Click on the .pdf file and a full size version of the Head Banger Info Sheet will open up. Adobe Reader is required for the file to open. Amistad Tackle “Head Banger Info Sheet” authored by Will Chiao, Richmond, Virginia.

Making a Suspending Crankbait/Jerkbait

It’s that time of year. The water has turned cold and it’s time to think about suspending crankbaits and jerkbaits. As the water gets down to its coldest temperature of the year bass become lethargic as their metabolism slows. Threadfin shad also become stressed in the cold water and are an easy meal for predators. Getting a crankbait to suspend right in front of lethargic bass often gets you a strike this time of year while a bait that floats up and out of the strike zone on a pause just hauls water. A suspending jerkbait or Rapala Shad Rap has long been a staple of tourney anglers in the winter and early spring when the fish are lethargic and the bite is tough.

While many of today’s baits are designed to suspend (e.g. Luckycraft Pointer series) they are often only designed to suspend within a specific temperature range. These baits are a huge step up from what we used 10-20 years ago, but still can’t achieve a perfect suspend under all conditions. A bait that suspends in cold water will often become a sinker in warm water and a suspending bait in warm water will float up aggressively in colder water. This occurs because the density of water changes with temperature. One of the keys to making a bait perfectly suspend is to weight it for the exact temperature which you are fishing. It will actually suspend quite well within a narrow window of water temperatures. When you are on the water you can often make small changes with the weighting to make the bait suspend or slowly rise just the way you want it.

Some of the essential items for creating or modifying a suspending crankbait are an assortment of hooks, split rings, lead split shot, BB’s, small rubber core sinkers, SuspenStrips (adhesive lead strips (Storm Lures)), soldering wire, super glue and some two part 30 minute epoxy. The other thing you’ll need is a bucket of water with a temperature close to what you think you’ll be fishing in so you can watch the bait react to the changes you make. Add ice to cool the water down if needed and use a thermometer to make sure it’s close. For tools a good set of split ring pliers, a small hand drill and assortment of drill bits are all that is needed.

Suspend Technique 1 – One of the easiest ways to get a bait to suspend is to just change the hooks and/or split rings. Often increasing the hooks one size will make a floating bait suspend without affecting the action too much. If it doesn’t suspend quite perfectly you can add either lead solder, SuspenStrips, a small rubber core sinker or a crimp a split shot to a hook to fine tune it. You can even clip a small drop shot weight to the split ring to add weight. The Rapala shad rap is a bait that is a staple in the early spring because of its tight wiggle. This finesse crankbait can be easily made into a suspending bait, slow floater or sinker by making a hook change and/or adding a little weight to the belly hook.

Suspend Technique 2 – Another common technique with plastic crankbaits is to drill a hole in the bait and add BB’s. This is commonly done with the Norman DD22, but it can be done with any hollow bodied crankbait. Drill a hole in the bait about the size of the BB and add the number of BB’s needed to get the bait to do what you want. Super glue and then epoxy the last BB into the drill hole to make it waterproof. If you want to make the bait silent shoot some super glue into the hole where you added the BB’s which will lock them into place. If you want to be safe, and not have a sinker, leave the bait a little buoyant and add SuspenStrips to the hook or belly to fine tune it.

Suspend Technique 3 – Adding water to the bait. This works well with most plastic baits and was the first technique I used to suspend baits back in the 1980’s. Simply drill a hole in the bait and using a syringe insert the proper amount of water into the bait until it does what you want. Super glue the head of a small nail into the hole and then cover this with epoxy. As with the other techniques you can fine tune the suspend or slow rise with a little lead on the hooks. The only downfall to this technique is that the water will often evaporate or leak after some time and you’ll have to re-work the bait. A Dremel tool can be used to grind the epoxy away and the nail head can be pulled to get back to the original hole. Interestingly, Norman had a crankbait in the 90’s called the Rippin’ Rick (endorsed by Rick Clunn) which had a rubber valve in it for adding or subtracting water from the bait. The syringe you see me using in the picture is actually the syringe that came with the Rippin Rick.

Suspend Technique 4 – Wrapping solder wire around the hooks or adding rubber core sinkers to the hooks. This is my least favorite method, because it decreases the gap on the hooks and makes the bait look butt ugly. However a lot of anglers use this technique successfully. With this technique just wrap the solder wire or crimp the rubber core sinker (remove the rubber first) onto the hook shank until you get the bait to do what you want. Super glue and/or paint some epoxy on to the solder wire to get it to stay in place.

