If you’re anything like us, fishing squarebills is high on your list for catching bass. You can cover lots of water quickly, bang them off all kinds of structure, generate lots of reaction strikes and have a flat out good time.
This genre of baits is so much fun and so productive that every lure maker out there who is in the hard bait arena has them in their line-up. Today, we’re going to take a look at a new offering, the Sebile Action First Bull Crank Shallow.
What’s new
Sebile has been around for a number of years putting out some very uniquely designed baits ranging from soft plastics to wire baits. The trouble has been finding a retailer that has them in stock.
This new series promises much better distribution to retail outlets through a collaboration with a much larger company.
We got the new Bull Crank Shallow Runner in the 2 1/2 length to fish in the 4-7 foot depth range. This bait weighs in at a very respectable 1/2 ounce to allow anglers long distance casts followed by plenty of time in the strike zone.
The pattern we obtained is the Smokin’ Purple Pearl. There is a good selection of color options for this bait that mimic lots of natural forage.
Here’s something different
Similar to most Sebile designed baits, the Bull Crank employs something different in its design. For the Action First Series, that means using a belly weighting system that the fore hook is anchored in.
Since this bait is silent, the increased area of the interior chamber means that it will float up a little quicker than some of the other baits on the market.
We started fishing the Bull Crank on 10 pound mono to see what the wobble was like and to get it down to the bottom in the shallows to observe its deflection characteristics.
This bait has what we consider a fairly wide wobble. With no rattles, this type of action creates disturbance in the water for the fish to hone in on.
Another feature of good squarebills is that the hooks are sized properly for the bait. Too large, they get hung up constantly, too small, your hook-up ratio suffers, just right, the bait moves through cover well and you have a good hook-up ratio.
In the Sebile Bull Crank, the hooks are sized well for the bait and are fairly sharp out of the package.
Any problems?
Unfortunately, our usual review period with this bait was cut drastically short. Not due to weather or other external factors, due to a problem with the bait.
We were putting the Bull Crank through our usual squarebill process which, as we have mentioned in other articles on other baits, includes running them into as many different obstructions as we can find, when something just didn’t feel right.
We reeled the Sebile all the way in, took a look and darned if the bait that we had came back without a lip. It snapped off pretty cleanly as you can see in the pictures.
While we do tend to abuse lures in the interest of seeing just how durable they will be, we don’t intentionally – most of the time anyway- deliberately try to break them. We just put them through real world, on the water use.
It was during this process when our test bait failed. Because of this, we didn’t have the opportunity to hook and land any fish with the Bull Crank.
It’s a little tough then to now write anything other than what we found. We can’t recommend this bait as it is currently constituted.
Given they make some changes to the material used, we would certainly revisit it in the future.
| Sebile Action First Bull Crank Shallow | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |   |
| A promising design with a major flaw | |
See ya’ on the water …