Hammered Spinnerbait Blades

Hammered Spinnerbait Blades

Smooth-surfaced spinnerbait blades are by far the most popular finish on bass spinnerbaits. They emit a lot of flash, which makes smooth blades appear larger than they really are. The vast majority of bass spinnerbaits today have smooth blade finishes.

Fluted blades are mainly smooth blades with a fluted fin ray section toward the blade's tail end.

In addition, there are a number of hammered or textured blade finishes:

• traditional hammered finish
• diamond pattern finish
• hex pattern finish
• scale pattern
• rib pattern
• ripple pattern

Hammered blades and textured patterns look nice. Most days, hammered blades may seem to produce as well as smooth blades.

However, hammered and other textured blade finishes are not very popular on bass spinnerbaits.

Hammered finishes give off less flash than smooth blades, and therefore appear smaller. Visually, they tend to present a fish scale appearance or a tiny bait pod appearance in motion.

I tend to prefer hammered finishes when I want to make blades seem even smaller or to make blades appear more separate. Hammered finishes tend to break up the large flash of a blade (or pair of blades) into a number of smaller flashes, more like a bait school, less like a singular large baitfish

Scale pattern blade finish gives a baitfish scale effect.

Hex Blades. The six-sided scale (hex) finish breaks up the reflection and the appearance of the blade, something that a real baitfish coloration is designed to do - break up the appearance of the bait. The natural-looking hex finish blends into the environment.

Lobed Indiana Blades. The Indiana blades used here have a more modern feature - a unique crease straight down the center that effectively subdivides the blade into two separate lobes.

The crease on these Lobed Indiana blades makes these blades look more like a vee-hulled boat shape rather than a perfectly round tablespoon. The centerline enhances the action and flash of the blade. You get a distinct flash off both the right and left lobe of each blade, plus a third flash off the centerline itself.

Indiana Willow Combo. This particular blade sizing and spacing is fine-tuned to give the impression of  three different sizes of shad "stacked" in a mixed size school. The Indiana blade, the medium-sized Willow blade, and the bigger skirted head represent three sizes of shad mixed together, a common schooling occurrence especially in autumn.