Suspend Technique 5 – Adding lead to a wood bait. I have done this with the Bagley Bang-o-Lures. Drill a hole or holes at about the middle hook hanger (balance point of bait)and insert either split shot or barrel sinkers into the hole until it suspends. Once you have close to what you want epoxy the weights in and seal the hole. Remember the epoxy is going to add some weight, so take that into consideration when you are watching the bait do its thing in the bucket. I originally saw this technique used for night fishing for walleye in In-Fisherman magazine, but it works well for bass also.

Suspend Technique 6 – Chest weighting (aka the Fritts Technique). In the 90’s David Fritts came out with a video which explained his technique for weighting the Poes 400 to suspend. Basically this involved drilling a hole in the chest of the bait, between the bill and the belly hook hanger, and pouring molten lead into the hole. Lead was drilled out of the hole until the bait suspended and the hole was then sealed with epoxy. I’m sure there are copies of this video floating around on the web if you are interested.

Fine Tuning a Suspend – If you re-paint a suspending crankbait you’ll often find that the new paint and clear coat makes the bait a sinker. I have even found this with baits like some of the older Norman DLN’s. Having a selection of smaller and lighter split rings will often reduce the weight enough to make the bait suspend again. If this doesn’t work moving to smaller or lighter hooks will often cure the problem. Gamakatsu hooks seem to be a little lighter weight than others. A thin wire treble will also be a lot lighter than others. You’ll just have to experiment. If that doesn’t work you’ll have to strip the bait and start over or just use it as a sinker.

Other Considerations – With jerkbaits you can make the bait float level, nose down or tail down, depending on which hook you add weight to. The new McStick jerkbait from Spro has a nose down attitude. Mike McClelland who designed the bait for Spro says this gets the bait a little deeper. Some anglers advocate having the bait suspend perfectly level. The great thing about customizing tackle is you can get it the way you and the fish want it, not what the company who makes the bait gives you.

These six techniques cover everything I know about making a bait suspend. I’m sure there are others techniques out there that are closely guarded secrets. The guys in the Ozarks could probably teach me a few things about the suspending jerkbait. You may ruin a few baits in the process of doing some of these modifications, but when you get a good bait it can make all the difference in the world. In general, suspending cranks work best when the water is cold, but I’ve also seen times in the summer when a suspending deep diving crankbait used around wood will trigger inactive bass to bite. David Fritts claimed this was one of the keys to his success when he was tearing it up on the tournament trails in the 90’s with the Poes 400. The key with these baits is that they remain in the strike zone for a long period of time on a paused retrieve, which looks like an easy meal to the bass. In other situations an aggressive retrieve may be a better alternative for getting reaction strikes. Let the fish tell you what they want.

I usually spend some time each late-fall and winter making a few suspending crankbaits to use in early spring tournaments. I really like a suspending #7 and #9 Rapala shad rap over the top of submerged grass and have made some huge catches using this little balsa bait fishing it with a spinning rod and 8 pound line, when nothing else worked. A friend of mine now living in Tennessee tells me the Shad Rap is a staple in early spring tournaments on Kentucky Lake working it on main lake and secondary gravel points. Work on some of your crankbaits this winter and learn what they do and don’t do. A swimming pool is a great place to really see what is really going on with a particular bait or brand of baits. Use a permanent marker to mark the bills, so you remember what was special about that bait. Get rid of baits that don’t do what you want, or re-paint ones with good actions in colors you have confidence in. Making a bait perfectly suspend can be a key ingredient to getting a strike. If nothing else tinkering and observing baits prior to getting on the water will make you confident that your bait is doing exactly what you want. When the fish are lethargic and the bite is tough this often makes the difference between success and failure.

Steve Magnelia
Co-owner, Amistad Tackle

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved, Amistad Tackle Company.

We have received a lot of questions about our 1-ounce “Hawg-N” flutter spoon. While spoons are certainly not new to the bassin’ world, this style of spoon has been a well guarded secret among a few select anglers. In 2007 the secret was unveiled when Kelly Jordon (BASS Elite Series Pro) caught several big bags on a big flutter spoon on the nationally televised “Ultimate Match Fishing” show while fishing on Lake Guntersville. A little research revealed that this style spoon had been used at Lake Fork, TX for quite a few years, but nobody was talking about it. Results with this spoon under the right conditions can been tremendous!

