9 Crossover Baits That Are Overlooked and Underrated

If you stop and think about it, a bass lure is only a bass lure if you’re throwing it for bass. Take the same bait off the lake and chuck in the bay and suddenly it’s a redfish lure. Throw your favorite smallmouth lure in a stream and now it’s a trout lure. There are really no rules in terms of which lures go with what species, but we tend to stay in the proverbial lanes. 

You don’t want to be the weirdo throwing a hollow-body frog 30 miles offshore. Or do you?

So many lures that have been squarely labeled as being for a single species have incredible crossover appeal with other species and even water types that they weren’t originally intended for. In fact, getting outside the box and throwing non-traditional lures can help secret weapons materialize in your arsenal. 

Here are some great examples of baits with proven crossover appeal, so the next time you’re in the tackle shop, grab something “weird” and non-traditional and try it on your home waters. You might be surprised at the results.

Chatterbaits for Redfish

The Chatterbait is one of the hottest lures in bass fishing today. In fact, it’s such a ringer that many bass fans agree it has essentially knocked the classic spinnerbait to the back burner. The magic lies in the lure’s unique hexagonal metal lip that creates incredible flash and vibration, causing the rubber skirt tail and any soft-plastic trailer to shimmy wildly. Furthermore, a chatterbait can run through vegetation very cleanly. That’s a big plus when targeting largemouths, but it can also be extremely helpful when hunting backwater redfish, too. 

A redfish’s eyesight is relatively poor, but they can feel vibrations like champions, often homing in on the sound of a baitfish school or fleeing shrimp. They also tend to live in murky water, so the sharp vibration of a chatterbait is a boon. Reds also like to feed in shallow, heavily vegetated water. They patrol tight to grass and reed edges within estuaries and bays, making a weedless lure extra potent because if you overthrow or contact partially submerged grass, it won’t foul. The stout, single hook in a chatterbait also does a great job of staying pinned during the fierce runs of a redfish.

Read Next: How to Fish a Chatterbait

Tubes for Trout and Inshore Saltwater Species

Soft-plastic tubes are synonymous with bass, or at least they used to be. With the advent of modern soft-plastic presentations, the tube has fallen out of the spotlight, though make no mistake, they’re still bass killers. They also have some crossover appeal for anglers wading trout streams and fishing inshore saltwater.

Tubes come in a variety of sizes, and by altering the weight of the jighead you stuff inside when rigging, you can vary their action and fall rate. Using lighter jigheads is key in shallow, rocky rivers where big brown trout live, as they’ll make the jig more nimble, allowing you to quickly hop them over hard structure and minimize snags. In fall especially, brown, olive, and orange tubes that mimic fleeing crayfish can draw some tank trout out of the deepest holes. 

In saltwater, a white or tan tube is an excellent imitator of a shrimp or small squid, which will trigger bites from flounder, seatrout, striped bass, and more. Try cutting off a small piece of kitchen sponge, threading it onto the hook, and sliding it inside the tube. Now fill the body cavity with shrimp, shedder crab, or menhaden oil to ramp up scent appeal.

Rat-L-Traps for Saltwater Stripers 

The high-pitched rattle of a classic Rat-L-Trap has been a staple for bass in off-color water for decades. Classified as a lipless crankbait, the lure is also very versatile. With a body that’s full of tiny metal balls, it’s plenty heavy so it’ll cast a mile. It wobbles in a tight pattern during a straight retrieve. However, a Rat-L-Trap can also be jigged vertically, which has a lot of application in saltwater. 

Southern anglers have been using “Traps” to punish sound-oriented seatrout for a long time, however the crossover appeal hasn’t really bled into the Northeast striper scene, which is a bummer. Silver and gold Rat-L-Traps are dead ringers for juvenile menhaden—a.k.a. peanut bunker—which are a staple of the striped bass’s diet (check out our guide to the best baits for striped bass). In the back bay especially, vertically jigging these lures around bridge pilings and across channels can be deadly. When the water is off-color, working a Rat-L-Trap quickly over rock piles, along sea walls, and around docks can score when quieter lures won’t.

Soft-Plastic Crayfish for Redfish

There are dozens of soft-plastic shrimp imitations on the market, and they’ll all tempt a backwater redfish, but have you ever considered switching over to a soft-plastic crayfish and leaning into bass-style presentations? You should, especially during colder times of year. 

Modern crayfish such as the Z-Man TRD CrawZ designed to be presented on a ned rig are engineered to float. When coupled with a mushroom style jighead, they’ll stand up vertically on the bottom as twitches of the rod tip get those fighting claws fluttering. In winter or early spring when bay waters are still cold, redfish may be less inclined to pounce on larger meals or chase fast-moving food. A ned-rigged crayfish is smaller than your average shrimp soft-plastic, and while crayfish may not naturally exist in the red’s environment, it will simply identify the lure as a tasty crustacean. A ned-rigged crayfish can stay in the zone longer, create a target that takes less effort to eat, and provides subtle (yet persistent) temptation at times when the reds aren’t exactly fired up. 

