Square-billed Crankbaits – Myths and Truth
– Part I

By Chuck Bailey

Two baits sit side by side. Their bodies, (shape, size, hooks, and hardware), are the same. They both run at the same depth – three feet. The only difference is the shape of the diving bills; one is round, the other square.

Quiz time: What difference does the shape of the bill make in the way each bait runs? Is the round or square bill known for its greater deflection qualities? (…and should it be?) Why are there no square-billed ‘deep diving’ crankbaits on the market? What is the proper place and procedure for fishing square-billed crankbaits?

No crankbait topic has been more misunderstood, nor accumulated more myths, than the square-billed crankbait. Even the “experts” often disagree. What better way to sort through the conflicting opinions and myths than to find a master craftsman and tournament fisherman who solely specializes in producing premium square-billed crankbaits.

Dave’s Custom Baits

Daves Custom Baits Meet Dave Ryan of Dave’s Custom Baits. Dave started fishing professionally at the age of 22 back in 1994. While on the tournament road he painted a lot of lures for himself, Randy Blaukat, Brent Chapman, and a number of other professional friends on the circuit.

When personal and family responsibilities required Dave to step away from professional fishing, it spawned the birth of Dave’s Custom Baits in 2004. And as fate would have it, this lifestyle change would lead to a love affair with square-billed crankbaits.

In the beginning, making crankbaits was the furthest thing from Dave’s mind. “That first year I was just painting baits and doing Bagley Balsa B repair.”

A Little History about the Bagley Balsa B

Now if beginning crankbait enthusiasts are wondering why there was a serious demand to repair a specific model of crankbait, the answer comes in packaged in a little history. Jim Bagley was a legendary lure designer and craftsman. One of the true gems that came from his early work was a square-billed lure called he called the Balsa B. It reached about three feet deep and ran through the water with some unique characteristics never seen before.

Rather than running back to the fisherman in a straight line – it “hunted”. That is, the water flow across the square-bill and body in such a way that the bait moved horizontally along its path, first to the left and then to the right, wiggling tightly all the way. This fluctuating or reciprocating pattern imitated the natural behavior of forage in a way that triggered bass to strike in a way no other shallow running bait had. It was an immediate hit.

Changes – Real and Perceived

While there is much speculation and debate as to why the Bagley Balsa B was changed over the years, there is an overwhelming consensus among Bagley fans that the original hand-crafted baits were the best.

Some changes can’t be disputed; the originals used brass wire to form the line tie and hook eyes. There are others who believe that the grade of balsa went down in quality as the production ramped up to produce greater quantities. Some believe that the assembly methods changed, and the minute differences added up to affect the quality of the bait.

Whether the treasuring and hoarding of the originals was based on fact or fiction, (most likely a combination of both), the fact is, the early Bagley B’s became a hot item and a favorite among fishermen. When an original bait became damaged or its bill broken, it was deemed irreplaceable and worth sending to a custom bait shop to get repaired.

Dave Ryan not only began to make a living refurbishing the early Bagley B’s, he became one of the bait’s greatest fans and collectors. Early in his professional tournament fishing he met the angling masters that he fondly calls now the “Godfathers” of square-billed baits and he learned from them how to effectively recognize and utilize this amazing crankbait.

After years of dissecting and refurbishing his own baits, intensive study of the traits that made the original crankbaits “hunt”, and years of experience on the water throwing the square-billed crankbait, Dave eventually figured out the “secrets” of what made the early crankbaits so unique. But even then, the concept of making premium square-billed balsa baits had not yet occurred to him.

The Day the Bagley’s Burned

And then during a storm, a lightening bolt hit his detached garage and burned it to the ground. Along with his new Triton bass boat, over $4000 of original Bagley B’s went up in flames. For years Dave had been purchasing every original 1970’s Balsa B that he could get his hands on, spending endless hours on eBay, and bidding on every brass-eyed Bagley that made it to the auction block. Now their burned remains mingled with the ashes of his garage.

“So I set out on the task of dealing with insurance,” recalls Dave, “and I set out to rebuild my garage and my collection. But out of every 10 baits I might buy on eBay, only two of them would be worth a darn. The rest of them would just wiggle and run in a straight line and not do what the original hand-crafted Bagleys were meant to do.”

