You can do a lot with a good mid-depth crankbait. Squarebills work well super shallow in 3 feet or less. And the deep divers do a good job once you get out to 10 feet or more. But that sweet spot in the middle is where a lot of anglers put down a crankbait and pick up a spinnerbait, jig, vibrating jig or swimbait. So finding a go-to crankbait in this range could help you catch more fish. And that might be what you find in the new Berkley Dime 4 Crankbait.
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DIVES 4 to 6 FEET
Don’t let me be mistaken, many quality baits dive 4 to 6 feet in the crankbait niché. This body style offers a narrower wobble than most in the 4 to 6 foot ranges, which makes it a good choice in cool water. That’s basically what it is built for is cooler temps and pressured fish where more aggressive crankbaits might be turning the fish off once they get conditioned.
NOT BALSA
For comparison’s sake, let’s look a little more at how the Dime 4 stacks up against coldwater balsa baits which is what a lot of anglers opt for when the bass are a bit more sluggish.
Wood baits work without a doubt, and I’m not aiming to discredit the need for balsa wood baits. Nor do I want to deal with the Internet backlash that such a statement would unleash. I’ll simply say there’s room for both wood and plastic baits in the crankbait world, and that’s where the baits part ways, as the Dime 4 is made using a dense plastic. Which, at the risk of stepping slightly further out on a limb here, is more durable than balsa wood. It also gives you some options for translucent colors as well as adding things like rattles. So again it has some attributes that make them another valuable tool in your box.
WEIGHT TRANSFER SYSTEM
One of the other benefits to plastic over balsa is the ease of configuring the innards. Since this bait is plastic, it is hollow and has more room inside for the designers to work. In this cavity, Berkley added a weight transfer system that not only allows for this bait to be casted a long distance, it also creates a dull knock as the bait is reeled back through the water.
If you hold this bait in your fist and give it a shake front to back, you can hear the weight transfer system knocking loudly. This would give the impression that this bait has a loud, one-knocker style rattle in the water. But that’s not the case. Holding the bait in your fist and shaking it side to side, you’ll hear a subtler movement of the weight inside the bait, which more accurately replicates what it sounds like as it wobbles through the water.
FUSION19 HOOKS ADD TO CATCH
The Dime 4 (as well as its siblings, the Dime 6, 10 and 15) is fitted with Berkley’s Fusion19 treble hooks. I didn’t have a lot of experience with these hooks prior to trying out the Dime 4, but I was pleased with their effectiveness. They stayed sharp despite grinding away on the bottom and didn’t bend on fish.
As I just mentioned, the Dime series actually comes in four different sizes. Berkley incorporated a pretty cool little feature to make it easy to identify which is which. Below the bill of the bait, there’s a small clear window where you can see the size of the bait printed on a metal disk that is used to balance the bait out. Perhaps it’s unnecessary, as the model number is also printed on the belly of the bait, but I do think it’s pretty cool.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH THE BERKLEY DIME
I tested this bait out mostly fishing around rock and wood. On one trip, I fished it under a dam for a couple hours where the water was a pretty uniform depth of 4 to 6 feet, with the occasional deeper hole, high spot or boulder. It was easy to get the bait down to the bottom and keep it there. I really liked that I could slow grind the Dime 4 along the bottom without it hanging up a lot. And when it did hangup it would typically float off if I gave it slack or I could pop it undone.
I actually let a buddy that was with me throw the Dime 4 a while too after catching a few fish on it myself. My friend isn’t quite a novice angler, but he certainly doesn’t get out on the water nearly as much as I do. So it was good to give him a bait that I felt confident he could throw easily, and one that didn’t take a lot of expertise to fish effectively. He ended up catching 4 or 5 bass on this bait as well, only hanging when he’d unwittingly thrown into inches of water and cranked down a little too quickly.
MORE THOUGHTS ON THE DIME
I’m looking forward to fishing this bait deep into and through the winter this year. It’s a great size for tournament fishing, as its size appeals to both big fish and solid keepers alike. All the Dime crankbaits come in an impressive 20 different color choices, with the Dime 4 in particular weighing 2/5 ounce and measuring 2 inches in length.
This crankbait retails for $10.99, so the price point is middle of the pack compared to other cranks in its class. There are certainly cheaper and more expensive options. But the Dime 4 dives quickly, runs true even at higher speeds, has strong and sharp hooks and comes in a plenty of color choices. The weight transfer system helps it cast as good as or better than other comparable baits, and it’s a great lure to catch fish with regardless of your skill level. At least, that’s what I found when testing the Dime 4 crankbait from Berkley. So I’d say the price is warranted when it offers better hooks, better casting and more consistent performance across a range of speeds.
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