Downsize To Upsize Your Catch

From clear water to cold fronts, bug hatches to bashful biters, downsizing soft plastics is a tried-and-true approach for consistently catching a range of freshwater fish, including walleye, smallmouth and largemouth bass, and plenty of other species. Here are some can’t-miss tips to help you upsize your catch using a section of CrushCity soft baits.

Some anglers resist downsizing out of concern a small soft plastic will be limited in its ability to attract fish and, thus, potentially go unnoticed by walleye, bass and other predatory fish. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to CrushCity’s Super TPE soft baits best suited for downsizing. 

Despite ranging in size between 2.5” to 3”, CrushCity’s The Suspect, Creeper and Ned BLT “fish big” when it comes to attracting fish and triggering bites, making them ideal baits for downsizing tactics. Making this possible is Rapala’s exclusive Smart Injection Technology. This innovative process allows for the precise placement of salt, scent, colour, and flake. As a result, CrushCity soft baits are performance-tuned and deliver the perfect combination of life-like action, buoyancy, salt-content, and taste that fish find irresistible.

RapalaVMC designed CrushCity soft baits to be adaptable as well as specialized with respect to rigging options. This means a CrushCity bait will perform when paired with tackle from a variety of fishing brands, but there are clear advantages gained when a VMC jig or hook is used. 

Take the beveled-edge, conical keeper on VMC’s Ned Rig Jig and Finesse Football Jig for example. This unique keeper will secure any soft plastic for prolonged use and multiple hook sets, but it delivers an especially impressive rock-solid hold of CrushCity’s Super TPE baits — even with small-diameter baits, like The Suspect, Creeper or Ned BLT. 

VMC’s Swingin’ Ned Rig jig serves as further illustration of CrushCity and VMC synergy. Its articulated head design allows a presentation to flow and move naturally with an incredible crawling action, a visual display that’s maximized through the use of a buoyant, Super TPE CrushCity bait.  

Let’s also not overlook the importance of quality fishing line for making long casts, staying in contact with your presentation and detecting the light hits that are common when fishing with a downsized bait. An outstanding all-round choice is 6-pound Sufix Advance Fluorocarbon. Six- to 8-pound Advance Monofilament or 832 Advance Superline (6- to 10-pound) with a 6- to 12-pound Advance Fluorocarbon Leader are other can’t-miss line options for downsizing tactics. 

If spring walleye are in your crosshairs, you’ll want The Suspect, Creeper and Ned BLT in your tackle bag. Any of these baits on a Ned Rig Jig makes an excellent downsized package for finessing bites when casting and pitching early-season locations, such as weedlines, shorelines, shallow flats and rocky reefs. Steady swimming, snap-jigging and hopping are just three reliable retrieves sure to get your rod bent. 

When walleye are belly to bottom, try a Ned BLT or The Suspect on a Swingin’ Ned Rig jig, and work along the floor with shakes, pulls and pauses. Drop-shotting either bait, along with the Creeper, is another excellent option for bottom-oriented fish.

The Creeper a fishing essential during mayfly hatches. Rig a Banana Prawn, Black Nightmare or Bloodworm UV Creeper on a 1/16-ounce Ned Rig Jig and fish s-l-o-w.

A Swingin’ Ned Rig jig allows you to go heavy for longer casts, with better bottom contact and deeper finesse presentations without sacrificing the bait’s ability to stand straight up — benefits enhanced further by using a buoyant Super TPE soft plastic. Drag, shake, pop and twitch this jig with The Suspect or a Ned BLT along bottom anywhere there are bass and hook-ups are virtually guaranteed.

For a slightly different jig-infused action, rig a The Suspect, Creeper or Ned BLT on a Finesse Football Jig. Its oblong-shaped head invokes a side-to-side rocking action, enhancing the soft plastic’s movement.

Making a long cast, then slowly swimming a grub on a jig is a longstanding finesse presentation for smallmouth and largemouth bass. Now, thanks to Smart Injection Technology and Super TPE, the Creeper with its tantalizing, lifelike tail action brings cutting-edge, soft-bait technology to this potent old-school tactic.

Drop-shotting is another formidable tactic well suited for downsizing. You’ll catch plenty of bass nose-hooking any of these CrushCity baits on a size 2, 1 or 1/0 RedLine Series Drop Shot hook above a VMC Tungsten Drop Shot weight on 6- to 8-pound Sufix Advance Fluorocarbon. When bass are on deeper structure, a drop-shot rig fished vertically with a shake-pause cadence will trigger strikes. Casting and dragging the rig is effective for catching bass on sand flats, sand bars and other areas where bottom snags are limited.

Anglers fishing The Suspect, Creeper and Ned BLT as described above for walleye and bass may also experience encounters with big yellow perch, crappie, pike, trout and catfish. Good news, of course, for multi-species enthusiasts eager for quality fish catches, no matter the species. 

Another fact surely observed by astute panfish fans is that the “downsized” fishing techniques described here for bass and walleye can serve as “upsized” offerings used for targeting big yellow perch, crappie and panfish. For details on this topic, check out the Upsized Baits You Need For Catching Big Panfish blog post. 

No matter what season you’re fishing, a properly presented downsized soft plastic is tough to beat for catching all kinds of fish. Although finesse tactics with small baits for catching walleye and bass are showcased here, The Suspect, Creeper and Ned BLT also easily fool many freshwater fish species. Fact is, most anglers will be hard-pressed to find downsides to using downsized fishing tactics involving CrushCity soft baits, VMC jigs and hooks, and Sufix fishing line.