The above video clip walks you thru the “Supernova” that hit the Tennessee River Valley while I was on Kentucky Lake, for the 2011 FLW Outdoors Everstart Championship. My practice partner, Troy Anderson, won the tournament on the Co-Angler side. I blew up a lower unit on Day 2 and forfeited a month of practice and preparation. I stayed after the tournament (got the lower unit fixed under warranty, thank you Yamaha) to spend some time throwing and exploring the Alabama Rig. The Supernova continues, and who knows where it will take us and the universe of fishing. Stay tuned for more, and updates around the Big Hammer and Retriever Rig Partnership, as we eluded to in the video clip.
Here is the gear we feature in our video clip, The Alabama Rig Supernova:
Here is some previously unreleased footage and insights into grass swimbait fishing with the Huddleston Deluxe Weedless Suite of Baits: The Grass Minnow, The Weedless Shad, and the 6” Weedless Trout. This is the first part of what we are calling “The Big O Sessions”, and this Part One is called: Grass Swimmers.
This footage was shot on Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, in January 2011. We are celebrating the launch of a new site for southernswimbait.com and just celebrating rising water levels on Okeechobee and counting our blessing for still being on the road, fishing. Gonna keep the train rolling into 2012.
Notes: Watch the hook sets in the above video. Slower action rods, sweeping pressure set style hook sets. Long whip casts, where you have 12-15” of line out from your rod tip and make a whip cast to get the bait out there and maximize casting distance with an 8 foot rod. Whatever style or brand of sunglasses you wear, try out some Yellow lenses in the black Florida water. You will be amazed at what Yellow lens technology does to brighten up that black Florida water, no matter if the sun is out or not. I wear my Kaenon Hard Kores with the Y-35 lens everyday in Florida (including out to the night clubs in South Beach, it helps me blend in with the hipsters!).
"John Brown". The Catalyst of the War. War on closed minded approaches to rigs and rigging. The Alabama Rig, "Old Blue", simple, made from quality components and solid terminal tackle just helped us all catch a lot more fish.
I’m sitting in Calvert City, waiting for Jet-A-Marina to give me a call, to let me know my lower unit has been delivered, and then installed. Thanking Yamaha for standing by their warranty, and their support. Of course, I’d like’d to have seen the Yamaha Service crew at the Everstart Event, but that is business and fishing. So no fishing for me since the tournament, just making hard and from the hip decisions everywhere.
I’m not going to give my $.02 on the Alabama Rig, yet. I haven’t had a chance to really fish it hard and carefree, swimbait style, and do everything I want to do. So, I wanted to share some things that were in direct relation to the Rig. As things were unfolding with Paul Elias at G-Land, I was making modifications to my presentations to be more ‘multirig’ or ‘polyrig’ in style. You couldn’t just go get a ‘rig’ to go fish. It was crazy hearing all this and not even being able to see one or hold one to fabricate your own from, so we just made do. The fish are on a shad bite, they hunt in small wolf packs in places, and small bait balls that have broken away from the main bait ball are a damn sure good way to get the fish fired up and focused.
Quad Bladed Spinnerbaits started catching fish as we scrambled to do anything to start casting baits that made balls of bait, not just one or two baits. I believe we'll be seeing spinnerbaits with many more blades and setups as a result of the Rig Effect
The Booyah Quad Blade Spinnerbait…Someone riddle me this: Why is there only one spinnerbait with a quad (bonzer!) blade setup (generally available kind)? And it only weighs 3/8 oz? Why not a 6 blade? Think about the implications of multirigs and using teasers and creating schools and predator>prey setups that is about to explode. I have so many ideas and thoughts lately about the Rig Effect it’s hard for me to organize them or even share them in some cases, because the fish catching and money making implications are profound. Every lure company in North America should have had an ‘all hands’ meeting with the team to strategize about multirigs.
