Connecticut Bass Pro Terry Baksay holding a bass at Lake Picachos Mexico caught on a Rapala DT20 crankbait

It’s easy to get into a rut of using certain lures and certain brands either because you’ve done well with them before or simply out of laziness. It’s equally easy to forget about some for the same reasons. That’s what happened to me with Rapala DT (“dives to”) crankbaits in Mexico. It wasn’t that I hadn’t experienced success with them, but rather that I just got into a habit of tying on other things first.

That was a mistake.

I really had no reason for overlooking them. In 2015 or 2016, my friend Ray Kawabata had a fantastic day at El Salto with a bluegill-colored DT10, including legit 9- and 10-pounders. When Terry Baksay joined me at Picachos a couple of years later, he brought boxes of DT20s, which was fortuitous because that proved to be our best lure by a wide margin, especially the models with a healthy dose of chartreuse. Over that same period, the DT6 has become one of the most popular crankbaits in the world – especially in the springtime, and especially in shades of red like Delta, Red Crawdad, Rusty and Ike’s Demon.

I finally started throwing them again on our June 2023 El Salto trip and found that the balsa construction sometimes outfished the competitors’ plastic baits. So I’m making a vow to integrate the DT series (both the “originals” and the ones from the “Ike’s Custom” series) back into my lineup for Mexico. They have a wealth of colors, but here are five I’ll rely upon most heavily.