Shavin Crankbait Lips

After watching "Wining Ways" the TV show where Timmy Horton stated how he shaved his crankbait bills, I gave it a shot. He uses a belt sander but I just used a normal hand file. I wouldn't recommend it though, it wasn't easy. Anyways I got the bait to swim straight eventually and I cant wait to take it out to the Cal Delta. Here's the article if your interested.

Timmy Horton's Crankbait Cure

By Tim TuckerBASS Times Senior Writer, September 2006

Former BASS Angler of the Year Timmy Horton is a crankbait fanatic.
In tournaments, diving plugs have long been one of the Alabama pro's mainstays. In his workshop, cranks are often the objects of considerable tinkering.

"One of my favorite things to do is modify crankbaits like a No. 6 or No. 7 Fat Free Shad, or a 6A Bomber," he said. "I'm always working on them and experimenting with different things."

One of Horton's tinkering tools is a handheld belt sander."The first thing you want to do is make sure the bait is tuned properly before you start to sand it," he explained. "After you sand it, you might mess it up and have to make adjustments then."

With the big Fat Free Shads, Horton shaves about a 1/32-inch swipe along both sides of the plastic bill at the point where it enters the nose of the bait."And then I go back to my swimming pool and make sure the bait is still running properly," he noted. "If it's running off to the right a little bit, I need to shave a little bit off of the left side of the lip. If it's running off to one side, I shave off the opposite side."

Why would you give a crankbait a shave? "It makes the bait run a lot tighter," Horton replied. "It makes it roll instead of the usual action. And it gives it a lot tighter wiggle. It also gives you a unique lure that nobody else will have. And you can really toy with them by making a Fat Free Shad that will run 10 feet instead of 14 feet or vice versa.

"The reason I want a No. 7 Fat Free Shad that will run shallower with a tighter wobble is that I still want that big-bodied bait. I remember Rick Clunn winning a tournament at Lake Texoma. He was fishing shallow, but he still wanted to fish that big-bodied crankbait. This is the same situation. That's what this [modification] does. And you usually don't see a lot of big-bodied baits with a small lip. But I can take a belt sander and modify them and get them down to the right size."

By shaving off the kick-out points on the bill of a Fat Free Shad, Horton believes the transformed tighter wobble makes it an excellent cold-water cranker. With a Bomber 6A, he shaves the front point of the lip, giving the lure a more subtle action that pays dividends on waters where the bass receive substantial fishing pressure.

"Bass feed on a crankbait by the feel of that thing wobbling through the water. And what you're actually doing is taking some of the action off of the crankbait, which is what you have to do in high pressure situations."

A word of caution: Horton says it's best to practice these modifications on spare lures first, rather than on your favorite crankbaits, "because it takes some time to get used to doing it."

If anyone has anymore tid bits on this I'm all ears.