If you fancy having a go at fishing with these creature baits for bass (crab/squat lobster etc. imitation-type lures) - check this blog post here as an example of what is very possible - then I thought it might be interesting to break down a few simple options together with how much they cost. As I said here and before any freshwater experts shoot me down, once again I am by no means trying to say that there’s a load of revolutionary stuff going on here. But also once again I have to go back to this one single question - how many of us bass lure fishing nuts spend any meaningful time trying to imitate what is surely one of the most important food sources for estuary bass especially? Is there something rather interesting to all this?
At the top of my knowledge pile as such for sheer ease of use and design cleverness sits the rather ingenious MegaBass Sleeper Craw lure, and as is typical from the Japanese company MegaBass, it’s almost deceptively simple. Remember the Zonk Gatarides and the X120 hard lures for example? MegaBass makes class gear, but there is no getting away from the fact that for the most part their lures ain’t cheap. There is a wonderful simplicity though to simply clipping on a complete, ready to fish crab imitation lure, as easily as one might clip on or clip off a surface lure etc. For sure the MegaBass Sleeper Craw costs a fair bit, but with where I envisage going at the bass with these crab imitations - estuaries, often around bladderwrack - I don’t see myself losing many of them at all.
The other way to have a go at this is to very easily make the rigged “bait” up yourself. I have chosen to go the cheb-rigging route, but there are obviously other ways to present these lures on the bottom and I haven't really explored these yet. I have taken a look at a typical packet of creature baits, cheb weights, and weedless hooks below, and I thought it might be of interest to do a very basic cost analysis and see where we end up. I know that lures can be fairly expensive things at times, but I think of how much I could be spending on fresh and frozen bait and then I think about how many bass you could land on one good lure. All seems just about okay to me if I think of it like that.
Please note that there are a mix of affiliate and non-affiliate links below. Creature baits and the associated cheb weights and so on are very prevalent in the freshwater lure fishing world, so make sure to go looking around because there are any number of different options and stockists out there. I came across the very impressive Predator Tackle at The Big One Show last year, I don’t do anything affiliate based with them, but wow they have a lot of nice freshwater lure gear which of course has various uses for the saltwater world. By the way, I will be at The Big One Show again this weekend, hope to see some of you there. Anyway, back to the blog post……………..
The ready to fish approach - complete lure, don’t need to buy anything else:
One 3’’ MegaBass Sleeper Craw complete lure (inbuilt weight and hook, ready to fish, simply clip it on, do not mix this lure with any others in your box): £12.99 per lure (Veals Mail Order).
Some options for making the “baits” up yourself:
One packet of the 9.1cm/7.5g Savage Gear Reaction Crayfish: £7.49 for 5, about £1.50 each (Predator Tackle).
Z-MAN Turbo CrawZ 4 Inch: £5.99 for 6, about £1 each. Same sort of TPU material as the MegaBass Sleeper Craw. Lasts forever, tough as hell, but you can’t mix them with other lures and it’s almost impossible to get a corkscrew into one. Therefore you need to use conventional weedless hooks, but there are also a bunch of different hook and jig head options designed to work with Z-Man lures, have a good look around the Predator Tackle website. I like how this material floats, so the “crab” trundles along the bottom with the “claws” up (Predator Tackle).
Vike Tungsten Cheb Weight - 10g Natural Silver: £6.75 for 3, £2.25 per weight. Tungsten weights are smaller/more dense than lead, but you pay more for it (Predator Tackle).
Berkley Fusion Bottom (cheb) 10g weight, bit larger than the tungsten equivalents but I don’t think this matters: £3.99 for 5, about 80p per weight (Veals Mail Order).
Savage Gear 4/0 or 6/0 Weedless Corkscrew hooks, without belly-weight, these are the hooks we did for the Gravity Stick original and 120 sizes. You can use either the 6/0 or the 4/0 version for the 9.1cm Savage Gear Reaction Crayfish: £5.99 for 6 for the 6/0, about £1 per hook, or £4.99 for 6 of the 4/0, about 84p per hook (Veals Mail Order).
Varivas Avani Ocean Works Power Rings (split rings), you are going to need to put one of these on the front of a corkscrew design weedless (swimbait) hook so that the cheb weight sits correctly, photo above: £2.99 for 16 of the size 4.0mm, about 19p each (Veals Mail Order).
Varivas Gran Hooking Master (Monster Class) weedless hooks, a conventional weedless/Texas hook which means you won’t need a split ring to get a cheb weight to sit right. Works with the Z-Man lures and of course it also works with regular soft plastics, it’s just that I prefer the corkscrew type attachment where possible. These particular weedless hooks are outstanding: £2.99 for 5 of the 4/0 version, about 60p per hook (Veals Mail Order).
The costs for one lure, rigged and ready to fish:
Note that I am not taking into account that you are going to need to buy packets of lures, hooks, cheb weights and split rings if you use the corkscrew-design weedless hooks - which obviously is a greater cost than the one MegaBass Sleeper Craw. But of course you get multiple lures by buying packets and reducing the cost per rigged lure.
One x 3’’ MegaBass Sleeper Craw complete lure: £12.99 per lure
One x rigged 9.1cm/7.5g Savage Gear Reaction Crayfish - lure + 4/0 Savage Gear corkscrew hook + split ring + tungsten cheb weight: £4.78, or £3.33 if you substitute the tungsten cheb weight for the Berkley one
One x rigged Z-MAN Turbo CrawZ 4 Inch - lure + 4/0 Varivas weedless hook + tungsten cheb weight: £3.85, or £2.40 if you substitute the tungsten cheb weight for the Berkley one
I do like the smaller tungsten cheb weights, but there is no getting away from how much more expensive they are. I can only recall losing a grand total of one or two so far though, so it hasn’t exactly broken the bank yet. I am very inexperienced when it comes to fishing these lures, but I fully intend to put a lot of time into it this year because I believe in the merits of giving myself another very logical option. Time will tell but one thing I do not mind doing at all is experimenting to see what might or might not work better for my fishing. If you want to have a go then I hope this blog post has given you a bit of useful information, but if not I will see you later in the week!
Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.