Muddy Water? Cans or Islands?

[limitlypps]

its been years since I've pulled cranks, looking at possibly reverting back to it for early season walleyes, I do have a fortune investing in walleye divers, thundersticks, power divers,reef runners,hot in tots,Mann's stretch15's, 20's and 30's but, no bandits.

I look at the bandits and they all look like a small reversion of the thundersticks I used to religiously run. My question is, has the lake feeding paradigm changed that much that would gravitate to the absolute necessity of having to go spend all that much more money on these bandits to maximize my efforts?

[wildturkey]

I'm with you I used to fish the lake in the 90's I went last year and used my old lures and caught walleyes on them they still worked. I'm coming back up in a few weeks with some of the newer ones and see if they are any better I live in sc and pull crank baits for strippers.

[freddie]

its been years since I've pulled cranks, looking at possibly reverting back to it for early season walleyes, I do have a fortune investing in walleye divers, thundersticks, power divers,reef runners,hot in tots,Mann's stretch15's, 20's and 30's but, no bandits.

I look at the bandits and they all look like a small reversion of the thundersticks I used to religiously run. My question is, has the lake feeding paradigm changed that much that would gravitate to the absolute necessity of having to go spend all that much more money on these bandits to maximize my efforts?

No, you don't have to go spend all that money to catch fish - you can absolutely use what you've already got. Those lures will absolutely catch fish!

Here's the deal, the reason a lot of guys are buying Bandits right now - they're the hot bait, the popular bait, whatever, so a lot of guys are running them. If your time on the water is limited, a lot of guys find it a better use of what little time they get on the lake, to run what has already been established as a program in the fishing reports (location, bait, color and leads) as opposed to going out and trying to reinvent the wheel so to speak, establishing their own program with what existing baits they have.

If someone says they crushed them on DJ's Ibfrozen bandits, at whatever reef, at 1.8 mph and 45 foot leads, and I have 8 hours on Saturday to spend on the lake for a few weeks, I'm going to pick up a couple of those Ibfrozens to try to best capitalize on my time on the water by running what has already been established - if it means buying a few baits, well, I'll do it because my time is limited. Why reinvent the wheel? If I had more time to be on the lake than I'd probably be more inclined to try to make something work with what's already on the boat.

Obviously you can have 2 different lures in the strike zone and the swim pattern of those baits will make the difference between a good day and a bad day, but I don't have a theory on that. Maybe someone else will chime in with some theory on swim pattern vs water temp/clarity/etc.

Bandits do flat out catch a LOT of fish obviously. I see them in the net frequently

[limitlypps]

I'll always digress to the same scenario in Lake Whitehall Mi. salmon fishing, not trying to toot my own horn, I had myriads of captains, respecting me, not glouting over my salmon catching prowess, as to how I was out performing them? I absolutely killed the the salmon in respect to there take. I felt like an out cast until after 4 years they finally respected my prowess as an outsider.Its helping every fisherman not trying to be invinsible in the process showing off a pig azz cooler of walleyes.We are here trying to help everyone out to enshrine a beautiful take to there freezers. I had a different approach to the locals. fwiw...