Creature questions - are these lures really imitating a crab, or is it more important that they are something vaguely appealing fished tight to the bottom?

Just this morning at breakfast my wife said that I definitely have an obsessive personality, and to put it into context I was trying to have a conversation about running and not fishing - she has no interest in either I might add. We have been together for nearly thirty three years now and I am so bloody glad I didn’t die of my heart attack because I get to be with her for longer. I have always believed that one of our strengths is that we love spending time together, BUT we also have always had plenty of stuff we love to do with isn’t together and in each others’ pockets all the time. Sorry, I digress. Me, obsessive?

Storms aside and not being able to get out fishing because of them, you have probably guessed that I am properly obsessing about the whole creature bait thing. Not very long ago I didn’t have a clue what a creature bait was, indeed if you go looking you will actually find that a lot of what we are stumbling across are often called “craws” and so on. Because so many of us here fish for (sea) bass and of course various types of crabs are seriously on their menu, I guess we tend to see these creature baits as crabs, when in fact my understanding is that for the most part they are meant to be imitating freshwater crawfish for freshwater/largemouth/black bass fishing in the US, Mexico, Japan, Spain etc.

There will always be anglers who say that they have been (sea) bass fishing with stuff like this since before they were born, but personally I choose to credit a few good and generous anglers with opening their minds and then talking about their experiences mainly online and in a way that helps to inform and get other anglers thinking (instead of talking down to other anglers that serves no purpose other than to feed an ego and be unpleasant). I am a sponge with my fishing and I love to learn from better anglers who kindly help to stimulate my brain. So the one question which keeps rearing its head in my head is this:

Are these creature baits (which are technically freshwater crawfish imitations) actually imitating crabs in a saltwater environment, or is it the fact that they are a (vaguely appealing looking) lure fished tight to the bottom which is the key when it comes to (sea) bass fishing?

We are obviously never going to know the definitive answer, but if something like a Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil is essentially the same shape as a sandeel, then something like that all-in-one MegaBass Sleeper Craw sure looks to my human eyes a good bit like a crab in a defensive mode with its claws up as the lure is slowly dragged along the bottom or held in place (is a somewhat cheaper “tribute” like this worth looking at? I don’t know by the way, but I went looking on Amazon for the Sleeper Craw and came across them). We are not fish and we don’t know for sure how something like a bass sees a creature bait style lure, but with how I am learning how to fish them in estuary systems especially, to me I am leaning towards the imitation of a very important good source for estuary based bass.

The all-in-one MegaBass Sleeper Craw

I talk about all this with a few very good anglers I know and who are kind enough to indulge my questions, and I also pay careful attention to what a few specific anglers say online because I know how good they are at what they do. As one of these anglers alluded to the other day on Facebook and which is something I have been thinking about the moment I learnt what a creature bait was in (sea) bass terms, he was questioning whether a creature bait is a crab imitation or the most important thing here is that to fish them properly you are keeping that lure tight to the bottom nearly all the time. Are we appealing to bass which are rooting around purely for crabs - which as far as I know spend most of their time on the bottom - or are we trying to catch bass which are feeding head-down because whatever they are after is tight to the bottom? Crabs, prawns, baby flounder, blennies or gobies (I never really know the difference) etc.

The Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'' rigged on an OMTD Big Football Power (weedless) Jig Head 3/0, wow do these things stand upright in the water!

To put it very simply, I can see nothing but logic to me as a bass angler trying to sometimes imitate something like a crab when I go bass fishing in certain types of location or times of the year. Note that I am nowhere near having a lot of answers yet, but I got that jolt of confidence I need, I saw another bass landed and a couple missed on creature baits before these storms rolled back in, and I have many, many more questions rattling around inside my head! The main thing to me is that it’s going to be so much fun learning more about this “bottom contact” style of bass fishing and whether it does actually become an important string to my bow or not………………

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