I’ve been a lifelong fan of Gary Yamamoto and his bait company. Understand that growing up and fishing out West, Gary Yamamoto and his baits were staples in the desert lake (ie, Mead, Powell, Havasu) fishing scene and the Yamamoto Pro-Staff guys at the time (ie, Ben Matsubu and John Murray) were my idols coming up. I was fishing WON BASS as a AAA (meaning co-angler), and fished the desert lakes like Mead, Havasu, and the lower Colorado River. So when Gary and Shin Fukae both had solid performances the FLW Eastern Series on Lake Okeechobee in 2009 (my first season on the Big O) I paid really close attention. I remember going to the final day weigh in, it was cold and windy, and Shin was one of the only guys that caught a limit that final day. He said ‘Swim Senko‘ and I took note. This was the event that the late great Jimmy McMillan would win on the Skinny Dipper. Swimming worms (you can call the Skinny Dipper and Swim Senko swimbaits of course, but from my perspective at the time, it was literally swimming worms) were something I hadn’t been exposed to or had any clue what was going on.
The mighty 5″ Yamamoto Swim Senko and 5/0 Owner Twistlock Open Gap Centering Pin Hook are a staple in my grass and open water fishing. Braid in grass and florocarbon in open water.
So, after that FLW Eastern Series on Okeechobee, about a month later, there was the FLW Stren Series event that I was signed up for. This was my first months of ‘retirement’ from the corporate life I had just walked away from, so I was well funded and eager to fish, so I fished for about 25 days straight or something crazy on Okeechobee in preparation for the the FLW Stren Series event that was upcoming. Besides just learning how to run and operate a boat in shallow grass and just get a feel for the Big O, I committed a lot of time to learning this ‘swimming worm’ deal. It was a couple of things coming together all at once for me: braided line, Skinny Dippers, 5″ Swim Senkos, Gambler Flapp’n Shads, Speed Worms, and Owner Twistlock Open Gap Centering Pin hooks.
Not sure why Junebug is such a good color in Florida, but it is.
In one month, I had gone from “get me off Okeechobee, this place is going to kill me and ruin all my equipment” to “I love this place, it has made me a much better fisherman.” I had figured a few things out with the Swim Senko that helped me to a 20th place finish in that 2009 FLW Stren Series event. The Swim Senko is a much more finesse swimming worm and bait than the Skinny Dipper. Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE THE SKINNY DIPPER and it has opened up a lot more minds than just my own, but just like everything, there are subtle nuances that baits possess and do that others do not, and the swim senko proved to get way more bites in pressured water for me. It has a smaller profile and footprint, and because the Skinny Dipper was being thrown by just about every other boat in the Monkey Box (water was high, like 14.50 that year, so you could get WAY into the Box and Harney Pond areas where we haven’t been since), I was catching fish and the boats around me were not.
This was the fish where the light bulb went off in my head, and I understood what I had been missing. Okeechobee, February 2009, expression session.
The Hook:
Owner’s Twistlock Open Gap Centering Pin Hooks were made to be fished with baits like the Swim Senko. They do an excellent job of holding a bait on and keeping it true as you fish thru heavy grass (your bait doesn’t get pulled down the shank). They make rigging super easy and give you a lot of life out of your baits. You don’t have the same issues with the plastic getting worn out like you do when you thread on a worm Texas style. They definitely are quality built, super sharp needlepoint, and robust enough to handle the rigors of 50-65# braided line, heavy grass and full torque by 8 foot rods and 300 series reels. I like to fish the 5/0 with the Swim Senko, which might seem like overkill for the little bait, but it gives the bait extra weight for casting and its already an unrefined, unreal style of bait, so realism isn’t the issue, its about hooking ’em in the grass.
Green pumpkin or watermelon colors don’t suck either. The boot tail of the Swim Senko does a whole lot of twisting, which in turn, twists the entire body of the bait. One advantage round baits have vs. flat sided soft baits, is when you are in thick grass, where your bait is actually coming in and out of the water, round baits can fish cleanly upside down and all awkward like, whereas flat sided softbaits will skim across the surface or plane out to the side.
