Entry 87-3

Emily Shaffer’s Five Favorite Baits

Why I Crank

Editor's Note: Emily Shaffer of Mount Juliet, Tennessee, a member of Strike King's professional team, and a 9-time Bassin' Gals Classic qualifier, has three first-place titles, 15 top-10 finishes and the WBFA 2002 Angler-of-the-Year title. With her career winnings at just over $200,000, Shaffer holds the record for the single largest bass, 9.01 pounds, weighed in at a Bassin' Gals Classic event, beating the 25-year history of the Bassmaster Classic and the 19-year history of the Bassin' Gals Classic. This week we'll look at Emily Shaffer's five favorite baits and how, where, when and why she fishes them.

Shaffer: I've won all my national tournaments on crankbaits. I love deep-diving crankbaits, and I've tried to talk Strike King into building me a Series 7 crankbait that will be the deepest-diving crankbait in the fishing market. I particularly enjoy fishing crankbaits in the fall. I won a tournament on Pickwick Lake in Alabama in the fall with a Strike King crankbait.

I was fishing a ditch, and I had all Strike King crankbaits tied on my rods - a Series 3 tied on one rod, a Series 4 on a rod, a Series 5 on a rod and a Series 6 tied on my last rod. I could see bass on my graph recorder. I cast out my Strike King Series 3 crankbait, caught a bass, put it in my livewell, picked up the rod with the Series 4 and did the same thing. I repeated catches with the Series 5 and Series 6 crankbaits, one right after another fishing that same ditch. I believe that feeder-creek ditches and little runoff channels underwater are some of the most-productive places to catch big bass in the spring, summer and fall.

My favorite color crankbait is the parrot color, which is chartreuse with a blue back. During the summer, I reel my crankbaits really fast, because I believe the bass want to chase baits then. But during the fall, I'll usually crank the lure three times, stop it, then crank it three more times, and most of the time, get a strike when the bait stops. I like to throw a crankbait on 12-pound-test line. When I fish over grass with a crankbait, and I don't want my lure to dive to the maximum depth that it can reach, I'll use 20-pound-test line to make my crankbait just tick the top of the grass as it swims over it.

If I only can have one crankbait, I'll choose a Strike King Series 6 crankbait, because I primarily like to fish deep. I like to fish a deep crankbait with a method I call "grinding teeth and walking through brush." I like to get that big Series 6 crankbait down to deep brush, let the bait hit the brush, pause the bait, allow it to float up and then reel it forward again until it hits the brush once more. You grind your teeth because you just know you're either about to get a big strike or hang that crankbait in the brush.
 

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