Getting Hung Up Is Part of Crankbait Fishing the Right Way for Bass
If you are never hanging a crankbait in cover, there is a good chance you are not putting it where the bass actually live. Rick Clunn explains why contact, deflection, and knowing how to free a bait are fundamental parts of serious crankbait fishing.
One of the biggest mistakes anglers make with crankbaits is trying too hard to avoid getting hung up.
Nobody likes losing baits. Nobody likes stopping a cast, shaking a lure loose, or having to move the boat to get a bait back. But if you are serious about crankbait fishing, especially around wood, rock, brush, stumps, and vegetation, you have to accept something right away.
Getting hung up is part of fishing the bait where bass live.
43 Hang-Ups and a Bassmaster Classic Win
Rick Clunn told a story from his fourth Bassmaster Classic win on the James River that says everything about this style of fishing.
He was fishing cypress trees and cypress knees. He said it was one of the best execution days he ever had on the water, and he was hung up 43 times.
That sounds wrong until you understand crankbait fishing.
He was not hung up because he was fishing badly. He was hung up because he was fishing correctly. Every cast was making contact. Every cast was bouncing the bait off cover. That contact was what generated the strikes. Without it, he said he would not have gotten one-fifth of the bites.
That is the part a lot of anglers miss.
They want the result without the risk. They want the crankbait bite, but they do not want to crash the bait into the cover. They want to catch the fish in the brush pile without bringing the bait through the brush pile. They want to catch the fish on the stump without hitting the stump.
That is not how this works.
Contact Is What Makes a Crankbait Dangerous
A crankbait becomes its most dangerous when it hits something.
The bill hits first. The bait changes direction. It deflects, kicks, pauses for a fraction of a second, and then starts hunting again. That violent change is what makes a bass react.
It is not just a lure swimming past the fish. It is something that looks like it made a mistake.
That is why the Livingston Lures RC Kicker was built to come through cover better.
The goal is not to avoid contact.
The goal is to make contact and keep fishing.
Learn to Feel What the Crankbait Is Doing
Rick also talked about the feel side of crankbait fishing. You have to learn what the bait is doing.
When it starts coming through a brush pile, he will increase the speed slightly right before impact. That helps the bait hit, deflect, and come through.
When fishing submerged vegetation, rod angle matters. If the bait starts digging too hard, raise the rod. If you lose contact, lower the rod.
Those adjustments do not come from guessing. They come from time on the water.
That is why practice matters.
You cannot learn crankbait feel by only fishing clean banks. You have to fish the hard stuff. You have to throw at laydowns, brush, cypress knees, rock, grass, and every ugly target that makes you nervous.
That is where the skill is built.
That is where you learn what the bait feels like before it hangs, when it is ticking cover, when it is digging, and when it is about to come free.
When the Bait Hangs, Do Not Pull Harder
One of Rick’s biggest points was what not to do when the bait starts to hang.
Do not pull harder.
Most of the time, when a crankbait first stops, the hooks are not buried yet. The bill is usually what is stuck. When an angler pulls hard, that is when the hooks drive into the cover and the situation gets worse.
Rick’s approach is to give the bait slack, then use popping and line stretch to help the lure back out.
That is also why line stretch matters to him in this part of crankbait fishing. He wants that stretch because when it pops, the bait backs up. The buoyancy of the bait and the bill design both help it work free.
There Is a Difference Between Throwing a Crankbait and Fishing One
Anybody can cast and wind.
But the real crankbait fisherman is reading every impact. He knows when to speed up, when to raise the rod, when to lower it, when to give slack, and when not to panic.
He understands that the bait has to hit cover to reach its full potential.
That is the lesson.
If you are never getting hung up, you probably are not fishing close enough. If you are always afraid of losing a bait, you are probably leaving fish behind.
The goal is not to be careless. The goal is to become efficient in the places where most anglers are afraid to throw.
Rick Clunn built his crankbait game around contact, deflection, and execution.
That is the mindset behind the Livingston Lures RC Kicker.