The Swim Senko has subtle things like added weight to the plastic (like the original Senko that has rocked the world, just by adding more salt and fat to their plastic, Yamamoto revolutionized making plastic baits that actually had some weight, so when fished weightless, they would sink and do subtle things that fish noticed and immediately responded to. The tail of the Swim Senko is booted, but has unique ribs that give it a unique vortex. The bait can be fished on spinning gear and skipped under trees and docks, or can be fished on 50# braid and light action 8 footers “getting after it” style in the thick grass
I wouldn’t say the Swim Senko is beautiful or gorgeous or has any realism associated with it to speak of. But it is a fish catcher. That is exactly why I like it so much, because it contrasts the “Huddlston Vortex” conversation about realism. You cannot join the realism conversation unless you have committed time and caught fish on both the very real and the very not real. The Swim Senko is Exibit A, the ‘unreal’ swimbait that catches fish. But then again, nobody is talking about 12+ pounders here, are they? We are talking tournament grass swimming baits. I pin the hookpoint back into the bait, for weedlessness. Ugly looking bugger, but dang if the fish don’t eat it.
Other Applications
The Swim Senko is a great trailer on your swim jigs and vibrating/chatter style baits. They also make great trailer on your Fish Head Spins and the underspin style of bait. They can be fished on light 1/8 and 1/16 tungsten weights with spinning gear and sorta shakey headed/t-rigged around creeks and things where you need to half way be swimming a bait and half way dragging and making bottom contact style bait. Be sure to notice there is a Jr. or small 4″ sized version of the Swim Senko too, which is awesome to fit smaller profile swim jigs, vibrating jigs and underspins or an even more finesse swimmer in the grass…
Owner continues to lead in terminal tackle that matches the physics of bigbait fishing. With the Owner Hyper Snaps, we now have high quality snaps that can be added to bigbaits, without worry about snap failure. These things are gorgeous stainless steel, and are a wonderful contrast to the junk snaps out there.
Most swimbaits and bigbaits are best fished when you tie your line directly to the bait. No need for a ring or snap, but not always. It can be difficult to find good solid terminal tackle that matches the physics of bigbait fishing. Owner Hyper Wire Split Rings are super high quality split rings that miraculously filled a void in that department, and have been a staple in my swimbait fishing for years. Now, with the addition of the Hyper Snaps, Owner has stepped up to the plate in providing super high quality stainless steel, superior strength crosslock snaps. The Owner Hyper Snaps are rounded and reasonably balanced/symmetrical, which is important because who wants unbalanced stuff, when given the choice?
$4.50 for 9 of them. Go ahead, splurge and get size #1, #2, and #3, and you’ll be covered for you small-medium-large swimbaits and bigbaits. However, if you happen to be fishing the super magnum baits or fishing for super magnum striper or some other massive 40-70+ pound gamefish and need the convenience and action snaps provide, the #4 is rated to 165 pounds.
When are snaps are good idea? It comes down to some personal preferences in how you fish, the retrieves you choose, the baits you throw, and your style of fishing. For me, snaps come into play when:
Night Fishing. I like to use snaps on my Slammers and Nezumaa Rats at night, because I have less vision on my bait, and like the sloppier swim a snap provides me at night. I feel like there is more clack and play in my slower moving wake and topwater bigbaits with a snap.
Finding Mrs. Right. Snaps give you the chance to go fishing and not have to waste time re-tying in order to change size, color, or bait. So for example, when I head out to Okeechobee and have a hardbait on my mind, and I’ve spent months preparing (ie, acquiring the baits, changing hooks and split rings, making modifications to them, etc) to take that bait and put it work, I’ll use snaps to fish the baits and see which ones perform best, which color looks the best in unfamiliar water (the black water of Okeechobee does bizarre things to how the color of your baits appears in the water), which ones are most buoyant, and just have the chance to make efficient decisions because snaps allow you make quick changes of your baits. I’ll have an open box and keep throwing 3-6 different sizes and colors of the same bait until I find one that matches what I want it to look like and do.
Fixing Lemons. Some of your swimbaits and bigbaits just don’t swim well. It happens. Snaps provide you a fall back to try and see if you can make your bait swim or perform better. For example, you can turn a MS Slammer that perhaps doesn’t slow wake or swim super well on the surface into a good topwater twitch/pause bait, or adding a snap to an MS Slammer can turn a wake bait into a super shallow cranking bait. So, use snaps when you have a bait you aren’t 100% happy with how it performs, and need another something to try and see how it fishes. Snaps typically loosen up the swim, make your bait a bit more sloppy.
70-165# ratings, which is going to cover your smallest to biggest swimbaits, and do it right, with the highest quality stainless steel.
I use snaps when testing and tuning baits, but find snaps can make certain baits, like the MS Slammer, perform differently….going from wakebait on the surface to shallow cranker.