What is different about this spoon compared to a regular slab (vertical jigging) spoon? While this spoon can be fished vertically, it is really made to be cast out and worked horizontally back to the boat with a pumping retrieve. It is great for covering large amounts of water on river ledges and deep grass lines. The spoon is cast out, pumped off the bottom, and allowed to “flutter back” to the bottom on a slack line like a dying shad. The large surface area of the spoon as it is going back to the bottom gives it an extremely erratic fall that is much different than a regular jigging spoon. It can also be worked through suspended fish when they are up off the bottom.

When should this spoon be used? Any time the fish are on structure spots and/or deep grasslines, and are feeding on shad this is an excellent bait to have tied on. Post-spawn, when the fish have moved off the bank and are feeding on newly hatched or spawning shad, is a prime period. The large size of the spoon often attracts the biggest fish in a school which makes this an excellent bait for a tourney angler who is looking for a kicker fish.

For gear we recommend a fast retrieve reel, medium heavy rod and low stretch 17-20 pound test line for working the spoon. The spoon can be cast a mile because of its weight, so a reel with a large line capacity is recommended. Won’t I get snagged a lot with this? While you will get snagged you can often easily retrieve the spoon by getting directly over it and shaking it free. The heavy weight of the spoon will work the hooks free. If that doesn’t work send a heavy piece of lead (2-3 ounces) or lure retriever down the line on a snap. Often the spoon will come free when the weight hits the spoon. Further shaking will often free it up, if it doesn’t come free immediately.

The big spoon is not a “catch-them-every-time” bait, but then such a bait really doesn’t exist. It is however a bait every serious structure angler should have in their arsenal and it is a presentation not many fish have seen. Give it a try and let us know about your results!

Steve Magnelia
Amistad Tackle

Watching coverage of the recent BASS Elite Series event at Lake Amistad I took note of a comment by Kevin VanDam on modifying his spinnerbait to mimic the dominant forage. VanDam said he started out with a shad imitating spinnerbait and couldn’t get a bite on it. After switching to a brim/tilapia imitation and fishing the same water he caught over 100 bass in practice and ended up with a top ten finish in the tournament. This was a simple modification, changing the skirt to a greenish/brown color and coloring the head of the bait red with a marker. I’d never really thought of a spinnerbait as a brim imitation, and had always used a crankbait or plastic bait when wanting a brim imitator. While a fluke or wacky worm would have probably caught some fish in this situation, a spinnerbait allowed VanDam to cover water extremely efficiently and still generate plenty of strikes in the clear water. Because of the extreme water clarity at Amistad, a crankbait may not have fooled the fish as well. Many scientific studies have been done on the forage of black bass. The common denominator in most studies is that forage often changes seasonally, with bass eating what is most abundant at the time.

Brim are often the dominant prey fish species for largemouth bass in many reservoirs and are the dominant forage fish in reservoirs which have abundant aquatic vegetation. Anytime bass inhabit shallow water these small sunfish species will be a main prey item. The three dominant sunfish species in many Texas’ large reservoirs are redbreast sunfish, bluegill and redear sunfish. Redbreast sunfish dominate in reservoirs without vegetation, while bluegill dominate in reservoirs with aquatic vegetation. Redear sunfish are present in lower densities in both situations, often inhabiting deeper water than the bluegill and the redbreast sunfish. I have often seen redear sunfish spawning as deep as 20 feet while scuba diving in clear reservoirs. All sunfish are prolific spawners, with peak spawning in late-March and April. They often spawn multiple times from late-spring and into summer. Multiple spawns creates many cohorts of different sized prey for bass to feed on. During the spawn and post-spawn bass will be up in the shallows and their main food item, sunfish, will be right there with them. In reservoirs where bass stay shallow all year sunfish will remain the dominant forage.

Gizzard and threadfin shad are also important food items for bass. However, these are an open water species, and other to spawn, spend much of their lives in open water. In reservoirs with good open water structure and little vegetation shad will often be a major food item, and/or will be seasonally abundant. Shad are also prolific spawners and usually spawn in Central Texas starting in mid-to-late March. Adult shad in March are too large for most bass to eat, so if bass are feeding on shad at that time they are going to be small. Downsizing your bait or spinnerbait blades might help trigger strikes in that situation. In early (May – June) when bass are moving to offshore structure or deep weedlines shad may become a primary food item. Shad grow very quickly and will be 1-1.5 inches by that time.

Crayfish are also important food item, especially early in the year, when sunfish and shad numbers are low. If you’ve ever looked at a crayfish from Lake Austin (Texas) you can see why red and orange baits have been so successful in Texas early in the year. Crayfish in Central Texas really are red and green, often with orange dots on the pinchers this time of year. I’ve also seen them this color in November and have often wondered if they remain this color all the time in Texas waters or change color throughout the year. Interestingly, a friend of mine from Florida, gave me back a red rattletrap I’d given him years ago saying he couldn’t catch anything on it in Florida waters. He claimed chrome with a blue back was the only color rattletrap they had success on in Florida.

