If you know your lures, you can walk past the boats at the end of a tournament day and chances are you'll see a few Rebel Deep Wee-R crankbaits tied on -- no matter what the patches on the anglers' shirts say. The reason, says Deep Wee-R aficionado Mark Menendez, is that "it just catches fish. It has the right combination of size, wiggle and color."
"It's a confidence bait for me because of its size," he says. "It mimics a fully-grown threadfin shad perfectly, and threadfins are the same basic size no matter where grow. It also has a nice, tight wobble to it -- not really a wiggle, just good vibration so you can feel what it's doing at all times."
Menendez says the Deep Wee-R is a great search bait especially before the spawn. "In early spring it's one of the baits I reach for first," he says. Because its "very weedless" and bounces off cover well, he says, it's also "a super point bait." Finally, he says the Deep Wee-R is very productive in rivers, like the Arkansas, Hudson and Tennessee -- because of its size "and the fact that river fish tend to live shallower than their lake counterparts."
He says it catches every species of bass that swims (even white) and all sizes, too. "I've caught a lot of numbers in the fall, and some awfully big fish on it in the spring -- a lot of 6- to 8-pounders."
Menendez fishes the Deep Wee-R on a light-tipped Shakespeare 6-foot 6-inch medium-action Ugly Stik graphite and a Shakespeare 5:1 Medalist reel. He says that "you need that slower retrieve ratio to get the bait down to its depth," which is about 10 feet on 8-pound Triple Fish line. "The lighter line gives the bait a much more natural action," he explains.
His favorite Deep Wee-R colors are photoprint perch and crayfish. These are colors that originally came out during the late 1970s and early '80s, and will be reintroduced in 2002 as Classic Wee-R colors. Menendez says that "people have absolutely beat me up looking for these colors. They have a huge fanbase."