Recommended rigging for the 6″ Huddleston Deluxe Top Hook style trout swimbait. The #2 Owner hook fits the bait well and is about as wide as the bait, and of course is balanced, so it rigs cleanly with one treble in the belly, two prongs out, in perfect symmetry.
The 6″ Huddleston Deluxe Trout is sweet candy bar sized swimbait that fits certain applications in swimbait fishing. Namely, smallmouth, spotted bass, tournament largemouth, and trophy brown trout. The 6″ Huddleston Deluxe Trout, whether you are fishing the ROF 5 or ROF 12 model, both have a top hook. So, you don’t necessarily need a bottom trap hook, however, in a lot of open water situations or situations like smallmouth or spotted bass fishing where the fish don’t always inhale the bait, a good stinger hook/trap hook setup helps with hook up percentages and just get those short and underside bites in the boat.
You can bet I’m working on a matrix and blog post that speaks to treble hooks and swimbaits. Until then, let me try and simplify this. I always will use an ST-36 treble hook when I can get away with a 1/0 or bigger sized treble hook. The ST-36 is just superior sharp, well balanced, and hooks fish for me. However, when faced with using a #2 sized ST-36 treble hook, I assess my rod, my reel, my line and what I’m hunting, because you can bend out a #2 ST-36 treble hook using a Shimano Calcutta 300 or 400 TE, 65 Pound Braid or 25 Pound P-Line Copolymer, and a medium sized 8 foot swimbait rod. That is just the physics of swimbait fishing. Not to say you bend out a hook every trip because I’ve successfully caught many nice fish on #2 ST-36, however, I have recently began using the Owner ST-56 treble hooks in places where I need small, strong and uber sticky trebles, and don’t need something as heavy duty as the ST-66s we use as part of our Huddleston Rig. So, if you are fishing for big fishes, like 4-6 pound spotted or smallmouth or really big brown trout or are fishing straight 65 pound braid and have some decent largemouth going, consider the ST-56 because you won’t bend out a hook if you happen to hang the fish on one treble and things to the wrong way for you which occassionally happens when just the right amount of torque happens on one treble. You never know when or exactly why, just too much stress on it and it bends. This happens to all lighter wire hooks by the way. That is why hooks are made in 2X, 3X, 4X etc configurations. Physics is a much bigger part of fishing swimbaits because the baits and fish are so much heavier, and so are the rods, line, gears and torque of the reel. I would fish the ST-36 Stinger Trebles if I was fishing for money. Meaning, if every bite and getting every fish in the boat, and was likely after 3 pounders or even good solid 2+ pounders, where just catching the fish, where you not likely to be catching ‘trophies’ because you’re more in a tournament mode of hunting bigger fish, I’d go ST-36 because the odds of bending out a hook are rare, but it does happen. I’d take on the risk to gain the reward of the sticky-ness of that treble hook. It is incredibly sharp and perfectly balanced, so it rigs very cleanly.
24.5″ Brown Trout, Cotter, Arkansas choked the 6″ Huddleston Deluxe Top Hook Trout. You don’t need a trap hook when they eat like this, but I like to have one on there, because they won’t always choke your bait, especially when it comes to smallmouth and spotted bass. Trap hooks just help, and the Owner Treble Hooks and Hyper Wire Spit Rings are a staple in my swimbait fishng and trap hook rigging, and have been for years. I’m getting better at matching my terminal and other tackle, it’s a system and mindset based on experience.
Owner Hooks has done something pretty cool with the Flashy Accent Trailer Blade series. The Flashy Accent is meant to compliment and add flash to any bait. You can add a flashy blade on a barrel swivel to just about any bait you can imagine. I cannot at all claim to have even scratched the surface of what these Flashy Accent’s are capable of. There are just too many baits and applications.
You have two willow leafs and one Indiana blade to choose from. Way too much still to explore, but pretty neat how well these compliment small baits, and even fish well stand alone.