Not only is there going to be a huge amount of rigs created (make your own rig, seriously, its not very difficult to do), there is a viral effect of ideas and innovations that rivals Facebook! (well, probably not). The Alabama Rig just points out our closed minded approach to rigging as a bass fishermen. Teasers and umbrellas have been around since the beginning of time. I’m just excited it catches fish so well. I can understand throwing 100 lures at once, you expect to hook something, but 5 baits isn’t some disgusting overkill. I mean we are catching one maybe two fish at a time at best. You could get 5 sure, but its about presentation and creating the school.
I started catching 'busting fish' in the back of pockets on the Grass Minnow Double Rig...Tie on one Grass Minnow with a Palomor Knot, leave a long tag end, thread the line back thru the nose of the Grass Minnow like a drop shot rig, come down thru and then tie on Grass Minnow #2 with a Palomar. The Double Grass Minnow has got good weight, but is still a tough Rig at times to fish if its super windy and rough, which it was during the tournament.
10 vortexes. Each bait gives off a unique vortex, one on each side of the tail, so 10 vortexes created by a 5 way Rig. In Southern Trout Eaters, Ken Huddleston says: “I believe bigger, more mature fish will analyze a bait, and if everything is right, it will commit to the bait”. Ken was talking about trophy fish. But just as occasionally a trophy fish will act like a 2 pounder, the 2 pounders can act really smart and be really finicky and fussy. Fish analyze a bait as it tracks thru the water, using more than just lateral lines and smell. Think about a fish that has only ever tracked behind a bait that has 2 vortexes, or at best, 4 vortexes (double rig fluke, Front Runner on your topwater rig), but never 10 vortexes. 10 vortexes in a fishes mind = safe = commit. And in fact, his buddies are so confident in 10Vs = safe = commit, they join the party and eat one too, so the angler catches 2 fish on one catch, way more often than normal.
The Grass Minnow is the most subtle swimming best vortex matching bait I know. The Weedless Shad is #2, the only difference being the Grass Minnow has a smaller profile and a swallow tail vortex (vs. the wedge tail). So, while I was scrambling to fabricate my own Rigs or get real ones thru hook or crook, we started fishing multirig style, meaning, Booyah Quad Blade Spinnerbaits, double rigged flukes, and double rigged Grass Minnows. The fishing on Kentucky Lake is tough, don’t kid yourself. The Rig caught fish, but it wasn’t any kind of whack fest out there. So, to fish with quad blade spinnerbaits and double rigs and start catching some fish again a little more regular, was pretty cool. I went into the tournament having a decent quad blade spinnerbait and double rigged Grass Minnow bite. But then came the Rigs.
Troy Anderson, my practice partner and eventual CoAngler Champion for the 2011 Everstart Championship on Kentucky Lake. Here is Troy, with 3" Hammers and a 4 way rig, with a spinnerblade teaser as #5 in the middle. We were in New Johnsonville here, so we were technically illegally fishing in TN water. We got an email at 4pm that day, last day of practice, that TN Fish&Game rules say no more than 3 baits. Basically, I bailed out of New J'ville and TN altogether based on that ruling alone. So did Dan Moorehead the Pro Champion and guys like Jim Tutt.
There is going to be landslides of changes, new innovations, new tournament rules and implications, and lots of fish getting caught as part of the Rig Effect. Just fishing multiple baits at the same time, totally under-explored, and creating schools of baits totally under-explored and creating new rigs and methods for presentations, casting, etc make all new kinds of swimbait like implications, like the need for 8 foot rods and big round reels with big gears and heavy lines and heavy terminal tackle. Strange and wild twist on fishing and swimbait fishing, but the bottom line thing I cannot get over is how well the fish eat the Rig. It catches fish, and it doesn’t seem ‘obnoxious’ or grossly out of line with fishing regular single bait setups, IMO. It fishes like a 8″ ROF 12 Huddleston Deluxe. No kidding.
Bob Wood and a nice Lake Pickwick smallmouth on the 6" Triple Trout, chartruese shad. Tournament swimbait and small and spotted bass killer
Each Triple Trout has its own unique features, strengths, and intricacies that can be hard to qualify for you. I work to find harmony and rhythm with my baits. The 6” Triple Trout is always on on my mind and front deck when I’m targeting smallmouth or spotted bass, especially when tournament fishing is involved. The 6” Triple Trout catches largemouths, no doubt about it, but it’s size and profile make it a standout with smallmouth in particular, but also spotted beasts.
