Tackle Talk: Go-To Lures for Multi-Species Angling

Tackle Talk: Go-To Lures for Multi-Species Angling

By Nick Johnson

How many lures does one angler need? I would venture to guess than many of you reading this have a stockpile of options to choose from and yet each season make repeated pilgrimages to the tackle store to increase personal inventory with new and improved offerings. Maybe just buying more of an old standby in case you lose a few. I am a sucker for purchasing fishing gear and I would venture to guess that in a given open water season I use at most 5-10% of what resides in my tackle boxes, maybe less. It’s a disease and so is fishing but we all love fooling our aquatic targets. You pre-meditate using these baits, how you are going to present it, the location, envisioning the strike. Fishing is awesome isn’t it?

Most anglers have a pretty good idea of what lures work for given species. Some species like bluegill, crappie and bass are fairly straightforward and will take a wide range of lures suited for their feeding profile. In many cases though it really pays to understand the attitudes of the fish and even what they are feeding on specifically at that time to dial in the perfect bait. Your chances of catching more and bigger fish grow exponentially when the right combinations come together. Rather than dive into a laundry list of baits which would end up being the length of a thesis, I would like to touch on a couple of the popular styles that all anglers can accommodate to, have been very impactful to me and how you can make the right selection to put more fish in hand.

Spinner Baits
Spinner baits are an immensely popular bait among anglers targeting a wide range of species. Bass, Pike, Muskie, White Bass, Stripers, even Crappie and more can all be caught on this style of lure. The color and blade combinations are seemingly limitless to perfectly dial in the water conditions and retrieval speed. How do you go about choosing the right combination of blade, weight and color though?

With any of the baits I am going to discuss, consider the conditions of the water and weather before making a selection. Is the water clear or stained? Is it bright and sunny or overcast? Are the fish deep or shallow and are they foraging aggressively? What structure are you planning to fish? With spinnerbaits if fish are deep or you are needing a faster retrieve, go with a heavier bait. In clearer water I generally like to go with more natural colors such as shad, bluegill or even white. In stained water, chartreuse, black, blue and brighter colors are going to stand out and trigger more strikes.

There are three primary styles of spinner bait blades, the Willow, Indiana and Colorado. Willow blades are long and slender and give off a ton of flash. They cut through aquatic vegetation well and are perfectly suited for faster retrieves. I switch out for these blades when making long casts and burning over the top of submerged weeds, when fishing reeds and when casting for more pelagic oriented species like white bass schooled up in open water. The Colorado blade is the polar opposite and is circular in shape. This blade gives off a lot of vibration and is best suited for slower retrieves and stained water. The Indiana blade is a combination of these two and is one that I use most often as an all-around presentation. When fishing in woody cover you can even opt for a tandem blade setup with one smaller blade situated ahead of the main blade. This will ensure that a blade is likely spinning and giving off flash and vibration even when knocking against timber.

One could easily write a short book on the different ways to fish spinner baits since they are so versatile and diverse. You can tip them with soft plastics to giver a bigger profile with added movement and vibration. You can choose from a whole host of blade colors and shapes to match or accent your spinner body. You can run a trailer hook if the fish are hitting it short and not taking the bait all the way. The list goes on and on. Generally speaking, spinnerbaits work throughout most of the open water season but summer and fall tend to be the peak times to throw them, when the weather is hot.

Crankbaits
Just like spinnerbaits, the list here is a mile long. Rather than run the whole gamut of different styles I will spend a little time talking about just a couple that I feel are most impactful when it comes to hard baits. You can catch just about all of the game fish species in Iowa on crankbaits and even a few of the non-game species like Drum, Goldeye and the occasional carp will tangle with them.

The classic standby cranks that many anglers use are more traditional styles such as the Berkley Flick’r Shad and Rapala Shad Rap. I have a few of these in my box but honestly don’t use them much unless I am throwing or trolling in deeper water, say 6’ or a hair more. The Des Moines River where I usually fish is pretty shallow and I get grumpy when I lose an $8 lure. They are great lures however and it pays to keep a couple stocked for the right conditions.

Minnow-style baits such as the Rapala Flat Rap and Shadow Rap just to name a few, are one of my favorite lures to throw for multi-species fishing. Many of these baits run shallow but the manufacturers also make some that run deeper. You can troll and cast with either and fish fast or fish slow. Many of these styles suspend when left to sit and that twitch-twitch-pause action is dynamite on hungry predators. If I am fishing smallmouth, walleyes, largemouth or pike, I generally have a few of these handy and they are perfect for making long casts and covering water. These lures can be fished all season long and work especially well on shallow walleyes in the spring and fall. Whether it’s a stream, river, pond or lake, these versatile crankbaits are an important component to many angler’s tackle box.

Tube Jigs
Jigs in general are probably more broad ranging than the other lures combined and the options here are truly limitless when you consider the incredible spectrum of jig-style baits. I’ll dial this in and talk specifically about tube jigs and even more specifically, crappie tube jigs. If there is one bait in my tackle box I fish more than any other it is a 1 ½ or 2 inch tube body with a 1/16th to 1/8th oz jighead. I have literally caught more species of fish on that than any other lure in my box, period. Bluegill, Crappies, Perch, Walleye, Smallmouth, Largemouth, Catfish, Carp, Pike, Wipers, Whitebass, Muskie and the list keeps going. It is a versatile bait that can be vertically jigged, presented below a bobber finesse style, tipped with a minnow and even twitched in like an escaping baitfish.

They work throughout most of the open water seasons and can be catered to suit a multitude of conditions. Keep an assortment of colors of these in a box and don’t be afraid to fish them when other artificials aren’t producing as downsizing can sometimes be the ticket. My go-to color is a pink jighead with a pearl/white body but man other combinations are equally as effective.

Jigs in general are just a deadly bait to fish throughout much of the open water season. Even the big boys intended for large Pike and Muskie are at times more effective than hard baits due to their movement and more subtle nature. You can literally fish any kind of structure effectively from deep to heavy wood and weeds with the proper setup. If I could have one genre of baits to fish for the rest of my life and nothing else it would most certainly be jigs.

Topwater
When the conditions prevail one of my all-time favorite ways to fish is with topwater baits. The explosion of the strike is exciting and generally the target species are larger predatory species which fight hard and put on a show. When it comes to bass, hands down my favorite presentation is a hollow body frog thrown right into the slop. Hot weather in July and August is prime time for doing this and it is also a lot of fun for kids to get their bass game on since the baits are so weedless.

Walking baits like the Sexy Dawg and Zara Spook are also favorites of mine and are great for fishing over structure in open water such as weed flats, rock flats and suspended fish that are pushing bait up to the surface. You can make super long casts and the action of the bait is easy for beginners to master. Many different species can be caught on these. When the water begins to warm and fish are feeding a little more aggressively is the time to throw these lures. You can fish them effectively from early summer all the way into mid-fall.

There are many, many other kinds of lures out there and I simply cannot cover them all without needing this entire article which I am sure Patrick would not be keen on. A few other styles like swimbaits, lipless cranks, spoons and flies are options near and dear to me but I will save those for another day. The lure styles I have discussed are a few that I rely on heavily throughout much of the open water season, are generally easy for new anglers to pick up on and have proven themselves as excellent multi-species options. Of course I use live bait too but this isn’t that article. Good luck on the water this summer!