Senko Upgrade:
Its hard to beat a Senko. Any accessory that will actually compliment one of the Top 3 fish catchers of recent history, is something to consider. Keith Poche put a blade in a Senko and put together an awesome 2012 BassMaster Classic as a result. A simple modification to a simple bait to give it a different look and fingerprint. The Flashy Accent is perfect for job to Poche your Senko. The Senko is so do nothing, so neutral buoyant, so simple, that adding flash to it and changing its original is always going to have drawbacks, but shoot, it’s going to have advantages at times too. Around current, where the blade is going to be flopping and turning and churning in the eddies and fast water sections, the Flashy Accent is going to really liven up and enhance what the Senko might do. I love how the bait helicopters straight down. Looks like an arrow or missle or something headed straight toward the bottom, but also uses the blade to glide along. The bait (and this happens when you’re drop shotting too) will rest on the face of the Flashy Accent and use it to plane as it falls sometimes. The other times it tends to helicopter the blade, blade end first, of the Senko and I really like that look. I tried to capture that in the video above. Fishing the 5″ Senko on a #1 Owner Mosquito Hook with criss crossed O-Rings that you put on with a Wacky Tool.
Part One: Cut #1 Paper Clip. Use to pin the Flashy Swimmer, thru the swivel, you can even remove the plastic keeper if you want and save it for using as a hook keeper, the paper clip will hold the swivel metal to metal just fine. Super Glue paper clip into bait with Flashy Swimmer, very carefully, for added insurance.Part 2: take the horse shoe cut paper clip and shove it down snugly into the end of your Senko. Use your pliers to narrow up and make the horse shoe longer, etc to best secure the Flashy Swimmer into the bait.Completed Rig. Snug down the horseshoe and go fish. I like the larger of the two willow leafs for the 5″ Senko. The smaller willow leaf Flashy Accent would look great in the 3 & 4″ Senkos.
Head Spins:
The Fish Head Spin is quietly and consistently catching lots of fish in lots of places. Grass, hard bottom, river, whatever. Places where the A-Rig is now catching them, which is lots and lots. The beauty of the Head Spin is adding some bladed flash to a swimming bait. Now, with the Flashy Accent, you can turn your drop shot baits into mini ‘head spin’ setups. Especially when you use full bodied drop shot baits. As well, with the Flashy Accent Senko Rig ala Keith Poche’s 2012 BassMaster Classic performance, you are turning your Senko into a head spin/spinnerbait of sorts. Notice how the Flashy Accent causes the Senko to fall blade end first, and how the blade turn and spins or helps the bait glide back to the bottom. The Flashy Accent is helping us blend styles and techniques, and your only limitation is your imagination. Here I am fishing the 1/2 oz Fish Head Spin with a Little Dipper as a trailer and the larger of the two willow leaf Flashy Accents.
How do you make a Fish Head Spin better? If “Fish Head Spinning” your Senko might make a Senko better, in some cases, how about Alabama Rigging (multi-rigging) your Fish Head Spin? Where you have a sorta bait ball appeal, the Flashy Swimmer gives another blade and flash to the Fish Head Spin.
Drop Shotting:
You can drop shot the Flashy Accent Trailer Blade as a stand alone bait. When your drop shot bait is on the bottom, you can do mini ‘strokes’ and the Flashy Accent fishes like a mini spoon, like guys who stroke spoons off ledges off the Tennessee River. Pretty cool drop shot refinements and integration of a few techniques into one. When you add a Flashy Accent Trailer Blade to your drop shot softbait, you give your softbait a look it probably hasn’t had much. I found the Flashy Accent compliment full bodied shad style drop shot baits like the Yamamoto Shad Shape, Jackall Clone Fry and Owner Wounded Minnow really well. If conditions call for a more horizontal and castable drop shot approach, you can sorta slow grind/hop your drop shot to make it a swimbait with this setup. Swimming your drop shot rig. It has given me the idea that I really need to lighten up the drop shot weights I’m using, especially in shallow water/current situations where you want your rig to tumble and come over gravel well. A well matched, l drop shot weight could be used to literally allow you to swim a small drop shot worm, like a fish head spin/drop shot combo, 1.5 -3 feet off the bottom from 0-100 feet. Anyway, that’s what I saw in the Flashy Accent in its action and fishability with the Wounded Minnow. I’m fishing the Wounded Minnow on a #2 Mosquito Hook. You could definitely sorta ‘stroke’ your drop shot too, which is wild.
Drop shot the blade only and ‘stroke’ the blade on slack line with a drop shot setup. Pretty cool action and a new twist on drop shot fishing.Owner Flashy Accent turns you drop shot into a head spin/swimbait of sorts, if you use a full bodied shad style drop shot bait. This is the Owner Wounded Minnow I’m using to show how the Flashy Accent compliments a drop shot bait.
Alabama Rig:
If you look at the implications of umbrella rigs and what the Alabama Rig did to our fishing, you realize we are foolish to not be using teasers and dummy baits at times give the appearance of a school of bait. The Flashy Accent provides you a mechanism to ‘A-Rig’ whatever you want, like a hard bait, or any hard bait you can think of. You basically are only limited by your skills with rigging, but the hardware is now there to add little blades to baits that otherwise had none.
