Big Squarebills for Thick Cover Beasts
When my friend Steve Yatomi handed me a Lucky Craft SKT Magnum 110 MR crankbait in 2012, I had to suppress a laugh. It looked like – as my friend Scott would say – a dog toy, too big for the largemouths I usually fish for at home. Steve had gotten the prototype from Skeet Reese and gifted it to me to try out, but I didn’t give it a fair chance.
In fact, even though several companies came out with similar lures in the interim, I wasn’t really attuned to how good big squarebills could be until I returned to the Amazon Basin in 2019. On the Rio Juruena our group chased wolffish and peacocks and payara and while we had moderate success with a variety of lures, the best option in the rocky, current-laden areas turned out to be a Strike King 4.0 crankbait. I wish we’d had more of them on that trip.
So whether you’re in the jungle or on El Salto or Guntersville or some other big fish factory, don’t discount these “oversized” lures. I recall that Bill Lowen once referred to his signature finesse squarebill as a “baby dump truck.” If that’s accurate, the following options might be characterized as Sherman Tanks.
Notes About Mag Squarebill Crankbaits
Be sure to change out trebles frequently. If you’re fishing them correctly, you’ll wear some out and bend some out in the course of the day. Make sure you have some in the 1/0 and 2/0 sizes, as appropriate.
Remember, almost all of these baits weigh more than an ounce, with some pushing two, so you may not be able to throw them with the same medium-action cranking rods you’re used to using. A flipping stick could handle them, but doesn’t have the give for boatside surges. I might use the same rod as I’d use for a 10XD (or even a swimbait rod), but if you’re fishing them in tight quarters, a 7’9” to 8’ model could prove unwieldy.
Several of these lures dive deeper than traditional squarebills. For example, the King Kong Shad 10 will hit 10 feet. That can be an advantage when fish in that depth range may never have seen a similar lure, but it can also lead to excessive snagging. You can make these lures go shallower by increasing your line size.
Rick Clunn’s quote: "The faster you reel it the better they eat it and the bigger the fish you will catch."
