How to Fish Rebel LIVEflex Series Lures in Creeks

Learn the best techniques and locations for fishing Rebel’s new highly realistic soft plastic lures to catch multiple fish species from stream settings.

Rebel Lures has taken natural attraction in fishing lures to a new level with the development of the LIVEflex series of soft plastic lures. These baits combine highly realistic shapes and colors with the fluid motion only soft plastic lures can provide and are infused with a strong natural scent. LIVEflex plastic is ultra tough, meaning the baits stay in place on hooks and each bait lasts a long time, and built-in buoyancy allows the baits to stand up, increasing realism and visibility to the fish.

While all five baits in the series share these characteristics, along with being similarly small and coming with two baits pre rigged and packaged with an extra KEG Head Jig, each is unique in terms of the forage types it suggests and the way it moves in the water. With those distinctions in mind, we will examine how to fish each LIVEflex lure most effectively in creeks and small rivers for various species bass, sunfish, trout and more.

Creek Craw

The Creek Craw uses a realistic crawfish shape and is designed to move fluidly in the current. Often, the KEG Jigs it comes matched with will be tough to top for creek fishing, although you can Texas rig it for snag resistance, drop shot it to keep the bait just off the bottom or use a split shot rig for an ultra-finesse presentation.

Focus on areas that offer both current and rock, whether in the form of gravel, shoals or boulders. Real crawfish make heavy use of rocky areas, and the fish find places to hold just out of the current so they can dart out and feed. Also note areas of submerged vegetation, which crawfish like to hide in, especially if a bit of current sweeps over the weeds or beside them.

Orient most casts upstream and let the current aid the delivery. Let the Creek Craw drift as it sinks, passing boulders and other obstructions. When it finds bottom, move it with twitches or gentle lifts so it moves with the current each time it rises and drops again. Experiment with the size and sharpness of rod movements and pay attention to what triggers strikes!

Hopper

Shaped like a cricket or grasshopper, the Rebel Hopper comes in two grasshopper colors and two cricket colors. From mid-spring through well into fall, terrestrial insects near creeks commonly hop in the wrong direction or get caught by a crosswind and find themselves afloat – enough so that stream bass, panfish and trout all get tuned into sudden plops on the top. Fly fishermen certainly know the importance of hopper patterns.

Because crickets and grasshoppers do come from land, waters near creek banks tend to be extra good for this bait. Look for grassy banks, overhanging bushes or trees and deadfalls, especially where current sweeps the bank or where there’s a hard eddy that’s between a current line and the bank.

Rigging the bait on a KEG Head Jig, swim the Hopper with the current or across it but add short, sharp twitches to suggest an insect struggling to get back to the surface. Dragging or hopping it on the bottom suggests other insects or critters that could be a meal. An alternative is to keep the KEG head rigging but add a float a foot or two above it to drift the offering in the current. Other good options include dropshotting and stringing the Hopper onto a bait hook, with no added weight, and using a casting bubble or float for casting weight and letting the Hopper drift on the surface.

Creek Creature

The Creek Creature was created to suggest a variety of aquatic insects, including Mayflies, stoneflies and damselflies, especially in their nymph stages. These insects offer critical forage to game fish of many kinds in creeks, so the highly buggy Creek Creature quite simply looks like dinner.

These species largely favor clean, rocky or sandy bottoms, ideally with some current. Gravel bars and rocky runs and the heads of the pools that these areas feed are ideal for matching natural forage. That said, these little guys suggest an easy meal anywhere fish are feeding, so don’t get boxed in with locations.

The Creek Creature is best fished on or near the bottom and moving in the same direction as the current because that matches the natural behavior of the insect they imitate. For the same reason, slow presentations tend to work best.

The Keg Head Jigs that come with the Creek Creature allow you to rock the bait, barely moving it along the bottom, or to gradually move it with gentle drags and hops. In stronger current, it will bounce along the bottom like a real insect caught in the flow. Rigging the Creek Creature on a short drop shot, nose hooking the bait, lessens the likelihood of losing baits in the rocks and allows you to present the bait barely off the bottom and very slowly.

Shore Shiner

The Shore Shiner is a small, slender swimbait with a natural minnow shape and a fast-kicking tail. It can effectively suggest a shiner, chub or other minnow when swam steadily or a sculpin when worked slowly and close to the bottom. Because it can be fished with quick, swimming presentations, the Shore Shiner is arguably the best of the LIVEflex baits for covering water to locate fish and prompt strikes from actively feeding fish.

Because different baitfish species favor different habitat types, the Shore Shiner lends itself to being fished in a vast range of areas. Most minnows don’t like strong current, so look for eddies behind downed trees and boulders and pools beneath drops and in cuts in the bank and areas of lighter current along inside bends and in wide areas of a creek. Sculpins like clean hard bottoms, often on the downside of gravel bars or in gentle riffles.

The KEG Head Jig is outstanding for the Shore Shiner because it is very well balanced for swimming presentations, which keeps the bait level, but it’s also nicely suited for bottom crawling and hopping presentations to match a sculpin. Orient casts upstream to cross current and experiment significantly with retrieve speeds, the level of the water column, and straight reeling vs adding action with the rod tip. If you’re fishing the bait shallow enough to see it through part of the presentation, watch the water behind it carefully as you fish. If fish are following but not committing, a slight variance in the presentation or a color change might convert those follows into bites.

Cata Crawler

Taking its shape from a catalpa worm, the Cata Crawler aptly suggests various caterpillars, worms and elongated aquatic insect nymphs, such as hellgrammites. It’s an outstanding finesse worm that stands up nicely when worked along the bottom and suspends just off the bottom on a split shot or Carolina rig because of the buoyancy of the LIVEflex plastic.

The Cata Crawler works well in a range of stream habitats because it suggests various menu items. Allowing current to carry it through swift, rocky runs and slowly hopping it along the bottoms of deep pools both have significant virtue, but it’s also a great target bait and well suited for casting below boulders and downed trees and into cuts in the bank.

Often the most effective rigging will be with the KEG Head Jigs that come with the baits, with the 1/16-ounce being best for shallower runs and snaggier spots and the 1/10-ounce better for getting down deeper pools. This rigging lets you drift the bait in the current, hop it along the bottom or drag it on the bottom.

Good alternatives, in addition to the split shot and Carlina rigs mentioned above, include a Texas rig for maximized snaglessness and a flick shake rig, which is a wacky rig on jighead and prompts strikes with it’s slow fall and wavering movement. A flick shake can be done with a 1/16-ounce KEG Head Jig by simply hooking the Cata Crawler right in the center.