Indiana Blade Owner Flashy Accent on a 3″ Big Hammer, which tells me it can be fished on the Alabama/Umbrella rigs too. Why not add blades and additional teasers to swimbaits in some cases, especially umbrella rig cases?
The Rig Affect
You can say things about the Flashy Swimmer that put it in the same conversation as the Alabama Rig. You are creating multiple flashes within one castable lure. You’re re-arranging the way blades are being strung up and hung…lets see we have inline blades and safety pin framed bladed baits. Underspins and Head Spins quietly join the party. Look at what Spencer Shuffield did at the 2012 FLW Tour Table Rock Lake event and the umbrella rig he was throwing in Missouri. It had 3 teaser blades as part of the setup. Missouri is a 3 bait only state so to maximize his effectiveness and fish within the rules, here comes this edition. Flashers and teasers, get your mind out of the gutter, we are talking about catching those suspended fishes that chase balls of baits here. My aloha pal Trevor Lincoln, from down around the junction of El Capitan and San Vicente Lakes (San Diego, CA), makes this bait called the Trip Jig. I cannot share all the details of everything I know about the Trip Jig that my friends share with me because it’s not mine to share. However, I can share what I’ve done to the Trip Jig thus far, since I fished around a lot of shallow grass this year in the SouthEast (Okeechobee, Seminole, Guntersville, Santee Cooper), and gone thru a bunch of Grass Minnows in the process:
The Trip Jig with 3 Grass Minnows on Lake Guntersville. The Trip Jig has absolutely no class: short skirt, flashy, teasy sorta bait that can be fished weedless style.
Moving Forward:
The Flashy Accent is a very unique accessory and new piece of terminal tackle in my tackle box. I basically try putting it on a bunch of various baits and see how it swims and looks and fishes. And of course, I’m fishing the ones I like and collecting footage to share in the future. The Flashy Accent is just something that literally compliments or adds some flash to just about any bait in your box. I tried to show some basics on ways I have found worthy of exploration to start. How about taking off hooks on hardbaits and using blades as teasers instead? You ever notice some Japanese hardbaits come with blades as tails and they basically put blades in places we don’t expect them at times? The umbrella rig and what we’ve learned about bass willing to chase an entire bait ball better than a single stand alone, especially while suspended. All related stuff to where and why the Flashy Accent has my attention and is being integrated into my fishing. Swimbait/bigbait implications? Don’t know yet. Have some ideas and applications but haven’t validated it enough to say. Work in progress. Feel free to join the conversation and post your thoughts/experiences below. MP
Wacky Rigging. One of my favorite things to do in a small bait, finesse, tough bite, you just need to catch 5 fish and haven’t had a bite in a while style of fishing is wacky rigging. Wacky rigging is the canary in the coal mine to me at times. If you can’t get a bite, wacky rigging, you are very likely not around ’em. My 2012 FLW Everstart tournament on Santee Cooper, started by picking up my boat in Augusta, GA on the way to lake, with a fresh fiberglass patch from the damage it sustained from Seminole. So, I only had 5 days to prepare for Santee Cooper, and in case you don’t know, Santee Cooper is 2 lakes, connected by a canal, and it HUGE. I mean, a man could spend a lifetime learning Santee Cooper, and because it has grass in it, which even the types of grasses are constantly changing (and growing and being sprayed or eaten by introduced grass carp), Santee Cooper is a lake that changes often. Add to that, South Carolina’s real estate on the Eastern seaboard. South Carolina, goes from extreme mountain trout eaters in the West, to the lowland black water swamp, palmetto tree + Spanish moss frog, swim jig, skippin’ jigs, buzzbait, 30 pound sack capable water, to Atlantic Coast beaches that people surf regularly ( I scored fun 1-2 foot peelers at Hilton Head one 4th of July circa 2006, 10 foot single fin, 80+ degree water, and a lot of hootin’ an’a hollerin’!) in the East. Santee Cooper is big fish fishery and it didn’t disappoint. Look at the weights from the event, lots of 11-15 pound, 3 fish sacks getting weighed in. Guys on 4-6 pounders pretty good, just numbers hard to come by. Santee Cooper is on a healthy cycle and it could be a sleeper for an incredible event if scheduling and weather permit. I wished I’d had more time to practice and explore things, because a bigbait bait there is inevitable. I threw Slammers, 3:16 Sunfish, 22nd Century Bluegills, and skipped the 6″ weedless Huddie too. I didn’t have tons of practice, but my gameplan was mostly