I'm finding out that getting good detail on these tiny blade baits without a good stencil is near impossible but it sure is fun trying. With our wonderful rainy weather yesterday I decided I needed a few pumpkinseed blades and set out to mimic them using my screen to shoot thru to mottles the brown color. Not the best, but they are cute. And the fish won't care. I think what really sets these off is the bronze hi lite in the clear top coat before the Sal Coat gets dipped on. The bait at the bottom of the pile shows the bronze well as do a couple of the others. I should have got the picture standing just inside the shade from the bright sun light that just happened to stick out between rain showers. Another thing that makes this pattern bug out is the Warmouth "Attack" series eyes....makes the baits appear mean, or just plain ticked off.
About twenty years ago I located a pod of crappies suspended about 11 feet from the surface over 37 feet of water while ice fishing. The bottom was absolutely littered with dink sunfish and perch with some shiners mixed in. The suspended fish were all in the 11"-13" range and would show on the locator for maybe 6 seconds then fade off. Once I figured out what they were and what they wanted it was game on. When I got home with my pail of fish I was amazed to find lots of regurgitated 1" long sunfish and perch in the water. Since then one of my favorite baits for summer suspended crappies is a small lipless crankbait in sunfish, perch or pumpkinseed patterns. These tiny blade baits fit right into the size range that I prefer and these pumpkinseed baits round out my arsenal.
