Rebel Critter Two Step

While stream fishing in the Ouachita Mountains last week, Bruce Stanton and I mostly used two-pronged lure presentations, making the most of the functionality of Rebel Crawfish and Crickhoppers. Both lures float naturally and dive a couple of feet and wobble when you pull them through the water.

Most of the smallmouths, spots and assorted panfish in Mountain Fork and the Ouachita River were close to shoreline cover and looking up, so we would cast toward the bank, let the bait settle for just a moment and then twitch it and pause it a few times to make it dance on top. Often a fish would blast the lure on the top. If it didn't, we'd then move to step two, which involved reeling the lure back to engage it's subsurface swim.

On that particular trip, if we had only used the lures as crankbaits, by casting and immediately reeling them back, we'd have probably missed out on 80 percent of the fish we caught. Other days, the opposite would be the case. Often, strikes occur about evenly with both approaches. Experiment, and the fish will let you know.

The cool thing is that you don't have to choose. Just as we mostly did, you can incorporate topwater fishing and cranking into every cast.