around catching 4-6 pounders off cypress trees, but of course trying to just go fish and find big ones coming or going or on beds. I thought I could win with the wacky rig—if I got the bites and got them in the boat, there are just some awesome moments in tree fishing where you can get on ’em good. I had good bites going, just not lots of them, and it was the same stuff I had done here 3 years ago when I finished 7th place. I had the bites to win last time. This time, I didn’t have the bites to win, but I had a shot at it, and I knew I could compete and perhaps win, just like last time, but this time, things didn’t work out quite so well, but I did jump off a big one that cost me a Top 20 or so. 5-6 pounder eats my Senko on the base of tree with sparse grass around it in about 3 feet of water, and rips line off immediately for 10 feet right under the surface just hot and full dig style and when I went to turn and stop her, she reared up and jumped mouth open wide reverse flip backside roll tail grab fakey and spits the hook. Fudge. Whatever, I’m sitting in 7th place overall in the the SouthEast Division, and had a great tournament and finished 35th place, just solid, nothing great, but I’ll take it because Santee Cooper is tough as she is awesome at times. I had 3 fish on Day 1 for almost 12 pounds, so fun day getting 2 bigguns onboard, and one 14.5″ keeper. Big fish on the spinning gear around trees is just exciting and fun. I kept working and working, and also had a grass pattern going that never panned out, so I felt like I fished pretty damn hard and smart, just didn’t have the next levels of fish I needed. Look at how few guys caught limits both days. See Results Here. Ken Ellis won the tournament wacky rigging a Trick Worm on deep trees. So, I was on the right track and had the right gameplan, I just didn’t have the trees and the knowledge of what trees. Finding deeper trees is a key, sparse grass is key, and areas adjacent or near spawning grounds, where the fish are pulling out of their spawning areas and resting up, feeding up and hanging loose on the natural cover/structures in the lake.
The Old South. Santee Cooper is near Charleston, a city rich in old America history, and is two lakes, connected by a canal: Lakes Marion&Moultrie, named after American Revolutionary War 1770s era Generals famous for using the swamps and natural terrain to drive the Brits out. And of course, the first shots fired in the Civil War, happened in Charleston at Fort Sumter. My journey from Atlanta to Santee Cooper literally mirrored General Sherman’s notorious “March to the Sea” campaign, that ended with the Confederate surrender of Fort Sumter and terms being served, where the first shots were fired 4 years prior. I enjoy that kind of stuff, because I really try to understand the various regions and people of this country that are so different than my own home, and their history. I like South Carolina for the fishing for sure. I used to do great business in nearby Columbus and I know Charleston is really cool and happening and fun, and yet you can get yourself extremely rural and off the grid in a hurry too. Perhaps I have a soft spot for South Carolina because my personal best 14.60 largemouth came from South Carolina in 2006. But I think it’s just a killer state of mind and of fishing. The extreme Appalachian to Atlantic old timey Southern feel is highlighted with the weather. You want to talk about hot and muggy? We had low 90s and 100% humidity a couple days. Sweltering heat at times for what feels like ‘early in the year’. I believe in the summer time, Santee Cooper might be the hottest place on earth. You just feel lowland and can sense the warm ocean offsore influencing things. But then again, as the tournament came around, cool, windy, foggy, really windy, really really windy, rain and volatile weather came, making finesse fishing around trees, a bit more challenging! I wore my bibs all day on Day 1, that cold you get when you’ve been baked by the sun and then things cool down and you’re just cold because you aren’t baking hot. Finesse fishing, wacky in particular, is best served up under the above weather conditions, because the smooth water allows you to make precise and long distance skips of your bait to the tree. Wind creates surface waves which put your bait up in the tree and ruins the distance and accuracy thing horribly, but it isn’t game over, you just have to work that much harder to fish the trees properly. The calmer, the more finesse you can get, for example, throw a Trick Worm vs. a Senko, because it falls and stalls mas bueno, which is the thing about wacky, it is about fall and stall, which becomes neutral or floating mid water column at some point, which means you can keep your bait suspended or ‘floating’ one foot down, one foot off the tree, in the shade spot on base of cypress tree better than just about anything else. Stall + Fall = 0
