A Ton Of Tackle Or A Few Good Lures?

[bigredbirdfan]

If they're not eating any of those baits I'll just drink more beer and enjoy the scenery.

People forget this is part of the trip too....the scenery that is..I never forget the beer part.

[watermen]

No1 is a green pumpkin gitzit tube with weedless hook

one chugger, 2 buzzbaits, a rebel wee craw, several bown cranks, and a couple of black or brown road runners, and a couple beetle spins. one rod and lure choice depends on water depth and fish target size. All my big fish seem to come on a crank or the gitzit. It all fits in a little river box that fits in a fanny pack. big boat means more rods but the lures stay the same

[Gavin]

I'm always trying to whittle it down...but its not working.I usually start with a buzzbait or walker, fluke, and a jig n chunk rigged before I get to the water and adjust from there.

I like jerkbaits allot...and some bottom bouncing stuff..Always have some Zoom Fat Albert Curly Tails, A couple bags of 4" Chompers Hula Grubs, 3.5" Tubes, and some Hair Jigs. I probably need to fish spinnerbaits and crankbaits a bit more.

[ColdWaterFshr]

Spring and fall I tend to open the tackle box more and consider other baits.

Summertime though, I'm pretty much pitching only buzzbaits.

[Stoneroller]

hello, my name is mike, and i'm a gear whore.

on the lake I have close to 70lbs of tackle, rods, sonar, etc on my kayak. on the river I trim that down to around 50lbs. don't really need any norman dd-20's on the meramec...d

I don't like wishing I had brought something to try and not having it. been there, done that. when I run out of room, I stop loading plano boxes on the yak.

I always throw a crawfish imitation crankbait, a surface minnow bait, some kind of soft plastic on a stand up jig head and a beetle spin. NEVER under estimate the power of the beetle spin.

[Al Agnew]

Mitch, for some reason that I can't really pinpoint, jigs have become my murky water bottom bait, tubes my clear water bottom bait. If the water has four feet or less visibility I'm going to have on a jig and chunk. My favorite chunk, in this case, is the smaller Zoom Super Chunk (or something like that, can't remember for sure whether that's the name). It has a small "head" and big flappy tails. In big water or very murky water, I'll use that trailer as is, but if the water is smaller and a little clearer, I'll cut the flaps down to about half their size with a diagonal cut.

Funny how I've gotten all this down to where I don't have to make much of a decision...big water or water with some color--jig and chunk, with the color chosen to match the color of the bottom of the river as close as I can. Water that is really murky--black jig and chunk. Water that is about four feet of visibility--tube, and if it's a dark day, the color will be black. Water that's clearer than that--tube in a color to match the bottom of the river. Are those always the best choices? Of course not, but they work good enough and I finally got tired of carrying a ton of soft plastics and not having confidence in any of them. This keeps things simple and keeps me from switching colors and lures all the time.

I even have similar "systems" for choosing other lures. For instance, I simply won't use crankbaits in water with more than five feet of visibility in the summer, but with four feet or less visibility I'll ALWAYS have on a crankbait on one rod. And in colors of buzzbaits and spinnerbaits, I only have white, chartreuse, white and chartreuse combination, brown, and black. Clear water and bright day, it'll be chartreuse. Clear water and dark day, white or white-chartreuse. Murkier water I'll try brown. Murky water and dark day, it'll be black.

Of course, sometimes I'll get out of my comfort zone and experiment. I've even been known to try my homemade crankbait in clear water! But mostly that's my system and I stick to it.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Crawfish colors vary considerably

Except for the cave crawdad, they are all pretty much brown ain't they???

But you do bring up a thought I had yesterday. I have caught fish on some pretty wild, totally un-natural colors while tossing a crankbait. But they seem to be a little more finiky when it comes to bottom crawlers. Colors may be worthy of another topic for discussion.

[Guest]

I carry too much tackle.

It seems like I could take 4 spinnerbaits, a variety of skirt colors, a couple buzzbaits, jigs and trailers, super flukes, a sammy, a shallow and deep crankbait, and a suspending jerkbait (fall,winter spring) and I would be covered.

[Craig C]

I would say 98% of the smallies I have caught have been on a rebel crawdad crankbait. I keep various sizes and colors and experiment. I keep a few rooster tails n small tube baits in my pack but they the rebel craws have produced the most.

[ozark trout fisher]

I would say 98% of the smallies I have caught have been on a rebel crawdad crankbait. I keep various sizes and colors and experiment. I keep a few rooster tails n small tube baits in my pack but they the rebel craws have produced the most.

I'm the same way. If I didn't have anything but Rebel Craws I'd be okay. Many summer floats go by for me where I never once tie on anything else, and catch smallmouth 'til my arms fall off. They say there's no such thing as a magic lure but...

I carry a few other lures when I'm smallmouth fishing of course. Other than Rebel Craws I like Rooster Tails, Rapala Countdowns, Bomber crankbaits and black Jitterbugs at night. I've been told that this is the tackle box of someone's grandpa 40 years ago, which I naturally took as a complement. Most of our grandpas caught a lot of fish.