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Published: 29 October 2011

Written by Alex Tech

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Categories: MS Slammer

Nico Raffo MS Slammer — Nico Raffo shared two baits that have caught a ton of big ones and are proven in the field. I've never seen a 9" MS Slammer with more wear marks. An indication this bait gets fished A LOT.

The 9” MS Slammer is the first swimbait I ever committed to and was the first swimbait I ever saw fished. The 9” MS Slammer was developed in Central California, very closely with Lake Santa Margarita. Mike Shaw, the ‘MS’ in MS Slammer, lived in Atascadero and developed the bait, and tested it by casting, trolling and targeting big striper and big bass. Rob Belloni, was early on the bigbait scene, got to throwing Mike’s bait because he fished Lake Santa Margarita often as a Cal Poly SLO student. Cal Poly is where I met Rob, and Rob introduced me to the MS Slammer. The MS Slammer has been catching trophy fish quietly and not so quietly since the late 90s.

Rob McComas was early on the bigbait scene too, he just lived across the US, and was fishing Mike’s 9” MS Slammer on the trout fed lakes mountain lakes of Western North Carolina in the 90s. Rob was not only featured, but was a key figure in the ‘go ahead’ and production of Southern Trout Eaters. His footage is some of the best of the film, incredible topwater bites, big flushes…really capturing how it is with the MS Slammer and how it works and fishes. Rob has really opened my eyes to wood bait fishing and how to apply it. He fishes laydown trees and shade lines and focuses on and thoroughly dissects spots where the fish live. It’s a slower paced, more thorough approach to structure fishing.

Rob McComas MS Slammer fishing — Rob McComas, 9" MS Slammer fishing in Appalachia. Rob has been fishing the MS Slammer for over 10 years in the South, and has taught me a ton about fishing wood baits.

The 9” MS Slammer is an absolute workhorse. A bait you can tie on and fish all day and night and never have to adjust or fix. Its a killer night fishing bait, probably one of the best and the first bait I reach for when night fishing. It’s literally slaughtered big fish, I mean 12-17 fish in a single night and in broad daylight out West. It is a staple. Wood baits are killer. Each bait is unique. It has its own swim, own vortex, own buoyancy properties and tendencies. Wood bait fishing is so roots. The beautiful thing about wood is all the differences in wood and how you get a really bulks and bigbait that doesn’t necessarily weigh that much. 9” MS Slammers don’t weigh but X ounces, and they get an A+ in fishability. Just easy on you to fish and killer baits, and because it floats, you can fish intimately around wood, boulders, structure of any kind, just stalling and killing the bait along with swimming it along to keep it around the sweet spots longer.

Peters MS Slammer Clarks Hill — Clarks Hill 9" MS Slammer, white. Waking the bait over hydrilla in 10-14 feet of water, the Slammer is part of our blueback herring lake assualt. Why? Because its one of the proven baits, you take the proven baits and apply them to your water. Keep it simple.

There are various retrieves and styles of fishing around the 9” MS Slammer. The most common method is a relatively slow and steady grind, making the single jointed top water bait swim fluidly and clacky, move a lot of water, throw a big wake, and have a brilliant tail that licks the surface and compliments the jointed swim. You can stop the bait and walk the dog or just pause it, and the buoyancy of the bait makes it do a 180 or so and it’s a cool way to change it up on ‘em.

You can definitely reel the 9” MS Slammer and fish it 4-12” inches under the surface. Rob McComas has some excellent retrieves he uses to keep just the top tip of the tail above the surface while the entire bait is under the water swimming along with a small disturbance on the surface for the tip of the tail sweeping along back and forth. Rob uses the 9” MS Slammer as a deflection bait too, making contact with the wood and rocks and things purposely to draw bites.

