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Swim Signatures

Swim Signature: Owner Flashy Accent Trailer Blade

Published: 26 June 2012
Written by Alex Tech
1 Comment
Categories: Owner Hooks, Rigging, Small Bait Fishing, Swim Signatures, Terminal Tackle, The Alabama Rig

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6k4B5tfsks]

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

Swim Signature: Huddleston Deluxe Grass Minnow

Published: 23 June 2012
Written by Alex Tech
2 Comments
Categories: Huddleston Deluxe, Swim Signatures, Weedless Swimbaits

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsygKdiPAac]

The Grass Minnow has proven itself to me in the grass.  Shallow grass lakes of the South East.  As I spend more time in the Arkansas Ozarks, I am broadening my application of the Grass Minnow.   The warm and cold water creeks and rivers that feed the Ozarks are full of smallmouth and largemouth, and trout.   So, it’s not the heavy grass fishing, but it is more a finesse approach, but still a real swimbait approach.  I’m fishing the Grass Minnow much like I currently fish the 3″ Big Hammer.  Yes, a spinning rod.   Wet wading, aloha colored swimming trunks, oversized sunglasses, big hat and Buff covering my face, walking or floating a few miles of river here and there.   Getting some exercise and just trying to do it all. The Shimano Cumara 7’2″ Rod + 15 pound Power Pro Braid + 3 feet of Yamamoto Sugoi 10# floro are working really well for me which is crazy to have a bait that fishes well on 50 # braid and GLoomis 964 BBR (Okeechobee style) and now I’m fishing it on a spinning rod.  The Huddleston Vortex continues!    The Grass Minnow is just an extremely real looking and swimming bait, and I’m realizing cannot be pigeon holed into being just a grass bait by any stretch.

How many zillions of minnows are there in our lakes and rivers?  Little narrow looking fishes with forked tails. Fish tend to bite the Grass Minnow. With the right equipment and hookset, you’ll land your bites.

The Grass Minnow is a pretty sophisticated little candy morsel of a swimbait.  The bait is flat sided, has a unique swallow tailed vortex tail, yet the belly and shoulders are full and bulbous, so the bait has the classic Huddleston water displacement and push that we’ve gotten hooked on with his 8″ Trout.   Sometimes people discuss what is the definition of a swimbait, and where you draw lines, etc.  Sophistication trumps size in this case.  The Huddleston Deluxe Grass Minnow is a swimbait you need to learn.  I now have a heavy grass assault (ie, Okeechobee), sparse grass assault (ie, Champlain) and river fish (Ozark) application for this bait.   You have to be good to really understand, fully leverage, and fish this bait properly.  It’s fairly easy to swim, yet if you want to slow down, pause, dead stick and finesse fish with it, it does that too very well.  In shallow rivers, I’m finding it an alternative to the little tube where you can sorta hop/drag/swim it, and skip it under trees and into shade pockets which tends to be where fishes live in shallow low water Arkansas.

The Grass Minnow fishes well on the drop and can be dragged/hopped, like the 3″ Big Hammer, except its  ROF 5 vs ROF 30 respectively (approx). The Grass Minnow is very neutral buoyant and falls nice and slow and graceful. It has a hollow midsection, used as part of the weedless design, that also gives the bait an internal bladder. The bait falls and orients nose down and just drags nicely over hard bottom. It’s not just an excellent grass bait.

So, here’s the hookset with a spinning rod:   Tighten up your drag, so line doesn’t come off when you set the hook.  Point your rod tip at the fish when you get a bite and reel down until you feel tension of the fish at the reel and once you make really good contact with the reel>line>fish, put the rod into the mix and lift up hard with the rod and drive the hook home and maintain a good strong constant pressure as you move the fish and rod a few feet to really pin the fish.  Reel hard and heavy get maximum pressure as you swing the rod to set.   I could probably get away with a slightly heavier spinning rod than I’m using, perhaps the MH vs. the M model.  I am surprised how well it is fishing for me and hooking fish.  I am pretty converting a bunch of my stuff over to braid + leader setups, it just works great for me and my style of fishing.    This is another instance where braid provides something that couldn’t be done with mono or floro (fish a weedless Huddleston bait on a spinning rod, and still be able to hook fish).

