Crank your way to a great June bag

A crankbait is a tremendous tool for catching bass that have recovered from the spawn and moved out to deeper water. In June, bass are often found in schools, so catching one can mean catching several from the same spot.

I love to fish crankbaits — I’ve fished them a lot in tournaments as a search bait, to help me find fish, but in June, I fish them not only as a search bait, they’re the baits that do most of my catching.

What’s happening in most of our South Carolina reservoir is that bass have recovered from the spawn, they’ve moved off the bank toward deeper water and they’re doing a lot to replenish, to get back what they lost during the spawn — and that means they’re really biting.

When they recover and start to feed again, they tend to get in schools and packs and ambush baitfish, so when you find one, there will almost always be a group of fish close by.

So many people get disappointed and disheartened because it’s not April and May anymore, and they can’t just go down the bank and catch a fish here and a fish there. It’s harder to find fish when they move off the bank, but the rewards are much greater when you do find ’em, because they’re often in big schools, and you can catch all you need without moving.

What I like to do in June is fish main-lake points that are close to spawning pockets. From the middle of May to the end of the month, you can fish the points right off the spawning areas, but by June, especially later in the month, I’m looking for main-lake points where there is usually some current, and some shad that are in deeper water.

I usually start on the lower end of the lake and work my way upstream as the water warms up. By the end of the month, I’ll be up in the headwaters of the lake.

You have to keep moving around to find fish; that’s the key. When you find ’em and get on ’em, you’re going to really catch ’em, because they’re usually aggressive, and a crankbait is a great tool to catch aggressive fish.

To a fisherman who is used to fishing a jig, a spinnerbait or a plastic worm all spring, switching over to a crankbait can be a little intimidating. There are so many different kinds — plastic and balsa and cedar — so many different diving lips, shapes and sizes of bills and hundreds of different paint schemes that you can just stand in the tackle shop and not know what to do.

Here’s a tip: if you’re not an experience crankbait fisherman, what I would do is make it as simple as possible to start with. I’d pick out one crankbait manufacturer, one company, and buy an assortment of their baits. You want some medium-runners and deep-runners so you can fish anywhere from eight feet deep all the way out to 14 or 15 feet deep. I don’t have a crankbait sponsor, but right now, practicing for a tournament in Arkansas, I’m fishing a Bill Norman DD-22, but I’ve also got Strike King Series 5 and Series 6 crankbaits tied on, and I’m sticking with primarily shad colors, because fish are so keyed-in on baitfish at this time of the year. Strike King has its Sexy Shad and a chartreuse Sexy Shad, and those are perfect examples of the colors you’ll need for the first month after the spawn.

What I try to do is fish the bait that matches the depth I’m fishing. I always want to be fishing a bait that will dive all the way to the bottom when I want it to, but I don’t like to fish a bait that will run anymore than two or three feet deeper than the water I’m fishing. If I’ve got my boat sitting in 12 feet of water and I’m fishing something that’s 10 feet deep, I want that Series 5 bait that runs eight to 10 feet deep. If I move out to 17 or 18 feet and I’m fishing structure in 12 to 14 feet deep, I’m going to want that Series 6 bait. If I’m fishing deeper, I’ll fish the DD-22. When I finished second in the 1996 Bassmaster Classic, most of the fish I caught in that tournament were on a DD-22.

Three more crankbait tips:

• The retrieve is so important this time of the year. You can use a stop-and-go retrieve; you can use a steady retrieve, then speed up for three or four turns of the handle, anything like that. When you’ve got bass in groups, and you’ve got lots of shad they’ve been feeding on, if you can trigger the first fish to strike, they all may start hitting and you can have a great day.

• Some days, bass may really swallow a crankbait good, and other days, they may just swat at it. Whenever I buy a crankbait, I always switch out the hooks so I can catch the fish that just swat at the bait. Because of cost, not all crankbait manufacturers put the best hooks on the baits you buy. I’ll always switch them out for No. 2 or 4 Owner Stinger hooks. I use the same-sized hooks on the front and back of a crankbait, and most of the companies that make good crankbaits — like Bill Norman and Rapala and Strike King — have their baits set up perfectly for 2s and 4s.

• Always use a softer rod to fish crankbaits than you would fish spinnerbaits or worms with. I’ll fish a 7-foot All-Star crankbait rod most of the time. The action at the tip is a little slow, which helps you get a better hookset with a crankbait. You don’t want to jerk it out of his mouth the first time you feel him bump it; you want him to really get it in his mouth good while the tip of the rod is loading — before he knows he’s in trouble.

Picking up a rod that’s got a crankbait tied on will give you a much better opportunity to catch a really nice bag of bass this month.