“The baits that were now on eBay,” says Dave, “were most likely from guys who had purchased them, ran them, discovered they didn’t run right, and so they sold them. Buyers were increasingly purchasing other people’s culls.”

“Every once in a while a buyer was lucky enough to get a bait that ran right or at least could be altered to run right. (A lot of guys who buy baits on eBay will send them to me and I refurbish them; I can salvage them).” But it was becoming clear to Dave that the original 1970’s series of Bagley B’s were getting harder and harder to find.

A Growing Demand for Handcrafted Square-billed Balsa’s

That’s when it occurred to Dave that among square-billed enthusiasts, there might be a demand for a bait that might live up to Jim Bagley’s original vision for the Balsa B. But there were those in the industry who told him it couldn’t be done.

In fact, one very prominent lure designer told Dave that no one would ever be able to make those baits again because the original Bagley B’s were like snow-flakes; no two alike - each one was different, “…and you will never be able to recapture that.”

Dave disagreed. “Well, I’m a little on the mad-scientist side, and I’m very meticulous and particular about my tackle. And I knew without a doubt, that if I split some of the originals in two, studied them in detail, I could duplicate what the old baits did.”

“I believed that if I got the right wood, discovered the right bill angle, found the right line tie position in conjunction with the bill angle, developed a balanced weight mold that produced precisely the right weight, I could build that bait again and it would run identical. So… I did.”

Balsa Secrets

The secret is in the wood itself. Because of varying grain structures and wood density differences, no two pieces are the same. “I knew from hand manipulating this balsa wood that one side of the bait could have a hard spot in it, and the other side could be nice and soft, sort of fluffy. That helps explain why some baits look like they are made right but they won’t run right - because the weight is off. They aren’t balanced.”

How could the variations in each part of the wood be fixed so as to alleviate the problem and ensure each bait would ‘hunt’ like the originals? “Only by making them by hand,” says Dave. Minute adjustments in the shaping and sanding of each piece is required by an expert craftsman who instinctively knows how the adjustments must be made. No mass production process can do that.

Tested

Making square-billed crankbaits that ‘hunt’ every time is a time consuming, demanding art form, and therefore an expensive process. And even when meticulously hand-crafted, there’s still a failure rate of 2.5% to 3.5 %. “Currently in the shop I have orders for 60+ baits, but I have cut out, rough carved, hand sanded and placed bills in more than 70 baits. I’m building more baits than were ordered to build in a margin of error.”

“And after I assemble these baits, water proof them and dip them in primer, I take them to the water and I test them. I test every bait before I ever paint it and if that bait doesn’t run as I would want it to run, (as if it was destined for my tackle box), I discard it and that bait doesn’t go out.”

Myths about the Baits That Hunt

Anyone can produce a square-billed crankbait but that does not mean that bait will hunt, that is, wiggle tightly and have a horizontal displacement. (“I actually have a few rare baits that will hunt as wide as your suburban truck hood,” says Dave.) However, there is a myth out there that suggests that a bait that “hunts” will run straight back on a steady retrieve and then for no apparent reason suddenly dart or shoot out to one side or the other before coming back on track.

While Dave’s and Jim Bagley’s original baits do have a cadence to them, (a regular pattern to their horizontal movement), the sudden kicking to the left or right for unexplained reasons is a myth, “…the baits originally never did that, and to my knowledge there been no one that ever made baits that did that”, declares Dave.

Magic Brass?

Bagley B on eBay Another myth has grow up around the line tie and hook eyes. The original Bagley B was made of brass, and later changed as mass production kicked it. There is the perception that the brass wire makes a big difference in the way a square-bill crankbait bait runs. Not so, says Dave. And yet… Dave builds his premium baits with brass wire.

The reason for constructing his baits with brass wire is for the perceived authenticity many customers are looking for. The bait’s action is not affected in anyway by the type of wire used, nor does it matter to the fish. But it matters to many of Dave’s clientele.

