a tournament with a grade-A bait. But back then, grade-A plastic baits weren't around."

Skeet Reese added that plastic is one of the big reasons why square-bills are currently so popular: "Anyone can go out and buy a premium bait anytime they want. There's no more searching and wasting money on baits that don't work and Lucky Craft's the company to thank for that. The RC series cranks are what started it all.

"The new plastic baits work as well as any wood bait ever has and they all run the same right out of the box. You'd never find that with wood due to variations in each piece of wood."

Technology Shines

The fancy look of the new square-bills, like the RCs, are a departure from the classic finishes, but the baits themselves do stay true to traditional form.

"If not for those baits of yesterday, we wouldn't have the baits we have today," Skeet Reese said, who's a member of the Lucky Craft pro staff with a signature-series square-bill to his credit. "What technology gives us, though, is the ability to not only match the action identically to a balsa bait, but also tweak it to run a specific way – that's something no one will ever be able to duplicate with wood.

"The bottom line is water displacement – that's all it is. The water movement is the same no matter what the bait is made of as long as it's the same density.

"My SKT series baits are a prime example of this," he added, in reference to his Lucky Craft signature series finesse crank. "I wanted a smaller-body bait that I could run deeper, but had a tight wobble for tough conditions. Most square-bills have a wide wobble. But I also didn't want to sacrifice the square-bill's ability to come through the cover. A square-bill bounces off of cover which creates less hangups. That's the whole purpose of the SKT series."

Clunn had a similar experience with his RC series cranks. "In the design of the RC series, I wanted a bait with the characteristics of the original Big-O," he said. "It had to have a fat body and a sharp-corner bill to deflect around cover. Bills with a rounded corner will roll off the cover as opposed to deflect.

"The bait also had to have an intensely tight wobble and run true at high speeds – not hunt.

"Another big thing about older plastic square-bills was they all had rattles," Clunn noted. "Most of the time when I'm fishing this bait, I don't want it to make noise. Now, with the new Lucky Craft baits, we have a quiet plastic bait that works right out of the box as well as balsa wood does."

Clunn recalled only one time when a square-bill noisemaker paid off. "That was at the 1994 Lake Livingston (Bassmaster) Invitational that I won," he said. "The deal with this tournament was the water was really off-color and I felt I needed a bait with the rattle. It's the only tournament I know of where someone won with a rattling square-bill and the only time back then I didn't fish a wood bait."

Water and Color

Clunn and Reese are pretty consistent in terms of where, when, and how they throw square-bills, but there are some differences.

"As far as when to fish it, they work all year long," Reese said. "I catch fish on them in water temperatures as cold as 50 degrees, but they really shine in water 70 degrees and higher.

"In fact, because we're fishing more tournaments in the hotter periods of the year now, that also contributed to the resurgence of this bait. More tournaments were being won on them and that created a lot of publicity in its own right."

Clunn agreed with Reese on the water temperature, but added: "In the early spring, you have to fish the bait a little slower than I normally fish it, but as soon as the water gets to the mid-50s, you need to fish it fast."

Reese's experience with these baits began in the West, but he got even more after venturing to the Southeast.

"I used to fish them on Clear Lake and the Delta roughly 10 to 12 years ago," he said. "The baits became popular in the South, though, and I really learned a lot about fishing them when I went back there.

"Probably the number-one thing I learned was how thick of wood you could bring them through – stuff I'd have never brought a crankbait through without seeing it myself. I always thought you weren't supposed to throw cranks into a place like that."

Water color is also an important consideration in bait color and size.

"Water color generally dictates the color and size of the bait I use," Clunn noted. "As a rule of thumb, I use bright colors in stained water and more natural colors in cleaner water. To be more specific, I'll use Copper perch, black chartreuse, and white-sided baits in water with visibility from 1 to 1 1/2 feet, and then Tennessee shad and copper perch in water with 2 feet of visibility.

"If the water's clearer than that, I'll go to a smaller, more natural bait like the RC 1.5 and 2.5, as opposed to the RC 3.5, which I feel is the best bait of the series."

Reese added a few colors to Clunn's list. "In my opinion, chartreuse shad is the best color ever made," Reese said. "You can go anywhere in the U.S. and catch fish on that color. Other colors I use, though, are ghost minnow, American shad, aurora black, black chartreuse, and Table Rock shad. I tend to stick with the more natural colors in clear water and brighter colors in dirty water."

Retrieve Styles and Tackle

"There are 101 different ways to retrieve this bait," Reese said. "From a slow wake over cover to a high-speed burn. It's all based on the water temperature and clarity.

"You don't need to feel like you have to hit something all the time, either," he added. "There are times when it works really well on shallow suspended fish, and in that case, you don't have to hit any (cover object) at all."

Clunn's sold on the high-speed retrieve. "Most people still can't fish the big one (RC 3.5) right," he said. "They need to fish it fast – faster than they think. Only a few people can fish it this fast, but now, with the swimbait craze and people getting used to fishing the bigger baits, more people will finally get it.

"There's a huge difference in the amount of strikes you'll get by fishing it fast – and it's not one or two. It's big numbers."

Reese and Clunn do differ when it comes to rod choice, but both agree on line.

"I'm a firm believer in glass rods for these baits if you want to optimize your bite-to-catch ratio," Reese said. "The forgiveness of the glass will result in more fish caught."

Clunn instead opts for graphite. "For my RC 3.5, I use a 7-foot heavy-power graphite rod," he noted. "I need the heavy rod in order to get the hook points started, plus I'm throwing this bait into places guys normally would throw a spinnerbait or flip a jig."

"Line diameter's a big part of the equation too," Reese added. "If you're trying to get the bait deeper you need lighter line and to go shallow, use heavy line. Use a line that'll keep the bait in the zone you want it to be.

"Also, braided line like Spiderwire Stealth will get you more vibration out of the bait and generate more strikes due to the fact it doesn't stretch. If I'm not using braid, though, I'm using Trilene 100% fluorocarbon in 10- to 20-pound test. For the braid, 30-pound is my favorite."

Clunn opts for a heavier setup, since he targets mostly shallow water. "For most of my fishing, I use between 17- and 25-pound test," he said. "I used 17-pound at the Beaver tournament and 25-pound at Truman. Those are the two extremes.

"I also put oversized hooks on all my baits," Clunn added. "On the RC 3.5, I use 1 to 1/0 hooks. On the RC 2.5, I also use a 1 to 1/0, and for the smaller RC 1.5 I'll use a size 2 on the back and a size 4 on the front. Sometimes I'll use a 2 on both if I'm catching bigger fish. That's the only modification I make to the baits."

Notable

> Asked if either Clunn or Reese still use woods baits, their answers were the same: "Nope, I haven't thrown wood in 4 to 5 years," said Reese. "I don't have to anymore, (because) Lucky Craft's making Grade-A square-bills that run true and I can throw them anywhere," Clunn said.

> "One of the best places to fish these baits is on creek ledges in the fall," Clunn said. "People don't realize the bigger bait will dive to 7 or 8 feet. It's a killer technique on lakes like Kentucky that have a good ledge bite later in the season. The bait's also killer in drought conditions, (when) there's a lot of exposed cover, which is prime for the square-bill."

> Reese said, in conclusion: "Square-bills are something I always have tied on. You can fish them anywhere you can a spinnerbait or a rattlebait. It's a different look and vibration and they get bit. As long as I'm targeting fish in 6 feet of water or less, the square-bill's applicable to that type of water. Plus, you can fish them all year long. From what I've seen, I have yet to go to a fishery where they don't work."