Chad and Banning, my pals in North Arkansas, getting it done with the 6" Triple Trout. The six inch Triple Trout is a good 'starter' bait for guys who aren't conditioned for throwing the bigbaits, yet.
Smallmouth tend to like smaller profile baits, not always, but when in Rome (ie, a place like Champlain or Erie or Pickwick when you are focused on catching a trophy smallmouth) , throw a 6” Triple Trout, and see what happens. There has been a lot of 6” Triple Trout trail blazing by the BigBait Possee crew on Arizona’s Lake Havasu and friends of mine like Cameron Smith on the Columbia River on Western smallies. Smallmouth candy bars, the 6” Triple Trout be. The 6” Triple Trout has all the goodness of the other larger Triple Trouts, so it has good fluid ‘s’ swim and vibration and thump, but it can be a ‘sportcar’ too.
The SportsCar:
What I’m getting at, is the 6” Triple Trout is a high performance bigbait. When I talk about the Triple Trout blending with a jerk bait, the 6” Triple Trout is like a Triple Trout blending with a Gunfish or Vixen, meaning a bait you can virtually any way you want and make it look good, and the better you get with the bait, the more control you have. It’s your ability to control the bait that really sets the Triple Trout guys apart from the rest. The 6” Triple Trout throws Kelly Slater style cutbacks, turns and power. The bait fishes incredibly fast if that’s what you want. I like to burn it for a split second or quick 2 foot section, then stall it, then burn it again for 2 feet and stall, twitch, jerk, pause and burn.
Sports Car, the 6" Triple Trout coupled with a 400 TE reel is power fishing a swimbait, tournament style. Bone white, a favorite color the world over
The 6” Triple Trout has the tightest ‘s’ swim of the full sized standard Triple Trouts. The tightness equates to a tighter wavelength and vibration which makes it more a tournament swimbait than a lake or state record breaking swimbait. The tightness also equates to ability to cut thru the water. So, when faced with current, the 6” Triple Trout cuts water better than the 7/8/10” versions. You can control the 6” and just fish it absolutely fast tournament pace and be very effective. Power fishing a swimbait.
Strengths: Tournament swimbait. Smallmouth swimbait. Spotted bass swimbait. Largemouth swimbait, just not the double digit kind, most likely. Very fast and aggressive and performance swimbait. Highly stall-able. Highly burnable. Sharp bouncing switch & cutbacks. Power fishing on tournament day is what I think about the 6” Triple trout. And for hunting trophy smallies and spotted bass, make no mistake this bait gets a lot of 3-6 pound range fish which makes it candy for the trophy spotted or small mouthed basses.
The ST-56 Owner Stinger Trebles are 3X strong and an excellent choice when you need small size 2 or 4 treble hooks, and are fishing swimbaits where you don't want to bend out hooks with the rods and reels you are fishing.
Ideal conditions: The cooling water of Fall. Fish chasing on better than average sized threadfin shad. Fish who eat yellow perch. Fish who eat blueback herring. Fish who eat jerkbaits and topwaters in warm water conditions. Fishing that involves current and/or moving water.
3" Big Hammer, Motor Oil, Spinning Rod, Braid, Floro leaders = an excellent suspended and deep water probing swimbait system
Grab your spinning rods, boys and girls. And lets get into a swimbait and spinning rod conversation, shall we? The 3” Big Hammer swimbait tails and Lead Hammer Heads, are a true swimming bait. A bait that you fish in 1 foot of water just reeling it on busting fish, or a bait you swim down along a bridge piling in 30 feet over 80 feet for suspended fish. Very versatile bait in its rate of fall, and ability to swim it thru any water column or multiple columns on the same cast.
The Pickwick Lake Tailrace, the TVA lakes are loaded with man made structure, concrete, current and fish that chase bait. Anytime I'm on the TVA lakes, the 3" Hammer is part of my swimbait approach
We showed you a little bit of the 3” Hammer in action in Southern Trout Eaters in fact. We also showed you the 3” Hammer can get magnum bites. It catches numbers and size. A great tournament bait, especially good in places like the Tennessee River and the Savannah River/blueback herring lakes, where you have a lot of man made structure, things like barge tie ups, bridge pilings, wing dams, dam walls, and large marinas.