Jerkbaits for Flounder

Though many of the lures presented here have been used by anglers in-the-know for years, throwing bass-style jerkbaits for flounder is a more recent trend with origins in the Northeast. It’s proven very effective, assuming, that is, you deploy those jerkbaits in the right scenario. 

Many people think of flounder as bottom feeders because they’re flat and, well, lay on the bottom of the boat. But the truth is these fish will travel great distances up into the water column to chase a meal. Anglers have figured out that suspending jerkbaits that dive 3 to 5 feet are killers in the shallow surf and along the edges of flats where flounder hunt. The hit tends to come on the pause, and while the anglers addicted to this style of flounder fishing will agree jerkbaits may not hook as many fish as traditional bottom jigs, but the hits are so hard it’s worth it. Lucky Craft’s Pointer is a popular model for this tactic. 

Muskie Bucktails for Stripers

Believe it or not, some of the earliest and most trusted lures for saltwater striped bass were adopted from the Midwest muskie scene. Most notably, the Creek Chub Pikie Minnow became the muse for countless anglers throwing in the surf from Massachusetts to New Jersey. Even more recently, lures like the Muskie Mania Doc have made the full-time leap into saltwater tackle boxes with their ability to call up big bass in a variety of scenarios. But one lure that should make the jump (and hasn’t) is the oversized in-line spinner, better known in muskie angler speak as a bucktail.

Bucktails like the Double Cowgirl feature extra-stout components to stand up to heavy-hitting muskies, and that toughness can also withstand cow stripers in rivers and salty settings alike. These giant in-lines mimic large prey like suckers and perch.  But they do just as good a job mimicking the adult menhaden and large gizzard shad stripers crave. In stained water, the whomp and vibration these lures emit is second to none.  

Frogs for Dolphin

If I didn’t witness this with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it, but hollow-body frog lures typically used for largemouth bass in heavy cover are ideal for dolphin—a.k.a. mahi-mahi—under the right circumstances. Those circumstances are most common in the South (leave it to Southern ingenuity to figure this one out). 

Throughout the Caribbean, the waters around Florida, and in parts of the Gulf of Mexico, free-drifting mats of Sargassum weed are common. They can stretch for miles, creating an entire ecosystem that’s riding the waves and tide. The thick mats provide shade and shelter for small fish and forage items, and large fish like dolphin flock to them to feast. Sometimes, however, the weed can be so thick it’s nearly impossible to achieve a clean run with more traditional mahi lures like jigs and diving plugs. Enter the hollow-body frog, which will skim over the mats with ease. White frogs are used most often to match the tone of saltwater forage species like squid and baitfish, but dolphin aren’t very discerning anyway. If it moves and looks like a meal, they’ll eat it. Read our full guide to the best frog lures here. 

Square-Bill Crankbaits for Redfish

We’ve been listening to guys like Bill Dance and Hank Parker sing the praises of square-bill crankbaits for decades, but you’ve probably never heard them talk about using them for redfish. If you think about it, though, a lot of the features that make these lures shine in sweet water have benefits in shallow brine. 

Square-bills run shallow, which means they won’t dig into the bottom after two cranks. The design of the bill also allows them to deflect off hard structure. I’ve seen guides in Louisiana wear out redfish with a chartreuse-and-white square-bill along the rock-lined flanks of an inlet. In the stained water, the knock of the lure hitting the rocks just under the surface seemed to trigger the reds on patrol. These lures also work well along channel edges cutting through expansive flats.

Dropshot Minnow for Trout

Drop-shotting was invented to tempt finicky bass. With the weight positioned at the bottom of the rig and a twitchy, spry soft plastic hovering and dancing a foot above it, the idea is the bait can be shaken in place for a long time, coaxing lock-jawed fish into biting without your offering ever leaving the zone. It works wonders in cold water or for bedding bass, but a soft-plastic minnow on a dropshot rig can be just as lethal on big trout. Read our complete guide on how to fish a dropshot rig here.

Read Next: Glide Baits for Bass: How to Catch a Giant on a Glider

Baits like Berkley’s Twitchtail Minnow, measuring three inches, are ideal for the tactic. They work especially well in the fall and winter when trout are less apt to move around hunting for food. From lakes to small streams, a dropshot rig allows you to get on the bottom of deep holes and runs quickly. Instead of having a lure or bait zip through the zone, a dropshot rig can be held in places, right in front of a big trout’s nose. Subtle twitches of the rod tip to get the bait wiggling can be the trigger, but in heavier current, sometimes keeping a tight line and letting the flow give the bait action is enough to fool a giant brown or rainbow.