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Choosing Blade Sizes
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Selecting Blade Attachments

There have been an untold number of spinner blade designs over the last few hundred years, and many remain in use today. Most manufacturers limit themselves to just four basic shapes, and Secret Weapon Lures^® offers them all as quick-clip, in-line blade attachments:

• The Colorado spinner blade is almost round in shape. It rotates relatively slowly in a wide arc and produces what is best described as a “thumping” sound. It runs the shallowest and is the loudest.
• The willowleaf is the best known and most widely used of all spinner blades. Its great reputation is well deserved, but its renown is also a matter of timing because it was the most popular blade choice when bass tournaments became popular. Hence, it has become the blade choice of many tournament anglers. Today, all four blade types are used by tourney winners, based on fishing conditions. Physically, the willowleaf blade is long and narrow. It rotates the fastest of all blades and in the tightest arc. It is quieter than any other blade, and its minimal lift make it the deepest running of all blade types.
• The Indiana blade helped Hank Parker and several other top anglers achieve fame. The teardrop-shaped Indiana blade (so-called because it originated with Hildebrandt, which is located in Indiana) rotates in an even smaller arc than the above blades and at an even higher rate of speed. Perhaps the most important characteristic of the Indiana blade is that it sounds more like a quietly swimming baitfish than any other blade. The teardrop shape enables it to come through vegetation more easily than the Colorado or Turtleback blades, while still producing a strong fish-calling vibration.
• The turtleback spinner blade (also referred to as an Oklahoma or magnum willowleaf blade) is less rounded than a Colorado, and it closely resembles its namesake. The turtleback blade rotates a little faster than a Colorado and in a narrower arc. Fish love the sound, which is sort of a “slap.”

Before the advent of Secret Weapon Lures, there were no Universal Blade Attachments for all practical purposes. A few lure makers used a split ring to attach a snap-swivel to their spinnerbait’s upper arm and then snapped a blade to it. Others rigged the in reverse, with the snap-swivel attached to the blade by a split ring and the whole assembly clipped to the spinnerbait frame. Those were at times referred to as “blade attachments,” but despite the versatility they offered, the end result was always just another “me-too,” first generation spinnerbait with swivel-mounted blades. The Secret Weapon Quick-clip, In-line Blade Attachment (BA) has absolutely no relationship to those, according to the U.S. Patent Office.

Secret Weapon’s BA is what makes Secret Weapon spinnerbaits and Buzzrbaits™ out-fish every other lure in their class. No lures of their class offer greater value or are built with higher grade finishes and components.

Enough explanation for now. I want to help you to understand how to select SWL BAs for your personal arsenal. Note that spinner blade sizes are by no means standardized from one manufacturer to another. The sizes we use for the most part conform to those of our primary supplier, Lakeland, Inc. No manufacturer makes all sizes of every type blade, so remember that the sizes shown are our own and they can be found only at SWL dealers or here on our Web site.

A single SWL Clear Water boxed kit, for example, with four heads and 18 blade attachments, offers over 500 fish-catching combinations. With so many SWL Blade Attachments to choose from, how do you decide which ones to use? The selection process loses its mystery once you grasp the reasons behind it. Given one SWL spinnerbait and a small handful of SWL BAs, I can catch fish on any just about any freshwater fishery (and most estuaries) in North America. Find that hard to believe? Read on.

There are a number of SWL spinnerbaits and BAs that I could use, but for demonstration purposes, I would choose these:

1. A 5/16-oz. — approximately 3/8-oz. — Citrus Shad Tandem Willowleaf spinnerbait (SB-129-516-TW) that comes equipped with a #2 Nickel Colorado spinner blade installed in front of a #4.5 Gold Willowleaf blade.
2. Two painted #2 Colorado Blade Attachments (BAs), one chartreuse and one red.
3. Two painted #3.5 Willowleaf BAs in the same colors (one chartreuse and the other red).
4. Two metallic #3.5 Willowleaf BAs, one gold and one nickel
5. Two metallic Turtleback BAs, one gold and one nickel.

Upon arriving at your fishing destination, first evaluate the water conditions, available lighting, presence and type of cover, and other environmental factors as you tie on your one spinnerbait. Perhaps the tandem willowleaf configuration will catch fish, but is it the optimum choice? Here’s how you would evaluate the changes in the lure’s performance and/or visibility using just the blade attachments you have with you:

Suppose that you wanted to improve the spinnerbait’s visibility due to stained water. Choose the chartreuse Colorado BA if you want the lure to run shallower or with a little more sound. Otherwise, if you want it to run deeper and more quietly or through weeds, the chartreuse Willowleaf BA would be a better choice.

Perhaps you feel that water clarity suggests you should add some red movement to your spinnerbait so the lure looks like it is bleeding. You could buy an entire set of spinnerbaits like the Strike King^® Bleeding Bait series that includes red accent strands in skirts to make the lures ֻbleeders,” but that can get expensive. With SWL, just choose either the red Colorado or willowleaf BA based on the same parameters as stated for the chartreuse BAs above. Furthermore, you will quickly see that the rotating red blades do a much better job of impersonating a “bleeder” than just a few red strands in the skirt.

Perhaps your spinnerbait needs to be made even more weedless or you would like it to run deeper. If so, select a gold or nickel metallic BA (depending on water color and lighting), unclip the small Colorado BA from the spinnerbait, and replace it with the small willowleaf BA. Or better yet, pulling an idea from the pro’s bag of tricks, go even deeper and change overall lure size and appearance by unclipping both of the original blades and clipping on any two appropriate #3.5 Willowleaf BAs. Try it. This really works!

Every change that I have described so far results in extremely effective but relatively quiet spinnerbaits. If you decide that is not what you want, just use a gold or nickel turtleback BA. Replace the spinnerbait’s rear willowleaf blade with a turtleback BA, and you have successfully converted a quiet lure into a noisy lure. A turtleback blade is Jimmy Houston’s favorite. Have any of us not seen him land fish until his arms hurt with this blade? In ten seconds, without tools, you can be throwing a single- or tandem-turtleback spinnerbait.

Bob Rickard -----------------------<=-    0´)))><
August 16, 2006

Spinnerbait Blade Shapes

Notes
The information given here is based on the best data available at the time of writing. Changes will be made as dictated by new and valid information we receive.

Except for the category dealing with weedless and snagless capabilities, the characteristics above are neutral, becoming good or bad only as applied to your immediate needs.

[1] The speed of your retrieve can have as much or more affect on the depth you maintain as will the shape of the blade you use. Remember that spinnerbaits must be allowed to helicopter down to the preferred depth prior to or at some point during your retrieve, because they seldom sink during a normal speed retrieve.

[2] Even the Colorado and turtleback blades are fairly snagless, but they are far more likely to hang up in weeds than will a willowleaf blade.

[3] A wide blade such as a Colorado or turtleback rotates much farther out from the shaft, and hence is far more visible as the bait swims toward or away from a fish than is a narrow blade like a willowleaf. This becomes an important factor in stained water.

[4] High vibration and sound output volume is highly desirable in highly stained or muddy water. Conversely, that same feature can be very undesirable in clear water.

[5] Sound output frequency is a major factor in why different blade types “sound” different. At certain times fish prefer one sound to another, although no one really knows why.

Click here for a Printable Version of the Secret Weapon Blade Selection Chart