Favorite Crankbait Brands And Colors

What crankbait brands and what colors are everyone’s favorites for bass?

For brands I like Bomber, Bandit, Norman, Cotton Cordell and Strike King.

The best colors for me are chartreuse black back, baby bass, root beer, chartreuse brown splatter back,root beer chartreuse and brown craw.

Not a big crankbait guy for bass fishing. I have done OK with the Rapala DT series, but I change out the stock hooks. I also change out stock hooks on Rapala jerkbaits. They are weak and they bend. I need something stouter. I also sometimes use the discontinued Storm Subwart a lot for shallow water applications. I still have a few left but I guard them from the hated pike bite offs. The closest replacement I have found is the BPS XPS Shallow Crank.

I prefer natural colors like shad, bluegill, and perch.

Big fan of the Berkley Dredger series, especially the 14.5 and 17.5. Great colors, good stock hooks, and they’re on average a smaller sized body than other brands of equivalent diving depths.

Also like the Frittside from Berkley, DT-series from Rapala, and XD Strike Kings.

Oh…. and the 200+ Poe’s I’ve got squirelled away.

Strike King KVD squarebill and XD series, and Rapala DT series.

My favorite color is Chartreuse Black Back for the Strike Kings seems to catch fish in any scenario. Sexy shad and Ghost Shad (translucent version of sexy shad) are really good too.

Perch, baby bass, and any of the craw colors for DTs

The size 7 fat rap is my all time top producer for a crankbait. Since they are no longer available except on ebay, I have tried several different brands. I have come to really like Norman lures Deep Little N. I even catch an occasional walleye on them.

In the past 10 years I have used crankbaits less and less in favor of using Chatterbaits and Dark Sleepers more because they can work into and around cover so much better.

That being said, I do use DT’s from time to time because you can set the depth so well with them. War Pigs are great for ripping around sparse weeds. And occasionally I use a squarebill and my new favorite for shallow water is a Hybrid Hunter Jr.

Best color in our northern waters for me is some kind of Perch pattern.

Used to throw the Rat-L_trap a lot. Did pretty wellat times. Might give another try this. Not sure why I took it out of the rotation. I like DT’s and pink X-Raps.