Grass is where you find it. Weedless baits sometimes fish really well without weeds. Just like some non-weedless baits fish really well in weeds. A softbait without a top hook sticking out, treble hook hanging or sticking out,  or trap rig of any kind.  Just a clean real bait, sans hook.  It looks really good in the water and fishes super clean.
Yes, that is a spinning rod. The Grass Minnow fishes amazingly well with the spinning rod. Braided line gives me the hookset I need, and the floro leader helps me get bit in uber clear skinny water. But boy, they eat it. Weedless swimbaits fish really nicely in all waters, but around current, where your bait can tumble/ deadstick and hop and stroll, that’s where not having a hook or any exposed hardware really pays off and gives ’em a different look, keeps your bait free from muck, and is a much more refined approach, especially in clean water.  Stay tuned, this whole spinning rod swimbait thing is still being tested, but appears to be excellent.

Music: 

“First Light”

Bobby Vega & Chris Rossbach

Usage Courtesy:  Body Deep Music

Swim Signatures: The 5″ Big Hammer Swimbait

Published: 12 June 2012
Written by Alex Tech
1 Comment
Categories: Big Hammer, Swim Signatures

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f44H2A9gTtQ]

The 5″ Big Hammer is a workhorse swimbait plain and simple.  Born in the Pacific Ocean, to catch calico, sand, and spotted bay bass the 5″ Big Hammer Swimbait is a unique bait that swims high and low, and with the exposed lead head design, provides you bottom contact and rate of fall few other swimbaits can match.   The 5″ Big Hammer is one of the few swimbaits I can say I’ve consistently caught fish with in >15′ of water (speaking about non-trout fed tournament style lakes) off the bottom and fish that were suspended.  The ledges of Kentucky Lake, for example, has deep schools of fish and I found the 5″ Big Hammer to be an excellent bait to catch them with.  This Swim Signature Series piece is dedicated to showing the swim, hop and drag of the 5″ Big Hammer swimbait.

The 5″ Big Hammer Swimbait on a 3/4 Big Hammer Head. The 5″ Big Hammer swimbait is a swimmer but also a drop bait, a stroke bait, a vertical bait, and a dragging style swimbait. A well rounded swimbait, you might say. But the tail is anything but round. Known as the ‘square tail’ you can see the twist of tail and the ripple effect on the back half of the bait in the picture. Also, you can see the beautiful purple hue of the color, “Silver Phantom”.

I fish the 5″ Big Hammer on a 3/4 ounce Big Hammer Head with the 4/0 hook.  That is the setup in the above swim signature series, where we are looking at the the Big Hammer as a swimmer, but also a dragger and a hopping bait too.  The exposed lead head just gives you excellent touch and feel, to know hard and rock bottom vs. sand or muck, and dang it if the bait doesn’t sink out like a rock.  Incredible rate of fall, even with a 3/4 ounce head (Big Hammer makes them up to 1.5 ounces).   So, you can fish these thing DEEP and maintain excellent bottom contact.

Notice the pyramid head and shape of the Hammer head how well it orients a bait that sits on the bottom. For an exposed hook/top hook swimbait, the Big Hammer is amazing at getting thru rock and hard bottom/sand. Not so great around wood. The pyramid head shape with the line tie back off from the nose, is really good for swimming and for hopping and dragging. You don’t bang your knot into rocks as bad and you tend to be able to orient the bait up and pop it up and out of harms as you fish it out deeper.

I suggest fishing the 5″ Big Hammer swimbait on at least 20# mono.  I fish the bait on 65# Power Pro braid tied to a 4 foot piece 20-25# of P-Line CXX Copolymer.   I have excellent feel with the braided line, and get a good hook in the fish with the braid too.  I have fished this setup lots of times successfully with just 17-20 pound mono/copolymer, and no braid, and this too is another setup I’m switching over as I slowly migrate all my swimbait baits to braid + leader.     A faster action, not super fast, but not super slow, long rod is what you want to fish this bait. I like the Shimano Crucial 7’11” MH  for the 5″ Big Hammer.

Music:

Song: “Not Even…”

Album:  The Left Hand Side

Usage Courtesy:  Body Deep Music

Swim Signatures: The 3:16 Lure Company Sunfish

Published: 5 June 2012
Written by Alex Tech
3 Comments
Categories: 3:16 Lure Company, Bluegill/Sunfish Baits, Owner Hooks, Swim Signatures

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvgiSIRm6lQ]

The 3:16 Lure Company Sunfish is a bait I reconnected with this year.  I had fished it before, but after some sitting and thinking about some things, simplification and just expansion of the bigbait journey, I realized the bluegill/brim/sunfish space was something I needed to focus and commit to.   I tied the 3:16 Sunfish and hit Okeechobee this past winter, and immediately picked up where I’d left off with the bait some years ago on places like Lake Otay.   Let me be clear, you need a bluegill/brim/shellcracker/sunfish swimbait approach, especially around the spawn.    So, the 3:16 Sunfish (and you should know that the 3:16 Bluegill is the exact same bait, just poured in a different color.  Both baits are killer. I just like a little chartreuse and watermelon green in my life whenever possible), is a fish catcher.