Gear for the 9″ MS Slammer:

Rod: G-Loomis 966 BBR or Okuma 7’11” H

Reel: Shimano Calcutta 400 B or Shimano Cardiff 400

Line: P-Line CXX Xtra Strong, Moss Green, 25 or 30#

Hooks: Owner ST-36 Stinger Treble Hooks, 2/0 front and back

Split Rings: Owner Hyper Wires, size 7 front and back.

Strengths: The strength of the MS Slammer is its fishability. You can use various retrieves and styles of fishing the bait (wake, twitch, slow rolled, etc) and change things up cast by cast as you approach your targets. The bait rarely fouls up when casting or needs any sort of maintenance. You will need to change tails every so often, but just find yourself a good swimming 9″ MS Slammer and hang onto it.

MS Slammer Hook Change — Change your hooks and split ring to Owner. The MS Slammer is a workhorse and if you put quality hooks and rings on your baits, you're likely to catch and land most of your bites, even the ones that just slap at the bait. Sticky sharp Owner ST-36 Stinger Trebles and Hyper Wire Rings is what I recommend for all wood and big hardbaits. Once your bait allows you to throw anything larger than 1/0, the ST-36 is the hook.

Notes: You may fish the bait with a snap. It might change how you fish the bait and might work for some instances. I like to fish without a snap wherever possible, but understand that wood baits are unique and each one a different animal, so don’t be afraid to tinker and find what works best and makes your bait swim best.

Mike Shaw MS Slammer — Mike Shaw, Mr. MS Slammer himself, in his workshop. The 9" MS Slammer is a staple wooden swimbait and set the tone for waking bigbaits in the late 90s as big fish catching baits, day or night.

Published: 20 October 2011

Written by Alex Tech

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Categories: Big Hammer

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.

Pickwick Dam — 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.

Tennessee River structure fishing — 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.

Big Hammer box — "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.

Big Hammer featured in Southern Trout Eaters — 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.

Gear For the 3” Hammer Tails (and Hammer Heads):

3” Hammer Tails
Hammer Heads (3/16 and 1/4)
Rod: Shimano Cumara 7’2″ Medium Action Spinning Rod
Reel: Shimano Stradic 1000
Line: Power Pro, 15 Pound Braid
Leader: Yamamoto Sugoi Florocarbon, 10 Pound
Knot: Double Uni Knot (for connecting braid to leader)

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.

Big Hammer swimbait fishing on Kentucky Lake — 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.

Published: 19 October 2011

Written by Alex Tech

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Categories: MS Slammer

Ozark MS Slammer fish — The Ozarks proved to be an unlikely place to validate the effectiveness of the 12" MS Slammer, as seen in Southern Trout Eaters

Big Wood. No doubt about it, the 12” MS Slammer is big wood and one heck of a bigbait. There aren’t too many 12” hardbaits that get bit, and we showed in Southern Trout Eaters, that the 12” MS Slammer is a standout big wood bait.

Mike Shaw, who now calls Utah home, used to live in Atascadero, CA, which was right up the road from where I went to college. Mike got hooked up with my good friend Rob Belloni, and Rob was who first introduced me to Mike’s baits. The MS Slammer is a simple yet effective bait, and one thing is clear, they get bit.

ozark big wood swimbait fish — The 12" MS Slammer, fished in the shade lines and pockets of the bluff walls of the Ozarks, will get you a 20+ pound sack if you execute

Rob McComas has made an art of big wood bait fishing. Rob showed you how to catch 9” MS Slammer fish in Southern Trout Eaters too, but I got confidence in the 12” MS Slammer after talking to Rob at length about the number of bites and just overall fishability of the bait. You have to understand that even though the bait is 12” long, it’s made of wood, so it doesn’t weight that much. Composite and resin baits weigh much more at 12” than do wood baits, so the 12” MS Slammer is extremely fishable. It won’t wear you out and doesn’t require specialized gear to fish it.

rob mccomas ms slammer fish — Rob McComas, who has spent more time fishing big wood baits in the South than anyone, was where I got confidence to throw the 12" MS Slammer more

Gear for the 12” MS Slammer:

Rod: G-Loomis 966 BBR
Reel: Shimano Calcutta 400 B (the B is a slower reel than the 400 TE and is preferred for fishing big wake baits, but either will work)
Line: P-Line CXX Xtra Strong Moss Green, 30 pound
Hooks: Owner ST-36 Trebles (3/0 in front, 2/0 in rear)
Split Rings: Owner Hyper Wires #7s (you need #7s because the size of the hardware on the MS Slammer requires a big ring to get around the eye hook your hook attaches to)

Strengths:

The 12” MS Slammer is a noisy, clacky, and super fishable big topwater wake bait. You can fish it around laydowns, shade lines, man made structures, grass lines and keep the bait near the critical zone for a long time. It stalls out nicely around structure. The hanging trebles hook fish and you have a very high hookup ratio on this bait. The MS Slammer family of baits are workhorses. You can fish and fish and fish them and rarely do they foul or need care. That fishability also makes them an excellent night fishing bait because you don’t have to fuss with the bait, just fish it, not to mention the loud clackity clack of the bait helps attract big nocturnal bass.

Ideal Conditions: Rainy and cloudy overcast days are ideal for hunting big trout eaters with the 12” MS Slammer. Fish the bait slowly around key structure and vary your retrieves from a straight wind to walk the dogs with multiple pauses to get the job done. Anytime you have a lake with big fish and you are swinging for the fences, the 12” MS Slammer is a good call, and certainly anytime you go night fishing, reach for one of these and beware of toilet flushes and bowling balls falling from the sky style bites.

Notes: Carry spare tails, you never know when you might rip or tear a tail off on a fish. Tie directly to the bait and don’t worry about snaps to tie to.

The MS Slammer tail — The tail of the 12" MS Slammer is big, bulky, pushes a lot of water, and produces it's own unique vortex

Published: 18 October 2011

Written by Alex Tech

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Categories: Huddleston Deluxe, Weedless Swimbaits

weedless trout on okeechobee — Watermelon Red 6" Weedless Trout and an Okeechobee 'trout eater'

I’m shocked this bait hasn’t won a major tournament for me or someone else yet. This is a tournament swimbait if there ever was one. Grass fishing is just one of the major opportunities for this bait. The 6” Weedless Trout is a full bodied swimbait, but at only six inches long (weighs approx 1.75 ounces) this is a swimbait that gets the tournament style 3-5 pounders to bite, but has the potential for big bites.

To understand the 6” Weedless Trout, you need to first understand that the 6” Weedless Trout utilizes the patented Huddleston Vortex Tail. This tail design has proven itself as a fish catcher, matching the swim signature of a trout or other bait fish. The bait has a single molded in hook, with a collapsable air pocket chamber than encompasses the hook, making it weedless, but also enabling the bait to hook any fish that bites it.

weedless trout hook — With a little pressure and braided line, you'll get this hook to expose itself and pull nice fish from grass, wood and anywhere tight to structure or cover

Just like with any kind of frog fishing, we highly recommend you skip florocarbon and just go to straight braid and go to work. Braided line provides line buoyancy characteristics and zero stretch that make it a lethal combination when combined with the 6” Weedless Trout. The key to the hook set is using a slower action parabolic rod and letting the fish load up on the bait and then apply a forceful but not overly aggressive pressure set and constant wind to hook the fish. You need to keep a high rod tip during your retrieve, and once bit, drop your rod tip, let the fish eat the bait a second, then sweep hard and reel and keep the fish coming to you. Hookup ratios aren’t 100%, but with braided line we’re getting 8 or 9 out of 10 bites in the boat.

guntersville grass — Find yourself some shallow grass, decent water clarity, and just use a steady retrieve, nothing too fast or slow.