I stayed in Eutawville (“Utah-Ville”) at Bells Marina and fished with my good friend Ron and his son, that I’d met here a few years ago when I was here last. Ron helped me quickly get a feel for the lake and more specifically, the tree bite. The best trees tend to be deeper 2.5 to 4 feet of water, and have sparse grass around them, or just be on the ‘point’ or generally favorable position to feed from in a stack of trees. However, it’s sort of like flipping at some level, where you just have to put your head down and make hundreds of perfect presentations time and time again, and eventually you get a bite. And where you get one bite, you usually get more bites. Little flurries, I love you so! I tried to find good areas of trees in practice. Which I did. I also tried to find a grass bite, which I did with some help from my man Bobby Wood and Ron Buck. I practiced with them a day and really did some damage on Skinny Dippers and Swim Senkos around lilly pads, gator grass, and mixed stuff. With the cool weather we had for the tournament, my grass bite died on the vine. You just knew they were in the grass and biting for someone, but I had trees and grass to balance, and after starting each morning in the grass and coming up empty both days, I decided my grass bite was dead and didn’t try it afternoon of Day 2, just stuck out the trees, which helped because I got my 5th fish with 10 minutes left and helped me get a paycheck. I caught all 8 of my keepers on the wacky rig and only missed one bite, but it was a big one. Wacky rigging is a work in progress for me, and I love doing it. I love super finesse and super big stuff, opposing poles, positives and negatives, north vs south/ east vs west, natural attractions and relationships between the two ends of any spectrum. I love how it points out things to my bigbait fishing, because I think my success with bigbaits in a national tournament will be somehow directly or indirectly related to a super small bait bite or understanding of fish and fishing. For example, keeping it simple, just throw a Senko or a Trick Worm, or just throw a Triple Trout or a Huddleston or Slammer, having the right tools narrowed down for your window and using the small baits to either quickly fill a limit or be there as backup to back fill a couple big ones.
Reel: Shimano Stradic 1000 or CI4 Stradic 1000 (small spooled reels handle 10-15 pound braid really well, that line has super small diameter and although I like big spooled spinning reels, smaller spooled small spinning reels are good too. You can throw small and light baits really well, and manage you line nicely. It all matches up, where you don’t have super thin line on a big spool.
Hook:Owner Mosquito Hook, #1 or 1/0, get the 50 packs, because you use these things a lot and you do break off at times because of the exposed nose hook, trust me, this is a good investment. Use bigger hook size in the wind
Rigging:Wacky O Tool and O-Rings: I put an O-Ring around my senko and slide the hook under the ring and just fish away. Sometimes I criss cross two rings and put the hook under the X, but I a really like the way this one fishes and rigs, it’s not perfect, but I haven’t found one that is!
Braided line + floro leader, Owner Mosquito Hook, O-Ring. I will use 2 O-Rings and criss cross them and put the hook under the X at times, but then again, I will just slip the hook under a single ring and just go fishing. I catch a lot of fish on this rig, and slight variations of it anytime I’m around shallow grass, wood, and rock. Trick worms and Senkos are blue chip baits, make sure you own plenty in various colors black to green. Get a feel for skipping, floating, dragging and stalling side rigged baits. Bait control.
Some really good fish were caught in the grass. You just had to have grass with bait or just fish in it. The grass was like the trees, lots to choose from, but most does/do not hold fish and even if they do, you have to be good to catch them, especially for 2 days in a row. Things change quickly on Santee Cooper.
I was getting 1 or 2 fish in the 4-6 pound class a day fishing the trees slowly and thoroughly with wacky rigs. Scattered grass, access to deep water, shade all helped the cause. I figured I might be able to squeak out 15 or 20 pounds a day on the right days. I almost pulled it off, but not quite. No regrets, looking forward to getting back there sometime and getting back to work. “Fine thanks……………………you?”
The Big Hammer Sight Fishing Rig is part of a system. It's a system that involves using finesse baits and bigbaits to aggravate a fish into biting. The swimbait is fished as an 'intruder' and provides a power fishing approach to big fish, the female kind usually, but also good for the better than dink males you might need in a tournament situation.
