All BassFans know that David Fritts is the king of deep cranking, and now is one of the best times of the year to make that technique work for you. As such, here are a few quick summer deep-cranking tips from the king.
Patterning
> "I approach a lake mainly with seasonal patterns," Fritts says. "Spring and fall I'll be in a creek somewhere, and in summer and early fall I'll be out on the main lake."
> During the summer, "if it's an impoundment that has a power plant (hydropower dam) and a lot of current, I'll be somewhere with current, like a long point or a bar that runs perpendicular to the current."
> "I try to find the zone they're in. I like to start with the boat in 15-25 feet of water and throw into the 7-10 foot zone. I use a bait that runs 16-17 feet so it's in that zone. If they're biting when the bait first gets down, then I'll fish shallower baits. If the fish hit at the bottom of the cast, I'll use baits that run a little deeper."
> "Somewhere between 14 and 18 feet is a good strike zone to search for them in the dead of summer." He says that in his native North Carolina, he likes to find points in 15-16 feet of water with a few stumps at the end. But as a general rule, "wherever the shallowest water meets the deepest water on that piece of structure, that's where they should be feeding."
> "If there isn't much current, the size of the fish shrinks a little bit. The bigger fish don't come up to feed as often -- Lake Eufaula is a good example. You have to finesse those fish. You have to make the bait do certain things to figure out how they want it: fast, slow, stopped, ripped a little, paused. You can work a crankbait hundreds of ways. It might take you a whole day to figure out how they want it, but once you figure it out, it should work all over the lake."
> "In the summertime, water clarity tells me what color to throw. Usually a shad color is hard to beat. But by the end of summer and into fall, the chartreuses get good also."
Practicing
"When I practice, I spend a lot of my time deep cranking," Fritts says. "I probably spend more of my time doing that than the other guys do. I don't give up on it after a day. Maybe after 2 days, but not a day.
"Sometimes I stick with it too much. When they're not on it, that makes it hard. But when they are on it, I already have a head start in knowing about how the fish are relating to cover or structure."
New Bait
Fritts is ga-ga over a new balsa bait he designed for Rapala (one of his sponsors) called the DT-16. He says: "It's probably the ultimate down-deep bait. It runs deeper than every crankbait I've ever used.
"People can't buy it yet, but I've had it for over a year now. Before that I used whatever I could find: a DD-22, a Poe's 400, a Bagley DB-2. This runs deeper and gets down a lot faster so it really helps you when fish deep." Also:
> "It has a thin lip to make it dive faster and react more when it hits cover."
> "It has a small tail. When I used to buy old Bagleys, I'd always get the ones with smallest tails. Those were always the best fishing-producing baits because of the sound they made in the water. You can hear it if you stick your head in a pool and listen."
> "It's not a true suspender, but it is a really slow floater."
> "The bait has a little angle on the lip that lets you throw it without it helicoptering. The bait also has a weighting system in the belly and behind the lip. All the weight is in the center of the bait which makes it cast like you're like shooting an arrow."
> "It cranks easily so it doesn't wear you out."
"At the FLW at Old Hickory I'd just gotten the finished prototypes," Fritts says. "I caught 300 bass on two baits in two days (he caught the biggest limit on day 2). Then a big storm came in and I couldn't catch any. But there wasn't a place on those baits that wasn't eaten up -- I showed them to Kevin VanDam and Mark Pack." That actually was the shallower version, the DT-10.
Fritts says: "Unfortunately (Rapala is) going to sell it. It's a tremendous bait. I'm so high on it you can't believe it."
(No photo of the bait was available.)