The Tennessee River is loaded with barge tie ups, bridge piliings, and large marinas that make excellent current breaks, shade lines and are an excellent place to fish for suspended fish with the 3" Big Hammer
Fish, especially spotted bass, but don’t count mr. largemouth out, he suspends with the best of them buddy, love man made structures. You need a bait that can get down in a hurry along a deep wall or piling and then you want to not waste the cast, and fish right under your feet at times , looking at your graph, checkin’ out what those arches and marks will do when they see a bait of yours and you play a little pac-man on your graph—- the 3” Hammer is unique in that aspect in the world of swimbait fishing.
"My coat of many colors" ---My 3" Hammer box is a collage of baitfish, perch, candy baits and just old standards. Keep a box full of 3/16 and 1/4 Hammer Heads and get to work
How universally edible is a 3” bait? I mean, come on, every lake in the country has a 3” something that is edible and bass eat them. Big Hammers come in colors that range from yellow perches, whites, smokes, neons, candies to ghost and sexy shads and just good ole Pacific Ocean baitfish standards like the anchovy, sardine, smelt variants and calico bass killers.
The 3” Hammer has the exposed Lead Hammer Head, and it can be a good semiconductor to gauge what type of bottom you are fishing — hard bottom, soft bottom, shells, wood (you hope not, Hammer’s no likey wood, fish over wood NOT in wood). The 1/4 and 3/16 ounce Hammer Heads are about all I do with the 3” Hammer. Just depends what depth I’m fishing, how quick I need to get there, the wind, current and other variables preventing me from fishing a 3/16 ounce basically. I’ll pick a 3/16 ounce to start and go to 1/4 if I know I gotta get down quicker harder faster deeper because wind, waves, sharp edges/ledges, or whatever. The heads fit the baits perfectly, and when rigged correctly have a real slender and sleek swim, with that little square tail thumping and stretching the bait out as it moves through the water.
5 pound spotted bass from Southern Trout Eaters, 3" Hammer, bridge piling. The 3" Big Hammer swimbait will catch magnums if you get around them.
I use a 7’ 2” Shimano Cumara Medium Action spinning rod and Stradic 1000 Spinning Reel. That Cumara spinning rod, well, actually I have 2 of them that rarely leave my boat when I’m tournament style fishing. They are booth spooled with 15 # Power Pro tied to a 3 foot section of Yamamoto Sugoi Florocarbon. I find the Yamamoto Sugoi Florocarbon exceptional stuff and I use old spools of 10 pound from drop shot rods as leader material for my braid+floro on my spinning rods. I use braid + floro on all my spinning gear. I rarely have 100% mono or 100% florocarbon on a spinning rod anymore.
The braid helps immensely with hook sets, sensitivity, playing BIG fish, and honestly line management is so awesome, I no longer mess around with anything else. Hook sets and constant pressure are key because sorta like a football head jig, the weight forward lead head swimbait can come popping out if a fish jumps and opens its mouth and shakes, but you can solve that with good pressure and braid hook sets to bury the hook and control of the fish and not letting it jump and spit the bait.
Strengths: Deep man made structure fishing where fish can be suspended, at the bottom or anywhere in between. Covering water on ledges and long tapering nothing points where fish are feeding, clay banks, etc. Busting fish, try fishing these over fish blowing up bait. Fishing over top deep standing timber, like, pumping and yo-yo retrieve sorta like a blade bait. Paralleling bluff walls.
Ideal Conditions: Big concrete walls and structures with current. Big marinas, bluff walls, standing timber, long tapering and steep points, nothing banks, ditches, and deep schooled fish.
The 3" Big Hammer, is an excellent bait to catch suspended fish off man made structure. Fishing the dam at Kentucky Lake, this is a solid 3 pounder caught in 7 feet of water over 80 feet of water, concrete wall with current.
