Crawling Crankbaits To Catch Cold Water Muskies

Crankbaits catch plenty of muskies during spring, summer and fall, but the key to catching ’skies in the very early cold water season on these lures involves some special tricks.

- Joe Bucher

I stumbled onto this secret years ago while targeting bass and walleyes. It has since developed into a high confidence method for me in any cold water situation.

Essentially, success in cold water with crankbaits involves utilizing a version that sinks and has a very tight vibrating action. Primarily, early spring cold water muskies tend to hug closer to the bottom until the shallows begin to warm up. The closer one can get a bait to these bottom-huggers the higher the strike potential. This is why a sinking, tight-vibration, lipless crankbait answers the call.