Spinnerbait Blades

[fish2]

Can someone explain to me when the to use the different kinds of blades on your spinnerbaits. What you should look at in choosing your blades ie water color, temp, fish activity, location and depth of water?

[Jim80]

hey man usually you will use Willow blades in clearer water and Colorado blades in darker muddier water . The willow blade gives more flash and less vibration and lets you retrieve the bait a little faster were as the Colorado blades give a ton more vibration and you usually want to work them a little slower to let the fish key in on the noise they produce. as towards conditions A big single willow blade is hard to beat on a windy day when thrown along the bank . But i also throw a spinner almost anytime I can .

Btw welcome to the boards .

Jim

[fish2]

thanks for your help. I just found bassfishin.com the other day and I really like all the information it has on it. It is helping me out a lot.

[bamabassman]

well,well,well fish2, WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF NUTS PAL!! feed dat bait monkey and you'll be fine friend.

[BigBassin144]

Welcome to the Nut-House!I see you're from columbus. Not too far from me. Where you fish down there? We were planning on going to Alum Creek for musky this year, but it looks like it'll have to wait to next year.

As for the blades, Jim pretty much summed it up. Willow blades for more flash and faster retrieves in clearer water, colorado for slower retrieve and more vibration in mudier water. A lot people will tell you single large colorado in muddy water, but our best spinnerbait had been a double colorado with not as big blades.

Good Fishin'

BB

[Jim80]

Also adding a trailer hook wouldn't hurt , it helps deal with short strikers .

Jim

[rrw4258]

Ahh.. another buckeye basser to the boards... Welcome! As for the blades, jim has covered it...

Ryan

[freakyfish]

Also some people match the blade size with the size of the bait fish.As the bait fish get bigger so does your blade size.

[zooker]

thats odd freaky i have never heard of that..

zooker

[keithdog]

I love fishing spinnerbaits. And I make my own now too. I agree with Big Bassn in his opinion of using double colorado blades in murky water. I've had good luck using single colorado blades in clear water as well. A bit of advise I have for you is to buck the current mode of thought when using spinnerbaits. Doing the opposite of what is the norm will often produce well. I've used spinnerbaits in dead calm water with great success, which is what many anglers would never do. I only use two colors of blades. True gold plated blades and true silver blades. They both seem to work under all conditions. Some days, one color will work better than the other. Most days they work equally well. If I had to choose one, I would choose gold. I use colorado, willow, and indiana blades depending on how I want to use the lure. Double willows burned in shallow water works great when you want speed in your retrieve. But willows also allow you to work deeper depths at a slower retrieve due to their cutting through the water with less resistance. Indiana blades are a step in between willows and colorado and work very well in medium depths, and shallow faster retrieves also. How many old timers remember the Fleck brand of spinnerbaits? That was the first brand of spinnerbaits I ever used. They utilized the Indiana bades, and they worked fantastic!!! Colorado blades shine in shallow water, especially when the water clarity is stained. The thump thump the coloado blade makes really calls in the bass. And a 1/2oz to 3/4oz single colorado worked slowly in deeper water near cover can be deadly. One thing I have been trying this year with wonderful success is making my spinnerbaits using heavier bodies of 3/4 to 1oz size and adding a pair of blades that are smaller than usual for that size bait. Instead of using say size 4 and size 5 colorado blades in tandem, I'v been going with size 2 and 3 colorados. Also, doing the same thhing by adding a 2 size colorado and a 3 1/2 willow on a heavy body. These baits enabled me to easily fish deeper weedbeds this year and still have some speed to the retrieve. It worked pefectly. You can buy blades to change on your spinnerbaits that you already own. I often change the blades on store bought baits to alter how they work to suit my need at the time. My choice of skirts is either white, white and chartruese, or chartrueuse. Chartruese works best for me in cloudy low light conditions. White and chatruese for those partly cloudy days, and white skirts for mostly sunny weather. Once again, those are not hard and fast rules. Let the fish tell you what they want that particular day. Lastly, I almost always use a plasic trailor on my spinnerbait. I mostly use either a 3 - 4 inch twister grub, or a 4 inch split tail trailor. I like chartruse or yellow trailors with white or white/chartruese skirts, and white tailors with chartruese skits. The contrast between skirt and trailor colors seem to provoke more interest from bass. Also, using pork frog as a trailor on a 3/4 to 1oz spinnerbait with a single colorado blade is a killer bait at times.

[danielbasspro]

i am not an expert but for me in murky water the colorado blades work the best. just me

[Rebbasser]

Originally Posted by zooker

thats odd freaky i have never heard of that..

zooker

I call BULL! Me & Zooker have had more than one conversation on that subject.

Muddy water-big, single Colorado blade.
Stained-a Colorado or Indiana(my preference) in front of a willow blade.
Clear-double willow.

Like Keith and Zooker, I make my own. I prefer smaller blades on a heavy(1/2 oz.) bait. That way I can burn them in without them rolling over due to torque.

[BassMoJo]

When fishing the banks in spring / fall or all year round for that matter, if you see sticking out timber in the water throw your bait right in the middle of it all and burn it through the same goes with crankbaits disturbe as much as you can. Its like someone running through your house door your not just gonna sit there and watch the bass have the same apporach