Notes: Rig the bait perfectly straight for the right swim. Glue head to tail if you want to make your bait last longer, once you know you have it rigged perfect.
The Grass Minnow (foreground) and Weedless Shad (background) speak to Ken Huddleston's commitment to realism and innovations in engineering baits with vortex tails that match the swim signatures bait fish leave behind as they swim
The Grass Minnow was the first of Ken’s small weedless swimbaits that followed the release of his 6” Weedless Trout. The Grass Minnow is a special bait because it has incredible realism and includes a special vortex tail that was engineered to match the signature that a minnow or small baitfish leaves behind in it’s trail. The tail kick is extremely subtle, but when you step back and think about how much thump a real minnow gives off when it swims, it occurs to you what Ken is doing with the Grass Minnow. The bottom line is the Grass Minnow gets eaten by big fish and little fish.
This is what good water for the Grass Minnow looks like. Shallow grass fishing and the clearer the water, the betterGetting a little carried away, looking for the good 'hard' grass. Find good clean hard grass, and throw that Grass Minnow. Lake Champlain, near the French Canadian border
I’ve caught fish on the Grass Minnow on just about every grass lake I’ve thrown it: Pickwick, Guntersville, Okeechobee, Champlain, Seminole, and Dardanelle. Braid is key to my Grass Minnow approach. Just like with the 6” Weedless Trout or any other Weedless Huddleston bait, I use braided line to aid in my hookup ratio and ability to fish the bait around grass. Do you fish a frog on anything but braid? Exactly. You need zero stretch, the buoyancy of braid and the hook set ability of braided line to maximize your effectiveness with the Grass Minnow.
Lake Okeechobee has been ground zero for a lot of my weedless swimbait fishing. The Grass Minnow gets quality bites and serves as an alternative to the Skinny Dippers everyone else is throwing
My hookset is a sweep set. I don’t jack the fish. I keep my rod at 11 to 12 o clock, and just keep a steady grind on the bait. Not too fast, not too slow. When I get bit, I drop my rod tip to 9 o clock and let the fish eat the bait. When my line tightens up or the rod begins to bow up at 9 o clock, that is when I sweep hard to the side (like a spinnerbait hookset) and reel like mad to get caught up and apply pressure to the fish. I love the G-Loomis 964 BBR for the Grass Minnow. I can make long whip casts and really get the bait out there. But the 964 BBR also is a relatively slow parabolic action rod and is perfect for braided line and grass fishing, and helps me get a hook into almost everything that bites my Grass Minnow. I have a 90% or better hookup ratio on the Grass Minnow. Most of my bites get in the boat, hands down.
Lake Seminole has the right ingredients, shallow grass fishing, clean water in places and highly pressured fish
Here is a whole YouTube video I did on Lake Okeechobee, fishing the Grass Minnow:
Here is another video that discusses my approach to Lake Champlain, but also includes a section on the Grass Minnow from the shallow grass largemouth fishery of Champlain:
Strengths: The Grass Minnow is rare in that it is incredibly real and provides fish who are chasing small bait around grass something they haven’t seen. Fish aren’t used to such subtle swimming baits that look and feel so real. The Grass Minnow gets a lot of bites and is a resilient bait, meaning you can catch many fish on the bait and glue it back together a few times before you need to retire it.
Ideal Conditions: Lakes with super shallow grass fishing, like Okeechobee, Seminole, and Guntersville are ideal for the Grass Minnow. Anywhere fish are busting on small bait. I throw the Grass Minnow in a lot of situations where other guys are throwing swim jigs and paddle tailed tubes.
Notes: Keep the wind at your back whenever possible. The Grass Minnow isn’t super heavy (5/8 ounce) and can be difficult to get casting distance or cross wind. Keep super glue onboard because if you get into the fish, you are going to be repairing baits because you’ll catch a bunch of fish, big and small and they tend to inhale the thing, plus braided line and lots of muck and grass can wreck your baits.
Okeechobee isn't usually 20+ pound sacks and hot and glassy conditions in the Winter. The Grass Minnow will get bites on those cold days where just getting 5 fish is the goal.
