Teeny Wee Crawfish (Guest Review)
by Bill Schultz

Back in 1992 I bought my first Rebel Teeny Wee Crawfish to fish bluegills in a pond I have access to. To this day I remember my first cast with this little fish-catching magnet. I caught two bluegills and knew I had a winner. Today it is my “go to” lure for river and stream smallmouth bass. Since 1995 I’ve probably fished this lure for smallmouths as much as anyone in the country. If you’ve had a chance to read my “Smallmouths by Foot” article, which is also posted on this site, there’s some overlap, but you’ll find plenty of new information here that will be useful.

On many of my walking and wading trips all I carry in my waist bag are about eight or ten Teeny Wee Crawfish in a variety of colors and a couple of the Wee Crawfish. As noted in my article, I use St. Croix rods in light and medium light actions, mostly in the 6’ and 6’6” lengths. My reels of choice are Shimano 1000 series with long cast spools filled with 4lb. or 6lb. Silver Thread Excalibur. This line is strong, easy to work with, has a thin diameter, and is very abrasion resistant, a plus when working river rocks and other type of cover. With this set-up you can cast this 1/10-ounce lure all the way to the opposite bank of a stream and far enough to reach fish before you startle them.

One of the great things about the Teeny Wee Crawfish is that you don’t have to be an expert to fish it. This past summer I tied it on my eight-year-old nephew’s spin cast outfit, spooled with heavier line than I’ve ever used with this lure, and he caught eight smallies in a short period of time. The lure was designed to mimic a fleeing crawfish, and in the river setting as it scoots along the bottom it’s tough for a bass to resist.

Most of the time I fish it very simply. I cast cross current or down stream and bring it back with a steady retrieve. The deadly combination of an extremely tight wiggle along with the rattle, bouncing off the bottom, rocks, or just swimming back works great. The #14 hooks are small and very sharp. I think the small size helps avoid many snags that larger hooks seem to find. In clear water, with skittish fish, the light weight and small profile is perfect and won’t spook most fish. It lands so softly, they hardly know it’s there. Another great feature for the type of rivers and streams many of us fish is that this floater/diver has a running depth of about two to three feet.

In faster moving water, the steady retrieve seems to work best as the current turns an already tight wiggle into an even faster call for a smallie to strike. Casting up stream can work, but because I believe the fast wiggle enhances and triggers strikes when retrieving against the current, you have to reel very fast coming the other direction. In slower water you can try a variety of retrieves. As a floater/diver you can cast this lure, let it sit, and twitch it like a top-water. It’s not a suspending lure, but it floats to the surface very slowly so you can retrieve it fast and then let it sit, then repeat this action. Many times during this stop and go retrieve you’ll get the strike as it slowly floats up. Another good technique is giving the reel a few cranks and then a twitch with a horizontal jerk.

I’ve used all the available colors, but prefer the more natural ones, especially in clearer water. These include Cajun, Ditch, Stream, Softshell, and Moss. If you happen to know the color of crawfish in your river, matching color is an option that might increase the effectiveness. In muddy or stained water I also spend a lot of time with the Chartreuse/Brown and Chartruese. The bottom line is that the combination of tight wiggle, attention to detail, great profile, small size, and color all combine to make the Teeny Wee Crawfish a winner.

I started off with a couple of stories and what would a good review be without another one. One nice afternoon in October of 1999, I was wading the Fox River south of Milwaukee. I was catching a good number of smallmouths and having a great time. A guy standing near me looked like he knew what he was doing, had the right equipment, but was using a small jig with a twister tail (can be a good smallie lure sometimes) and wasn’t catching too many fish. I asked him if he’d like to use one of my Teeny Wee Crawfish and he politely said thanks, but no-thanks. Fifteen minutes later, after catching another six fish, I waded over and opened my small tackle container that held at least ten Teeny Wee’s and gave him one so he wouldn’t have to worry if he lost it. This time he took it and for the next couple of hours caught more fish than I did. On his way out of the river he thanked me again and said it was his best smallie outing ever. My list of converts just keeps growing.

For any of you who regularly fish rivers and streams I would highly recommend the Teeny Wee Crawfish. For deeper rivers you can add the Deep Teeny Wee or the Wee Crawfish (both run two to three feet deeper than the Teeny Wee) to your arsenal. Interestingly, by the end of last season I was up to 16 different species of fish on this lure. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean large fish won’t hit it. I think the small size enhances strikes from across the size spectrum. Some of my largest fish have come on the Teeny Wee Crawfish. My most recent addition was a 6lb. Brown Trout on the Milwaukee River in October.

For information on these and other Rebel lures, along with all the PRADCO products, you can go to www.lurenet.com. Also, in the March 2000 issue of Bassmasters, Don Wirth wrote an article on Rebel’s “critter baits”, as their small crankbaits and topwaters are called. Jim Gowing, who designed the first of these lures in 1979, is featured in the article and talks about what went into designing the Teeny Wee Crawfish and the other “critter baits”.

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