Little refinements on jerkbaits can make a difference. You won't know which tweak might work unless you try it. One that I like is to rear weight a Suspending Rogue until it slowly sinks backward. If you have observed a dying minnow, a slow struggling sink backward is a very natural action that gets...

Compared to 15 yrs ago, I think the popularity of Japanese reels and their advances in quality has been the real driver for the whole manufacturing community. If a company sells a reel nowadays that is engineered and quality controlled more poorly than Shimano or Daiwa, they get hammered on public m...

Looks to me those R2S baits have been glued together rather than sonically welded as most plastic baits are. Regardless, exposing any bait to sustained heat will soften the plastic and make the bait expand - often enough to split them at the joining seam. A similar problem can affect wood baits, so ...

To me, they are completely different crankbait designs. The C-Rap is an in-house Rapala while the Wart was developed long ago by Storm. The fact that Storm now belongs to Rapala is not a factor.

Yep that's about the best fix you can hope for since the lip on your bait is molded as part of the body. One caution - Devcon Two Ton will work but 5 Minute Devcon will not - it turns quickly to an ugly brown when exposed to UV light, plus it is only water resistant, not waterproof. Also the 5 Minut...

The largest Hot Lips Express (I think 3/4 oz) dives to 22 ft on 10 lb line, which makes it one of the deepest diving crankbaits available. But the one I like best is the 1/4 oz Hot Lips, which dives a true 12 ft deep - astounding depth for a very small crankbait. It's one of my favorites in the fall...

Blah, blah, blah. Yes, you're right. A jerkbait that suspends in warm water will float in colder water. A jerkbait that suspends in cold water will sink in warmer water. You can tap dance around the 'science' all you want. The statement in the tackle review was exactly upside down. Want it to suspen...

This is a little hard to answer. You need to pick and choose among the baits offered by any online source I know. There are a few baits among the Jann's Netcraft selection that I like, including their small 1/4 oz fat shallow crankbait that looks like a mini RC1.5. Bustinbassbaits.com has a good sel...

Imakatsu Waddle Bat. The video shows a really wild hunting retrieve pattern you'll not see on another shallow crankbait. The small rear blade that causes it is a unique feature. Innovative = new and catches fish. New and doesn't catch fish = just another gimmick. I'm pretty jaded about lure designs ...

Can't speak specifically to oval rings, but the most often used size for round rings on bass baits is #2. They work well with #6 and #4 trebles. You might want to upsize/downsize for other hook sizes.

Yep, the Brian's Bee deep diver goes deep (maybe 23 ft?) if you can stand the larger size (it's huge). The deepest diving regular commercial crankbait is still the large 3/4 oz Luhr Jensen Hot Lips Express. It will dive 22 ft deep on 10 lb mono on a 75 ft cast. That's 4 ft deeper than most the deep ...

The 1/4 oz Luhr Jensen Hot Lips Express is the deepest diving small crankbait around -an honest 12 ft deep on 10 lb mono line. JMHO, it doesn't have a lot of thump but works well in the fall for suspended fish.

I build and fish (don't sell) a lot of D-Bait type crankbaits. I tend to like flat sided crankbaits and the D-Bait is probably the premier custom built bait of that type. That said, I've fished other custom crankbaits like the Zoom WEC E1, Tennessee Tuffy's, etc. Depending on the depth and action yo...

The reason for using short shank is so the trebles cannot tangle. They also allow you to up-size the trebles on some baits when that is desirable. I mostly up-size on lipless rattle baits where a heavier hook will not compromise the action of the bait. I've been using the Mustad KVD Short Shank treb...

I've got this book "Precision Casting" by Steven Holt and Mark Romanack, that gives dive profiles for various crankbaits. They took a pool of crankbait anglers and asked them to make "average" and a "long" casts so they could set up the distances for their crankbait tests. They averaged the distance...