Adjusting bait color and size is a key component to success in bass fishing. Very successful anglers, like Kevin VanDam, always seem to be making adjustments to match the conditions. At Amistad Tackle we offer a variety of custom crankbaits colors to match the dominant prey items wherever we are fishing. We do the same thing with our Thumping Bug vibration jig, with both shad and sunfish imitators. Next time you’re on the water and aren’t catching them, think about the conditions and be sure to include the main forage the bass are feeding on in your color selections.

Steve Magnelia
Amistad Tackle

Here is what every angler has been looking for to pair with their paddle tail swimbaits!

Below is a video with Amistad Tackle co-owner Steve Magnelia demonstrating our new Big Daddy Swim Bait Hooks.

Half the battle of visiting a reservoir you’ve never been to before is finding your way around. Couple a paper map with standing timber or bad weather and precious time will be lost just figuring out how to get to that spot that looks so good. Often if you do find “the place” you’re looking for you’re never really sure you’ve actually found what you marked on the map.

Speaking from experience, things often don’t look the same on the water as they do on a map. I’ve often thought I was headed into one creek and ended up in another creek further up or down the lake. In the last couple of years a lot of the anxiety and frustration of navigating our reservoirs and attempting to locate fish has been alleviated with advances in global positioning system (GPS) units, mapping software and web based aerial photography viewers. Combine the knowledge of these three products together and you’ll be better prepared for safely navigating unfamiliar waters, finding fish on a strange body of water, or for that matter finding new fishing spots on waters you’re already familiar with.

Web based aerial photopgraphy is certainly not a new concept, but new features and the ability to view multiple features without special software are. Below are links to many of the best sites and products:

Terraserver – This mapping resource has been available for many years and has an extensive database of maps.

Recently several new viewers have been introduced that will be of interest to anglers.

National Map – This site is produced by the United States Geological Survey. The viewer allows anyone to look at a multitude of features (called layers) at the same time. Of most interest to anglers will be aerial photographs, satellite photos and contour lines. Since many of our reservoirs in Texas were low when the aerial photographs were taken many features of interest are revealed. Features like roadbeds, weedlines, humps, tank dams and tree lines can be easily seen when the viewer is zoomed in. Contour lines can often be overlaid on aerial photos. The tip of the pointer on this viewer gives the GPS coordinates at the bottom left of the page. Find the spot of interest, write down the GPS coordinate, and then load it into you GPS unit.

National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) – This is a comprehensive set of digital spatial data that contains information about surface water features such as lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, springs and wells. The layers available on this viewer aren’t nearly as extensive as the National Map, but this viewer often updates images quicker.

Google Earth – A free program download from Google (upgrades will cost you), which allows you to view any area of the earth from your computer. Images are updated frequently and you can save your own coordinates and notes right on the maps. Unfortunately image clarity outside of heavily populated areas isn’t real clear, but you can often see weedlines, humps and road beds on reservoirs when zoomed in.

Microsoft (MS) Virtual Earth – A competitive product to Google Earth that often has different aerial photographs. Look at both Google Earth and MS Virtual Earth and you can often see the lake at different lake levels. This will give you a great idea of how structure is laid out in an area of interest.

With any of these viewers a high speed internet connection is a must.

New mapping software and maps have also taken great strides in the last view years. If you ever tried to manually enter GPS coordinates into your GPS you know how time consuming it is. Map software like Garmin’s Mapsource and Lowrance’s MapCreate make this process much quicker. Saving waypoints by lake in separate files on your computer allows you to upload what you need for a trip and be ensured you won’t lose your GPS waypoints if your unit fails. You can also plan routes, look at your track from a days fishing in relation to contour lines and add waypoints by pointing and clicking. Garmin (Fishing Hot Spots) and Navionics also offer electronic contour maps. Navionics premium cartography chips have many lakes with one foot contours. These maps are simply amazing for finding new spots and/or patterning fish. A newcomer can often find spots that would usually take years of scouting to locate. Many brands are compatible with the Navionics chips. Lowrance also offers “enhanced” maps on their website for free downloading, which are often quite detailed.

Global positioning systems have certainly changed fishing. Couple the products mentioned in this article together with your GPS and you’ll be a step closer to putting a limit of fish in the boat.

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