Dock Skipping: If you watch Southern Trout Eaters, we cover dock skipping with the 6” Weedless Trout. I can skip a 6” Weedless Trout under and around docks better than I can a senko. This bait is a dock skippers dream. You can put a full bodied swimbait in places the fish have never seen a swimming bait. Lethal at times, when the fish are positioned way up under docks. Again, braid recommended for ease of line management and for getting big fish out from under docks.

dock skipping swimbaits — We showed dock skipping the 6" Weedless Trout in Southern Trout Eaters. Braided line, Curado 300 and Shimano 815XFA (sadly no longer available).

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Bait: 6 Inch Weedless Trout (the ROF 12 is what we recommend for most applications)
Rod: G-Loomis 965 BBR
Reel: Shimano Curado 300
Line: 65 or 80# Power Pro or P-Line Spectrex Braid

Strengths: The 6” Weedless Trout puts a bait where only baits like swim jigs and skinny dippers can usually play. The size of the 6” Weedless Trout makes it a standout, and will get bigger bites. There are very few bigbaits that are weedless (the 3:16 Mission Fish being the other), so when you are throwing the 6” Weedless Trout, you are likely showing them something of size that they haven’t seen before. The six inch size makes it a really good choice for tournament swimbait fishing, and will catch 2-5 pounders.

lake eufaula swimbait fishing — Lake Eufaula, FLW Eastern Series, shallow dirty water tournament swimbait fishing with the 6" Weedless Trout, ROF12, Junebug.

Ideal Conditions: Shallow grass, lilly pads, lilly stems, dollar pads, reeds, hydrilla, milfoil, or whatever shallow hard grasses are excellent places to throw the 6” Weedless Trout. The bait is extremely weedless and can be fished virtually anywhere without hanging up, yet able to hook a fish. Wood is an excellent application of the 6” Weedless Trout too, where you need to make a lot of contact with the wood to draw a strike. You can fish through a laydown tree and purposely make a lot of contact with the trunk and branches, and get some big bites from trees that usually only see flipped baits, square bills, spinnerbaits and the traditional assortment of lures. Docks too are an excellent application of the bait. When you get some practice and the hang of it, you will find the 6” Weedless Trout one of the best dock skipping baits around, that has the potential to hook a giant.

Published: 18 October 2011

Written by Alex Tech

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Categories: 2012 Tournament Fishing, Triple Trout

8 inch triple trout — The 8 inch Triple Trout, showed its strength in the Ozarks section of Southern Trout Eaters. Good bait for covering water and seeing what happens when you are on a lake where 20 pounds is a good sack. How about those Owner ST-36 Stinger Trebles? That fish is punk rock with all those piercings.

The 8” Triple Trout is probably the most universal of the Triple Trout family in that it is a bigbait, and able to get big bites, but at 8 inches long, this is a good search and destroy bait in lakes that aren’t known for big fish. But the 2-5 pounders will attack the 8” Triple Trout, given the right circumstances.

triple trout fishing on lake murray — The 8" Triple Trout is not just for 'trout eaters'. The bait is the standard for chasing the elusive blueback herring eaters of the South. Lake Murray, South Carolina, and a May stud off a point, fishing with Chris Koon.

The 8” Triple Trout is part of our ‘trout eater’ toolbox, and was featured in Southern Trout Eaters in the Ozark section, where we were documenting our first attempts at bigbait fishing in the Ozarks. We were fishing a lake not known for double digit fish, had never fished the lake much and needed to cover water and see how the fish would react. We ended up with multiple 15-20 pound sacks and we were able to document most of it on film and in photos.

early-brad-rutherford-triple-trout — Before Brad Rutherford could drive, he was throwing the 8" Triple Trout, a testament to Brad's fishing and where he is going in this sport.

The 8” Triple Trout is also a staple in the blue back herring assault we have been exploring for years. Clarks Hill, Lake Lanier, Lake Murray and Lake Hartwell have all seen plenty of 8” Triple Trouts courtesy of our crew (Chris Koon, Brad&Bob Rutherford, Robert Malcom, and myself). There is no question the 8” Triple Trout is gets bit when you get around blue back herring chasers.

clarks hill swimbait fishing — Clarks Hill, Fall of 2008. Working on the blueback herring bite around long sloping red clay points.