The 3:16 Lure Company Sunfish. A great swimming bait, booted tail with lots of lift which helps get it up around shallow grass, yet, you can still sink it out and slow grind it back for a more mid water column retrieve. The bait can definitely be burned and it still runs amazingly true, as per the fast water section of the above video clip.

I fish the 3:16 Sunfish on a medium action 8 foot rod, moderate fast, parabolic style, 965 BBR G-Loomis Rod with a Calcutta 300 TE Reel.  I am using 65 Pound Power Pro Braid (no mono leader as per in the video, yet….I’m still messing around but straight 65# braid is awfully good) and one single 1/0  ST-41 Owner Treble Hook.  Why the ST-41?  I feel like the ST-41 Treble Hooks are excellent when fish load up and just eat a bait. you don’t ‘skin hook’ or barely hook fish on the 3:16 Sunfish.  They eat the whole damn thing.   If I’ve only got one hook, and I’m getting 4-6+ fish, which is common, I need one strong hook and the ST-41 has worked well for me, especially when matched with 65# Braid.   You could definitely use the ST-36 Owner Stinger Treble here too.  I am constantly trying new things and just sorta testing and seeing what works and what doesn’t and found the single 1/0  ST-41 Treble Hook to match this bait and how I’m fishing it on braid really well.

Slashing and Burning. The tail of the 3:16 Sunfish and Bluegill is a ‘slasher’ as far as I’m concerned. It’s like a buzz saw. But it’s got a lot of twist in it too, so what do you call a twisting buzz saw? A twistbuzzstersaw. Say that 5 times fast!

The purpose of this Swim Signature series is to provide an underwater and slowed down look at various baits, big and small.  Not to critique or necessarily ‘review’ the baits, at least, not yet.  This is an objective, here is this bait swimming in the water look.  You can form you own conclusions, but I suggest you might pick one or four of these 3:16 Sunfishes up.  They are softbaits, they fish really well, you can catch a bunch of fish per bait, and you will see in some future productions, they catch nice size and numbers.  For $12.99 you get a lot of bait that will be worth the money, and I’m about 99.99% sure your bait will run true, as per Mickey’s packaging and quality control standards. His baits just swim bang on out of the box.   Bass inherently have a contentious relationship with the panfishes, which means they tend to eat them out of anger and hunger, which tells me I need to be throwing them, especially when trout are not an option.

What do Paul McCartney and the 3:16 Sunfish have in common? They both love to twist and shout. “You know you twist so fine!”

Music:

“Che Seville”

Album: The Left Hand Side

Usage Courtesy:  Body Deep Music

Swim Signatures: The 8″ Huddleston Deluxe Rainbow Trout ROF 5

Published: 4 June 2012
Written by Alex Tech
No comments
Categories: Huddleston Deluxe, Rate of Stall, Swim Signatures

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QGe7_JWT2s]

Swim Signatures. I just like this project.  So, this is the mighty ROF 5 Huddleston Deluxe Rainbow Trout swimbait that didn’t get the airtime it deserved in Southern Trout Eaters.  Now, why would that be?  Because of where the fish were and the time(s) of year we did most of the fishing and filming.  The ROF 5 is a staple in my Huddleston approach.  I usually have a ROF 5 and ROF 12 tied on every time.  The ROF 5 is where “rate of stall” came from in my head.  I can fish the ROF 5 much slower across a point, while still having the bait swim true, than I can the ROF 12 or ROF 16.  The ROF 12/16 will want to sink out faster so you have to reel them a bit faster to keep the nose from pointing down.   The ROF 5 sinks belly button first, something we captured in above video clip that is key.  It falls straight horizontal and remains parallel to the surface of the water as it sinks which too helps you creep it along at a super slow pace and keep the bait oriented correctly.

ROF 5 means more stall, more neutral buoyancy, a bait that falls horizontal (vs. nose down). I’d best compare it to a properly rigged and balanced senko setup. Very slow horizontal fall with a lot of wiggling and undulating, but its the ability to swim it slowly on a perfect horizontal plain, and wag that tail super duper SLOW that gets this ROF destroyed by trout eaters.

The ROF 5 has different applications than does the ROF 12, and fishes really well in cold water, offshore, and along pieces of key structure where I know there are fish living, and I want to slow down and really stall them out.   Think about grass fishing.   As I progress and poke around places like Okeechobee and Guntersville with the 8″ Huddleston Deluxe, I’m using the ROF 5 a lot because of the buoyancy and stall factor which is very important in grass fishing, and it also all tends to balance really well with 80# Power Pro braided line fishing.

