Lipless crankbaits
A flat sided rattling bait that sinks. The best grass bait in cold water.
What it is
A flat, lipless hard bait with the line tie on top of the back. That geometry gives it a tight, high frequency shimmy and a nose down attitude. Most are loaded with rattles. Unlike a lipped crankbait it sinks, so you control the depth by counting rather than by choosing a bill.
When to throw one
Prespawn over grass is the famous window, when you can rip the bait out of the tops of hydrilla and get crushed on the recoil. It is also excellent in fall on schooling fish, and it casts far enough to reach a surface blow up that a crankbait cannot.
How to fish it
Cast, count it to the depth you want, then retrieve steadily or yo-yo it. Over grass, reel until you feel resistance and then snap the rod to tear it free. The strike comes on the fall right after the rip, almost every time.
Gear that matters
Trebles bend and dull fast on a bait that is being ripped out of cover repeatedly. Check the points more often than feels necessary.
Pulling steadily to free it from grass. Snap it. The sudden break free is the trigger.
Lipless crankbaits by the numbers
- Families in the catalog
- 86
- Individual variants
- 810
- Brands represented
- 29
- Weight range
- 1/16 oz to 1.5 oz
- Length range
- 0.25 in to 5.1 in
- Most stocked color families
- Silver and Blue, Shad and Natural, Red Craw
A family is a product line. A variant is one color and size of it, which is the level the app actually reasons about.
What the shelves carry
Shelf availability, not a recommendation. Which color is right depends on the day, and that is the part the app works out.
Lipless crankbaits with the deepest color runs
The families carrying the most individual variants in the catalog. Breadth of stock, not a ranking of which one catches more fish.
What a web page cannot know
Everything above is true of lipless crankbaits everywhere, in every month, for every angler. That is exactly the problem with it. Cobia answers the narrower question.
Those four lines need a location, a clock and your actual tackle box. No website has any of them.
Lipless crankbaits questions people actually ask
A flat, lipless hard bait with the line tie on top of the back. That geometry gives it a tight, high frequency shimmy and a nose down attitude. Most are loaded with rattles. Unlike a lipped crankbait it sinks, so you control the depth by counting rather than by choosing a bill.
Prespawn over grass is the famous window, when you can rip the bait out of the tops of hydrilla and get crushed on the recoil. It is also excellent in fall on schooling fish, and it casts far enough to reach a surface blow up that a crankbait cannot.
Cast, count it to the depth you want, then retrieve steadily or yo-yo it. Over grass, reel until you feel resistance and then snap the rod to tear it free. The strike comes on the fall right after the rip, almost every time.
Pulling steadily to free it from grass. Snap it. The sudden break free is the trigger.
Know which lipless crankbait to tie on
Scan your receipts, build your box once, and Cobia ranks what you already own against the water in front of you.
Android coming soon
iPhone, iOS 17 or later. Setup takes about a minute.