“Brass wire is absolutely a part of their confidence in the bait, and that’s why I use it.” Dave understands and respects the importance that confidence plays in fishing crankbaits and in many ways, that’s what he sells. “I want people who didn’t actually own those old Bagley baits, (but know the myth), to see this bait and say, ‘Man, David is building them just like the old ones, I’m going to have one of those.’” It then becomes one of their “go-to” baits – a product of confidence.

“Bend-The-Eye-Tie-Down” Myth

There is another myth especially strong in the Ozarks that says it is important to take the those old square-billed Bagley baits and bend the line tie down to the bill with pliers – and that’s what makes them run the best. “That advice spread, more and more, until it became the first thing that every purchaser of new baits did,” said Dave.

“What they didn’t realize is that the first guy who did that was overcompensating for an inexperienced Bagley employee who for a brief time was incorrectly installing bills at the factory at too steep of an angle. And so by bending the line tie down, it changed the geometry and allowed the bait to run correctly again.”

But once that problem at Bagley was discovered and fixed, (and the billed installed properly), there was no longer a need to do that - but people continued to do it anyway.

In fact, the story goes that supposedly one of the companies that represented Bagley Baits in the Kansas City area went to the company and said, “All our pros tell us this is what needs to be done…” As a result, the company changed the position of the line tie from just below the nose to way down on the bill. “And those adjusted baits just never ran properly,” said Dave. “Years later, Bagley moved the line tie back to the nose.”

What Makes a Square-billed Bait Unique?

Dave's Custom Baits What makes a square-bill crankbait unique? Its first characteristic deals with an inherent depth limitation. “A square-billed bait is unique just because of the lip configuration; as a result the bait is going limited to being a shallow running lure. It is only going to cover the first three feet of the water column. To go deeper you will more than likely be using rounded bills. That’s the first and foremost difference of the square verse round.”

There is a scientific reason anglers don’t see any square-billed ‘deep-divers’. Dave says that it has to do with the unique water flow or turbulence characteristics around the square corners in relationship to the body size.

“If a bait is given a longer or larger than normal square bill, the bait is going to quickly get to a certain point when that square bill won’t support enough water to go deeper and still track properly. I don’t want to say it rolls, but it is going to catch an air pocket and fowl – it becomes unstable.” So natural physics limits today’s square-billed designs to shallow applications.

Obviously there are shallow running round-billed baits too, so we need to address the question: how does the square-billed bait run differently than a round bill?

Square and Crisp

Dave explains, “If you have a short round bill on the same bait it is going to wiggle in a different way. It’s not going have as ‘crisp’ a wiggle as that square bill will have. It’s a softer, smoother wiggle and not quite as pronounced. A perfect example of that is the old Killer B 1 – it a has a little short round bill. Now if you removed the round bill and put a Lexan square bill in the same body, you’ll see that bait wiggle differently; its action becomes crisper, and its deflective qualities change as well.”

What exactly does Dave mean by his use of the word ‘crisper’ to describe the wiggle of the bait? “It’s similar to the way a spinnerbait feels with a Colorado blade as you retrieve it – it has a pronounced thump as it revolves, a ‘crispness’ to it. Whereas an elongated willow-leaf blade turns too, but more smoothly; it doesn’t have that crispness to it.”

In short, a square-bill’s side-to-side wiggle puts out a more pronounced vibration and sound underwater than the round-billed version; giving the fish a different and attractive ‘sonic profile’ as it moves through the water.

<To Be Continued>

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In Part II Dave unpacks the confusion and misunderstanding centered around square-billed "deflection" (verses round-billed baits). From split-rings to hooks, rods to reels, from line to rod-position - all the secrets to the proper use of square-billed baits are examined. We also look at "premium" baits and ask the question: are they worth the high price?

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David Ryan

Having stepped back from the national B.A.S.S. circuit in 1998, David Ryan is still a well-known name and serious competitor and champion in the regional tournaments around Missouri. (Dave just missed going to the Bassmaster Classic by two places in 1997, and again by one place in 2005). He is now owner of Dave's Custom Baits, and his hand-crafted premium balsa baits are found in the tackle boxes of some of the big name professionals on the bass fishing tournament trails. You can contact him through his website at
Dave's Custom Baits.