This is where I am currently at with choosing and rigging creature baits - somewhat cheaper options that catch bass and give me more control
If you are bored of hearing about this whole creature bait/crab imitation thing then so be it, but I make no apologies. I am loving the whole learning process associated with all this, and what I continue to want to learn about is giving myself more options when sea conditions don’t suit my open coast fishing. And of course the potential for a year round bass fishery…………….
Don’t want to read all this?! Go here.
I am a no more than a lure fishing junkie who really enjoys trying new stuff and experimenting with gear. I was never going to simply stand still and fish the MegaBass Sleeper Craw as my only creature bait, not with the numerous options I began to stumble upon as I disappeared down this particular rabbit hole. It’s a clever lure which is pretty expensive, and there are far better bass anglers than me who know a lot more about how to fish it for (sea) bass and who have caught many more bass like this than I quite possibly ever will. The Sleeper Craw is a very clever RTF (Ready To Fish) lure which makes the whole creature bait or crab imitation thing a good bit easier with how you can open up the packet - don’t mix them with other lures! - and clip or tie one on and cast it out. No weights or hooks needed because the lure is complete on its own.
Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature bait on a cheb rig
So once I had caught a few bass on the Sleeper Craw (with a big thank you to Marc Cowling for so kindly helping to get me onto my first few bass like this back in the winter), I had gained the necessary confidence that yep, the lures worked. You can read all you want, you can watch endless YouTube videos, you know they work - but you need to catch fish on them yourself. There is no shortcut that I am aware of to get me to the stage where I am not constantly wanting to change a lure because I haven’t caught on it so I haven’t got enough confidence in it. I am no Sleeper Craw expert in any way, shape or form I might add, but I have fished it a fair bit now and I think I have loosely got to grips with its strengths and weaknesses.
Then I started buying a few different Z-Man creature baits - again, do not mix them with other lures - and rigging them on a few different weedless jig heads I either had here already or managed to track down and buy (the BKK Silent Chaser EWG Round jig Head is SUCH a good jig head, I really hope that one day they will be readily available off the shelf in the UK). Rightly or wrongly I am currently of the opinion that it cannot hurt to fish with creature baits that are naturally buoyant and therefore sit upright and “wave” their claws around on the right setup. The MegaBass Sleeper Craw does this, and so do the Z-Man craws if you rig them right. I talked about the first bass I caught on a creature bait that wasn’t the Sleeper Craw in this blog post here back in May.
The Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'' rigged on a weedless jig head
So I carried on with various weedless jig heads and Z-Man creature baits and continued to catch a few fish from different marks and so on. Admittedly via my limited time and experience with this type of bass fishing, I can’t see anything wrong with rigging creature baits on weedless jig heads and bumping them around - if you can find decent jig heads with the right size heads and hooks and which allow the lures to sit upright. Not always that easy here in the UK because I guess the demand hasn’t previously been there in our saltwater world, which in turn got me thinking about other ways of doing it.
Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature bait, cheb-rigged
One of the nicest blokes in the UK fishing tackle trade very kindly sent me out of the blue an assorted colour packet of four of their new Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature baits the other day. I had seen them online but this was the first time seeing them in the flesh, and they looked rather nice - don’t mix them with other lures though, there’s a theme here! As I was going through a few different hooks and jig heads to see which might fit this new (to me) Nikko Craw 3.2inch the best, I got to thinking why not try the cheb rig with the creature baits? The hook which I had here already and upon which the Nikko Craw 3.2inch looked like it sat the best was a 2/0 Seadra T120 Weedless worm hook. But of course it needs a bit of weight to get it all working properly, and a cheb weight made sense. Plenty of different hooks and jig heads and so on are going to work with this particular creature bait of course, but I could only go looking for what I had here at home.
The only way to scratch an itch is to go out fishing and test your ideas out. The first time I fished with one of these Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature baits I got hit so hard but I struck too early and missed the bass like a complete tit. I subsequently landed my first bass on this new creature bait rigged on a cheb weight rig, and then a few more, including one this morning which slammed it. In some respects it’s fairly early days, but the more I fish these types of (buoyant) lures on cheb weights and weedless hooks, the more I am convinced that it picks up less weed as I move it along the bottom, I can feel a bit more along the bottom than with the (ever so slightly dead-feeling) Sleeper Craw, and when you need to reel your lure in over some rafts of bladderwrack to perhaps drop it back down into a big hole or gully in the weed, without a doubt the cheb weight or weedless jig head setup doesn’t get caught up nearly as much as the Sleeper Craw does when doing this.
I can always come back to them because I have a couple here, but I have not been carrying any Sleeper Craw lures with for a while now when I go out bass fishing like this. It’s a great lure, but I am not sold on the hooks which are not easy to sharpen and of course you can’t change them because they are a fixed part of the lure. I feel completely confident in the approach I am currently taking, but please bear in mind that this blog post is as of August 2025 and I am always going to try and improve my approach. The two main creature baits I currently carry with me in one of those rather good and less than £6 HTO Double Latch 20.5cm lure boxes are listed below. With what I have seen and caught on these Nikko Craw 3.2 inch creature baits so far, I am beginning to think they might be rather bloody special. Of course I bought a few more packets once I started catching on them, and I know it’s early days, but I’m sold.
I grabbed this from the “My Go-To Bass Fishing Lures” page on this website:
The two creature baits I am fishing with the most now are the Nikko Craw 3.2’’ and the Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4''. These lures are both made from a buoyant TPU soft plastic so they sit upright when you are working them along the bottom (do not mix these lures with other soft plastics in your lure box, you also can’t screw a corkscrew into them).
Through a lot of trial and error I have come around to a cheb weight/weedless hook setup because it works so well with creature baits, but the right weedless jig head is also very good. My go-to weedless hook for the Nikko Craw 3.2’’ is the 2/0 Seadra T120 Weedless worm hook and then the 3/0 Seadra T120 Weedless worm hook for the slightly larger Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4''. I then attach one of the Berkley Fusion cheb weights to these hooks, generally a 5g, 7g or 10g depending on the ground and depth and conditions etc.
If you prefer the simplicity of an all-in-one weedless jig head then the 2/0 7g Seadra weedless jig head fits the Nikko Craw 3.2’’ very well. This jig head also fits the Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'' but in a perfect world I’d prefer a slightly larger hook.
If it helps, I worked out a few basic costs per cheb-rigged lure setup, I went with the prices from Veals Mail Order. It’s exactly what I am currently fishing with, and yes, of course you have to buy the packets of lures, hooks and cheb weights to make this work, but I hope it might be of some help. See you down the rabbit hole……………
Nikko Craw 3.2'', £8.99 for 4 lures = £2.25 per lure
Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'', £5.99 for 6 lures = £1.50 per lure
Seadra T210 weedless hooks, £4.49 for 10 x 2/0 hooks = £0.45 per hook
Berkley Fusion Cheers, Cheb weights, £2.99 for 5 x 7g or 10g = £0.60 per weight
Nikko Craw 3.2 inch, one rigged lure total = £3.30
Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'', one rigged lure total = £2.55
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