Nebraskaland Magazine
Wherever anglers gather, whenever one catches more fish than others, everyone wants to know what bait? The next question is what color?
The color question should be the last thing considered. There are many other presentation factors that are much more important. The first of those, especially when using crankbaits, is depth. How deep does a particular lure run?
I have blogged about this topic before. If you want to dive into (sorry, I couldn’t resist) some details, take a look, Running Depth.
Keep in mind that there are a lot of variables that influence running depth of lures. I stumbled onto this article recently, and it does a great job of explaining some of those. This relates most specifically to trolling crankbaits, especially for walleyes. However, if you fish crankbaits of any kind for any species of fish, you should keep these things in mind:
I would dare say more walleyes have been caught from Nebraska waters by trolling than any other presentation. That is especially true at this time of year. In many cases, the traditional bottom-bouncer with a spinner rig tipped with a nightcrawler is trolled or drifted. But, I can show you at least one research paper that says crankbaits will often produce bigger walleyes. Even better when that is the case, is a person does not have to mess with live bait. When you can, you should be fishing crankbaits, for walleyes especially, but also a lot of other species, at least part of the time!