Bait: The 8” Triple Trout
Rod: G-Loomis 965 BBR
Reel: Shimano Calcutta 400 TE
Line: P-Line CXX Green Coplymer, 25 pound
Hooks: Owner ST-36 Treble Hooks (1/0 front and back)
Split Rings: Owner Hyper Wire #6s

Strengths: The 8” Triple Trout can be fished fast or fished at a steady grind, but you can cover water with the bait and get a feel for how the fish are reacting. The Triple Trout excels in warm water. Anything above 60 degrees, and especially as the water gets into the 70s and low 80s, the Triple Trout is a good call in warm water. Since you can start and stop the bait and make it do 180 degree turns and pauses, you can create a bite with your retrieve, so its a good bait for making fish that only follow a swimbait actually eat. The 8” Triple Trout only weighs approx 2.5 ounces and is far less a workout to fish than the 10” Triple Trout. It’s a good ‘starter’ bait for those just getting into the Triple Trout family of swimbaits.

triple trout fishing on lake guntersville — Lake Guntersville, 8 inch Triple Trout fished over shallow grass.

Ideal Conditions: Anytime you can fish a bait with hanging trebles over submerged grass, we recommend the Triple Trout. Anytime you are fishing a blue back herring lake, we recommend the Triple Trout fished around docks, off points, around brushpiles, off man made structure like breakwaters, rip rap, barge tie ups, etc, and certainly around laydown trees. Lakes with that are trout fed are a no brainer for the Triple Trout, and as the water temps warm up, use the 8” Triple Trout to call up active fish and get them to eat even in the summer swelter. You don’t need trout or blue backs to catch fish on the 8” Triple Trout, anywhere you are targeting 3-5 pound fish and know where they live, put on an 8” Triple Trout and see what happens.

brad rutherford swimbait fishing — Brad Rutherford, the first day we met, Clarks Hill, a little more grown up, giving me his "Matt Peters" pose...damn kids. Brad throwing a custom painted 8" Triple Trout blue back herring color.

Notes: Tie directly to the bait. Don’t use a snap to tie to. Just tie directly to the bait and make sure you retie often. The weight of the bait combined with big casts and repetitive casting make this a classic example of the physics of bigbait fishing we touched on in Southern Trout Eaters. Carry spare tails, because if you get onto a good bite, there’s a chance a fish can rip or wreck your tail so don’t be unprepared.

ozark triple trout fishing — 8" Triple Trout, light trout and an Ozark Trout Eater in bronze. When you are on a new lake, warm weather and water, need to cover water and have the highest odds of getting a bite, bust out your 8" Triple Trout in light trout and go to work.

Lake Seminole 8" Triple Trout Fish--Chartreuse Bass — Chartruese bass 8" Triple Trout. Lake Seminole sand bar fishing, the mouth of Spring Creek.

Published: 18 October 2011

Written by Alex Tech

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Categories: Huddleston Deluxe, Weedless Swimbaits

The grass minnow and weedless shad — 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.

lake champlain grass minnow water — This is what good water for the Grass Minnow looks like. Shallow grass fishing and the clearer the water, the better

grass minnow lake champlain — Getting 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.

Grass Minnow Fishing Lake Okeechobee — 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 Grass Minnow — 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:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIubnP4fyoQ]

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:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K507beZ_4VU]

Bait: The Grass Minnow (colors? show me one that doesn’t work!)
Rod: G-Loomis 964 BBR
Reel: Shimano Curado 200 G (w/ 6.5:1 Gear Ratio)
Line: 50 Pound Power Pro or P-Line Braid

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.

bigbait

The 9″ MS Slammer

The 3″ Big Hammer Swimbait

The 12″ MS Slammer

The Huddleston Deluxe 6″ Weedless Trout

The 8″ Triple Trout

The Huddleston Deluxe Grass Minnow

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