(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Anytime the water temperature is in the upper 40s to low 50s, you can bet that Bassmaster Elite Series pro Shane LeHew will have a flat-sided crankbait tied on. Historically, the best ones were made of balsa, but those lures had limitations that Berkley’s Frittside has mostly cured without giving up any action.
“With your old-school balsa flat-sided crankbaits, they were very hard to cast and now with a Frittside, it’s plastic, but it still fishes like that true balsa crankbait,” he said. “You can make a lot longer casts with it, you can change the variations of depth, they have a ton of different depths.” It can also mimic a wide variety of prey, from crawfish to shad to bluegills, with sizes to match the hatch.
Of course, one key color palette during the pre-spawn involves various reds and browns, and Berkley has developed several of them for when the fish are eating crawfish. When that’s the case, LeHew will usually start with the smaller Frittsides, fishing them on an Abu-Garcia 7’ medium-action PLX Winch casting rod. He pairs it with a Revo MGX or AL-F casting reel, which in either case should be a 6.4:1 gear ratio, usually spooled up with 8-pound Berkley 100% Fluorocarbon. He recognizes that some pros prefer monofilament, but he said that fluoro works better for him: “With our new age softer rods, the fluoro – yes, it doesn’t have as much stretch as mono but we don’t need that anymore because if the rod’s doing the work for you, that’s really all you need.”
When it’s time to switch to the bigger Frittsides, he goes up to a 7’2” medium-action rod, once again paired with the 6.4:1 Revo AL-F. “It’s probably the best reel I’ve ever put in my hands for casting these lighter baits,” he said. He upgrades his line choice to 10-pound Berkley 100% Fluorocarbon. That helps him make long, accurate casts and stay way off of his targets. The goal is to make your lure deflect off of a dock pole or laydown, then give it a slight pause, which triggers strikes. Because the fish “can see further than you can,” when there’s little or no wind he’ll employ a “clear-style crankbait” like morning dawn or any of the shad colors.
As the temperature goes down, he keys on long clay points and rock piles, but also sometimes targets do-nothing banks, too. “Those flatter banks are often overlooked,” he said, and if you can find a solitary stump or rock, they’re often money.
In dirtier water he’ll often upsize to the Frittside Biggun’, which throws off more water but still has a tight wiggle. Sometimes when others are throwing it in red, he’ll switch to chartreuse with a black back, a “color of the past” that can be newly deadly. Chartreuse with a brown back is also a staple.
If you want to learn some of the other secrets of how LeHew fishes one of the hottest crankbaits on the market today, including how and why he relies on it around wintertime boat ramps, check out his full video on the water, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
