Tuned to the Right Frequency
by Adam Johnson

There are many times when I’ve set up a profile that requires the use of crankbaits.  This is because crankbaits are such a versatile lure.  You can fish very shallow water by using a small-lipped bait and with today’s deep designs you can send that lure down 25, even 30 feet.  There’s very little of the water column that can’t be strained with a crankbait.

Where anglers go wrong with crankbaits is they don’t realize how important it is to have them tuned.

Have you been in a situation where you’re casting or trolling a crankbait and it’s catching fish and after a tough battle the lure just won’t produce?  It’s happened to me and plenty of other anglers I’ve talked to.  The lure has been knocked out of tune.

I had a crankbait that looked like a small pike that used to drive the muskies crazy, only the hooks seemed a little too small and big fish had a tendency to shake the lure loose.  I put bigger treble hooks on the lure and the fish wouldn’t take a second look at it.  I put the old hooks back on and it became the muskie killer I knew so well.  Better to miss a few then never get a hook up.

I had a shad-shaped crankbait that was on fire for bass until I had to rip it out of a stump it got hung up on.  That snag knocked that lure out of tune and I couldn’t buy a bite on it until I worked with it some and got it back on the right frequency.

Just a few years ago Pure Fishing did a study with a bunch of their top pro staff where they took their most productive crankbaits and studied them under laboratory conditions to decipher the reasons they were so productive.  What they found was that certain crankbaits deliver the right frequency to generate feeding responses as well as trigger reaction bites.  They used this information to design their own line of crankbaits.

Pros will tell you that they can have a half dozen of the exact same crankbaits and two out of those six lures will be responsible for the bulk of their catch while the other four lures might work marginally or maybe not at all.  These pro-anglers have a special box where they put their most productive crankbaits to use during competition. 

Is there any way to tune a crankbait once it gets knocked out of synch?  Can you tune a lure to the right frequency when it’s not producing as well as it should?  Can you tell which crankbait will be a killer before you even take it off the peg at the store?  Let me answer these questions.

You have to field test a crankbait to know for sure it’s tuned to the right frequency.  That means buying it, tying it on, and fishing with it.  It won’t take long to know if the lure has the right qualities; it catches fish.

Whenever I use a crankbait and it isn’t catching fish I’ll take it to my home workbench and make some modifications to try and make it more productive.  I might change the treble hooks.  Lately I’ve been adding red hooks to the lures and that has improved my success. 

Sometimes I might take a permanent marker in black, red, or blue and add some variation to the color pattern. 

I have been known to get out the Dremel Tool and rework the lip.  Understand, once you do some physical modifications to the lure with the Dremel, it’s permanent and that lure might never work well again.  On the other hand, you may have created the ultimate fish-catching machine out of what was a marginal bait.

Usually when a lure gets knocked out of tune it is a direct correlation to the wobble and tracking.  This can be remedied by working the eye of the bait with a needle-nosed pliers.  I am amazed at how many anglers I fish with who use crankbaits that are noticeably out of tune and they don’t take the minimal amount of time required to tweak that lure eye and get it to run straight and true.  You seldom catch fish on a crankbait that isn’t running straight because a poorly tuned bait won’t wobble like it was designed to do.

The reality here is that you have to pay attention to how your crankbaits perform and when you do find one that is exceptional, segregate it from the others for those times when you are on a tough bite.  The crankbaits that provide marginal success are yours to experiment with and enjoy it when you modify one that gets transferred to the hot box.

While I’m still referring to being tuned to the right frequency I am changing the subject.  If you’re ever in the Twin Cities on a Sunday, tune into 100.3 FM at six in the evening.  I have a new radio show called Outdoor Talk that’s a two-hour live program on hunting and fishing and I’d appreciate it if you joined me.  The program can also be downloaded at www.ktlkfm.com.