We shared this rig in Southern Trout Eaters. We have been getting asked a lot of questions about it, and Spring has sprung, so here goes. Think of the 5″ Big Hammer Sight Fishing Rig as a workhorse bed fishing bait, geared for ‘bigger’ fish. The one rod you have rigged up in case you come up on or purposely hunt big fish on beds. We’ve had a few years to validate this rig, in the mountains, and in the grass of Okeechobee and Seminole. I credit my friend and trophy bass hunter from the Bay Area, Rob Belloni, for sharing the fundamental of his Big Hammer Texas Rig with me. I’ve sorta dumbed it down since I’m usually not hunting double digit fish with it, most of my world, 4-9 pounders are king, with chances at double digits for sure though. I’ve made my own adjustments and have made it a staple in my sight fishing system. Rob has fooled giants, I have now fooled quite a few 4-9 pounders with it in multiple Southern States. This is a great trophy and tournament style of sight fishing, and it points out the need for a knock out punch in your bed fishing arsenal.
The 5" Big Hammer Sight Fishing Rig. 5" Big Hammer, rigged flat side up. Just bury your hook point enough to keep the bait weedless and free from snagging the fish, but able to sting one that just barely grabs it. Peg your weight, pitch and hop this thing around larger bed fish and see what happens.
The 5″ Big Hammer Sight Fishing Rig:
Bait:5″ Big Hammer Swimbait (colors: Pearl, Invader, Glowbug, Silver Phantom, Chartreuse, Fire tiger)
This 7'10" Powell Flipping Rod is a favorite all purpose 'heavy pitching' rod, for baits >1 ounce but not more than 1.5 or so. ie the Medlock Jig, 5" Big Hammer Rig, pitching 3/4 -1 ounce creature baits in grass, and light punching. The rod has guts. I think of it as a heavy pitching stick. I have whipped some nice fish with this rod. The short handle makes it handle and fish nicely, but long enough for leverage.
When you look at the trends in where bed/sight fishing is going, you will notice certain swimbaits and softbaits have flat sides or can be rigged flat side up are doing the most damage out there. More cutting edge, more geared towards targeting bigger fish or a better mouse trap for fooling weary pressured fish. The Dean Rojas Warmouth, and the Jackall Clone Gill 2.5 and the Mission Fish are all part of the big picture of modern sight fishing. All have wild variations and secret rigging and tricks I’m sure. I know the Hammer and Mission Fish best, both part of my toolkit. Believe me when I tell you I use a drop shot a lot when sight fishing. You need a big knock out punch and you need finesse, so I use the Mission Fish and Hammer as my big knockout punches, and drop shot/wacky and light texas rigs like the Warmouth and Clone Gill as my finesse approach. I thought it important to note flat side up or just flat sided bed fishing baits, have something about their swagger. Flat sides, square/boot/slight swallow tails, realism, perch/bluegill profiles, buoyancy, weedlessness, unique vortex, and big fish attraction. The Lateral Perch from PowerTackle is a derivative here, and likely a bed fishing bait for someone out there, but too has the this flat side up profile and swim, and is worth noting. I cannot speak to how well the Lateral Perch catches fish, but all of the other named baits I’m 100% certain catch fish on beds really well, and have too much in common not to connect the dots. They all fish differently, but in the grand scheme of sight fishing, you better have tools that can be drop shotted, pitched, weightless/wackied, hopped, swam, and texas rigged if you want to be competitive. Don’t just limit yourself to white tubes, craws and creature baits. Be thinking perch/bluegill too.
The Okuma 7'6" MH Rod getting it done too. You need some 7'6" and shorter than 8' rods for fishing baits like the Mission Fish. This is an even beefier style of pitching stick vs. the Powell, but it takes the conversation to more like 2-6 ounce baits no problem. I liked using it for the 5" Big Hammer rig too. Lots of power and fished very nicely. The rod still has good feel even though my rig was under weighted for the rod, and it just worked for me.
The 5″ Big Hammer Sight Fishing Rig is an excellent sight fishing system. You can see your bait very well in the black Florida water, and it shows up well fishing a bed fish in >8 feet of water in clear water. The rig has ample weight involved, which means you can ‘rapid fire’ and harass a fish with the bait, pushing the fish around, and firing them up into biting. The bait hops really well, and has the square tailed flap on the way back down to the bottom. It’s more of a hop hop and slight drag and shake style of bait. The fish love to ‘catch’ the bait coming back down to the bottom, with a well placed and timed hop. The 5″ Big Hammer gets bigger bed fish to bite and has an excellent hook-up and land ratio. There is very little risk of foul hooking or snagging a fish, with the Texas rigged nature of the bait, which also opens up the ability to bounce the rig off of the side, head and tail of the fish, making them eat it. You can expect to see a sight fishing production from us in the near future, highlighting this rig. We gave a sneak peak of the bait underwater in our Lake Seminole FLW Evestart Preview video, in case you missed it.