Watch in the video all the undulating and subtle things the Huddleston does while its swimming. Fins waving, head and body wobbling and literally swimming.

I’m planning on doing a whole series of thing solely around the 8″ Huddleston Deluxe Rainbow Trout, which will better compare ROFs and ‘things’.  But this exercise is about the swim, the swim signature of a ROF 5 version of the Huddleston Deluxe Rainbow Trout.  I tell people who want to get started with Huddleston fishing, learn the ROF 5 and ROF 12 because they are both very good tools for hunting big fish, tournament or just solely trophy hunting.   They are the 2 ROFs I most recommend (but don’t discount the effectiveness of the ROF 0 or ROF 16 either, they are just more ‘specialty’ but not duds by any stretch).

ROF 5, because it has no top hook, is perhaps the finest, most real swimming specimen you can feature. Hence, an almost 5 minute YouTube video of various angles and looks at the ROF 5 in the water. It deserves <5 minutes of your time.  Or actually no, don’t worry about the ROF 5, just throw the ROF 12 and let me worry about it!

Stay tuned for more from our ‘Swim Signatures’ series.   Kind of a fun project to look at what is going on under the water with the baits we fish, big and small.

Music:

“Desert Sand”

Album:  The Left Hand Side

Usage Courtesy:  Body Deep Music

Swim Signatures: The Huddleston Deluxe Weedless Shad

Published: 17 May 2012
Written by Alex Tech
1 Comment
Categories: Huddleston Deluxe, Swim Signatures

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzN8g72tt14]

I have decided, among other things I’m planning on doing this summer, that I’m going to be gathering a library of underwater footage of certain baits, as they swim.   To me, a ‘swim signature’ is the footprint or fingerprint or unique identifier that all baits have.  This just needs to be done.    The culmination of all things a bait gives off as it is swam (thinking mostly swimbait/bigbait) but all baits have some sort of fingerprint in or ontop of the water.  I have access to a river, various springs, and clear water lakes that shall provide excellent natural environments to show the swimming of various baits and just showcase baits in the water.   I’ve seen a lot of footage of baits swimming in swimming pools and even in lakes/ponds, but I’m finding there is something unique about swimming a bait in place in the current of a river, that allows the camera to really capture the subtle details of the swim and give you a better feel for all that is going on with the bait.

First thing of course is the dead-on accuracy and realism of the bait’s profile. Notice the Weedless Shad’s fully booted, miniaturized version of the 8″ trout’s vortex tail. The Weedless Shad’s tail has more thump and vortex than the Grass Minnow, and because it is a slightly bulkier and heavier bait, I find it fishes better in some situations. But both the Grass Minnow and Weedless Shad should have real estate in your tackle box. Fish catching sum’o’guns.

The idea of this ‘swim signature’ series is to provide an objective look at how baits swim in the water, with very little or zero narration or voice over.  So, to kick things off, I went out and spent some time swimming the Huddleston Deluxe Weedless Shad in very clear little crick.  I am using normal and slowed camera speeds.   The Weedless Shad is an incredibly real and lifelike shad swimbait.  I have caught fish from Lake Champlain to Okeechobee on this bait.  I love to fish it in grass, but I know it will work around wood, or even open water.   I filmed the bait on 50# Power Pro Braid, why?  Because that is how I  fish the bait, is on braid.   I am teaching myself some new knots and methods for attaching floro and mono leaders to braid, but for the most part, I find 50# braided line that is coated black with permanent pen, very low profile and very fishable.   I had some really bad experiences with floro and mono leaders, but am trying to come back around with the help of some trusted friends.  Bigbait and swimbait fishing takes the physics involved to levels the square bill and shakey head guys don’t typically get.  These are baits and fish of consequence, and even just repeated casting does things that are hard to quantify, but ultimately weakens knots and line. Basically, I plan on filming the baits on the same line as I fish them natively.   Of course 8# florocarbon would make the bait look and swim better, and perhaps I’ll get myself there, but when I pull out the Weedless Shad on 50# braid, I’m using going in and getting after it.  Guys who throw 100% floro tend to be fishing more open water, whereas I find myself in the jungles of the South East, on places like Santee Cooper, Okeechobee, Eufaula, and Seminole where grass, wood, and big bug-eyed bruisers are the game.

Swimming baits in place is surfing like on a ‘standing wave’… I’m finding out how telling the quality of a bait is by it’s ability to be swam in place. The baits that tend to catch fish swim nicely in current, in place. Hardbaits are much more difficult to swim in place, but even among the softbaits, their are stars and their are duds. The Weedless Shad is a shining star, excellent swim and example of realism in motion.