Kevin VanDam spent 2 years perfecting the KVD 1.5 and 2.5 Squarebill Crankbaits. He shares how their erratic swimming action sets them apart.
This bait will trigger bites when other baits won’t. It’s a bait that I worked on for a long time. It took two years from start to finish to get the KVD 1.5 and 2.5 perfected. What I’m looking for in a shallow running crankbait is the perfect wobble and vibration. This has no rattle to it, so it’s real quiet. This is a bait that I like to throw when it’s tough conditions, when the bite will be a bit off.
Most crankbaits just run in a straight line, but I wanted this bait to run through the water and swim erratically. When I first started fishing crankbaits a long time ago, like squarebill, we would look for wood baits. You’d try to cast them, and you’d look for that erratic swimming action and irregularity in the water. You’d buy a dozen of them and you’d be lucky to find one that has some action out of the box. And after two or three days of throwing it, it’s torn up—the wood baits don’t hold up. The KVD baits are durable.
We spent a lot of time on the body design and the weighting design to make sure the 1.5 and 2.5 KVD crankbaits swim erratically. Every single one out of the package will kick around and not run in a straight line.
I prefer to run the 1.5 or 2.5 crankbaits into cover. Even in clear water conditions, that erratic swimming action triggers a lot of strikes. I can catch a lot of smallmouth on these for that reason—I can throw it over deep water, and to them it looks like an injured bait fish swimming through the water column.
I’m going to fish it with a stop and start retrieve a lot. I want that bait hunting around. This bait will run almost six feet deep, or even deeper with light line. I always throw fluorocarbon when I crank, 10- or 12-pound test line. I can hang this bait up in water that’s six or seven feet deep, and it’s a shallow runner. I can put it on 20-pound test line and make it run shallow too.
I use my rod to control that height. I hold my 7’ rod up high to keep it running and ticking above the grass or hitting the bottom. I use my rod to control depth with these baits. As it goes deeper, I can drop my rod tip down.
What makes them special is the action we built in. Every single one of them moves erratically. And you don’t have to cast it fast. Every single one of the 1.5 or 2.5 crankbaits will hunt around on you, and that’s what the bass like. The price is something to like also—it’s very affordable. It’s also durable even in rocks and cover.
