Is it my imagination or just a difference in style? It seems bass fishing in the northland is dominated by soft plastics and slow jigging for big bass, but when I watch the bassmasters it seems like everybody down there is using crankbaits and ripping them ultra fast and still catching big bass.

I just haven't seen many bass that will attack like I'm watching on tv. It seems like most of the time they are in a neutral or negative mood...

While their are certainly times to rip the lures, I think the fish just are more spooky here with smaller lakes and clearer water.

Resevoir and natural lakes can be two very different styles of fishing.

For them, especially tourny guys using crankbaits on long points, channels and big stump flats helps them cover water fast and locate fish but they still use plastics and finesse techniques quite often.

Crankbaits are phenominal lures up here, too.

Lastly, their are lots of factors that affect a fish's mood. I dont think our fish here have a more negative mood overall than southern bass. I would say a bass is a bass...

I think its mainly a difference in underwater terrain. Southern resevoirs are dominated by rocks and wood cover. Northern natural lakes are mainly dominated by weed growth. Cranks are readily bounced over and maneuvered through rocks and wood. Soft plastics can easily be rigged weedless and pulled through heavy weed cover. There's definately a place for cranks in northern lakes, but I use them more as a search tool. Running them higher in the water colum, just ticking the tops of the weeds for aggressive biters. Once I know where they are I think plastics are much easier to work through the heavy cover. Another big differance is we fish for enjoyment and they fish for a living. Tourny guys don't have the luxury of enjoying themselves, they are going to go with whatever tactic gives them a chance to make the cut and give there sponsors some air time. Pros are also fishing water they're not that familiar with. They have to cover water as fast as they can to try and find the right school of fish. If they dont make the cut, they lose there sponsors and they're out of a job. The rest of us are a lot more likely to use whatever tactic we enjoy the most. We're out there to relax, have a good time and catch some fish. We're also probably on water we've fished a number of times before and have the searching part taken care of. It's more about enticing the fish we know are there to bite.

Also with the many resevoirs down south the current can really help a viscous bit on fast moving baits.

Watching someone on TV slow crawl a C-rig for bass over twenty minutes is really boring, but watching them throw a buzz bait or a frog is most interesting.

I could catch ten times more bass with plastics over cranks but I'll use cranks 100 times more often than plastics. I like working the crank.

good question Griggs. I've always thought that too. After watching the shows, i've bought quite a few crank baits only to find myself going back to soft plastics. Crank seems to catch me mostly the small quick aggressive ones.

Good points...

Another difference is the Pros "do things" to their baits that help them work better.

When the Pros have been here on Minnetonka, they've used their crank baits and spinnerbaits in the same places we've used plastics and pulled some dandys.

Big gluttonous hogs on a spinnerbait on my favorite C-rig spot and David Fritts "saving" a 4 pounder for the last day in a semi-popular spot. He went in there with a crank bait and called his cast.

They rarely fish hardware "as is" out of the package. They get baits by the case and tweak and tune to their liking and discard the ones that don't cut it.

This has turned into a great discussion and I think some really good points were made that I didn't really think of. I'm in the same boat as fellowx. It seems like most baits I swim are really the smaller fish that need to be aggressive in order to eat. When I learned how to fish soft plastics slow, the size of my fish went through the roof. I'm now wondering if I turn back around and see what I can find on a horizontal presentation, although it seems backwards to think a crankbait can be a big fish bait. It seems to me that jigs and texas or c-rigs are big fish baits, but I'm probably wrong...

I probably don't give cranks their due time and I'm starting to think that its something that I need in my arsenal to search and locate bass and more importantly locate schools of bass. I've typically been a more shallow water guy that doesn't really locate schools of bass.

I think I'm going to tie on some cranks and start looking for schools of bass on my home waters...

We don't really have the same forage base up here. The composition of the lakes is different too, as someone already said. Crankbaits do have their place in MN though. I've caught some dandies lately on cranks along sharp weedlines and rocks. I do prefer plastics and hate throwing spinnerbaits but even those have their times to shine. There are plenty of guys in the curcuit that fish jigs or plastics. How about derek remitz when he won on Amistad fishing jigs very tediously while Ike and the others were throwing large aggresive swimbaits.