The 3:16 Rising Son Jr. is a sleeper swimbait and is great for certain applications. I realized I’d been overlooking this bait as part of my tournament and trophy arsenal this past winter in Okeechobee. You are going to have to be patient, I have an Okeechobee sessions thing I’m working on that will shed a lot more information and clarity as to why the Rising Son Jr. works so well in some situations, and some insights into how I fish and rig it. I know this is one of Mickey’s most popular softbaits and for good reason, it comes in great colors, swims incredibly well at fast and slow speeds, and fishes good around hard and soft cover. Fish bite it.
Exactly. The tail ‘licks’ the surface, the body straightens out, and the bait gets into perfect trim when you get a good swim lane and a feel for the tempo of fishing it.Almost a great shot. Lens glare got me. Single Owner ST-41 Treble hooks and zero metal inside the bait/as part of the harness = very buoyant.The body is bulbous. It has a nice tear drop shape that gives it volume, and of course the tail just twists and shouts back there. Mickey’s boot tails are known to get bites and create lift.
Southern Trout Eaters DVD Review from Rob Newell FLW Bass Magazine March 2012
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.
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.
Justin provided some insights into the rod, reel, line, he was using to fish the 5″ Berkley Hollow Belly, single swimbait style. I found his input very interesting. The above video gives insights into the Powell 765 Swimbait Rod that Justin was using to fish the 5″ Berkley Hollow Belly Swimmer (Hitch color) , combined with an Abu Garcia Revo SX reel, and 17# Berkley 100% Florocarbon line. Notice what Justin says about the importance of the action of the rod, and the speed of the reel. “Not too fast, not too slow”. I couldn’t agree more. I am not a 100% florocarbon guy with swimbaits most times, but if I was going to be, fishing open water, mid water column/suspended fish is where I’d fish it! Justin is on point, his fishing, positive vibration and momentum speak volumes.
I love hearing what stuff other guys are really using and why. Justin knows what he is doing, and since I can only mostly talk about Shimano/G-Loom stuff with any crededbility because that is what I’ve invested in, I find it really helpful to get input from what stuff other guys are REALLY using….and why. Realism isn’t just a swimbait thing. It’s an integral part of my life and business. Keepin’ it real, thank you Justin.
Here is additional recap and insights into the mighty pool of the Tennessee River called Lake Guntersville. This is footage compiled from the 2012 FLW Everstart Tournament from May 3-5th 2012. There are some subtle details in the footage above. Suspended fish, getting caught on swimbaits. Sometimes in the form of the castable umbrella/Alabama Rig, sometimes just a single paddle tailed tube swimbait. Realize, that guys were able to catch 17-19 pounds per day sight fishing/bed fishing during this tournament. I had 15 pounds per day catching fish on the 8″ Triple Trout over milfoil and hydrilla in 2-6 feet of water. So, the fish were in 1 foot of water, and all the way down in 30+ feet. The lesson here to me was that the big fish, don’t just gradually make their way to the ledges. They go out deep FIRST. Really deep. Like full summer deep, and perhaps they aren’t on the bottom, but they relate to really deep water, and will suspend 10-15 feet down, over 30 feet of water. Justin Lucas provided some really interesting insights into what he was doing to catch 30+ pounds for 2 of the 3 days. Based on the brim one of his fish coughed up in the livewell on Day 3, which you can see in the above footage, it really makes me wonder what a guy could do with bigbaits, out on the ledges of Guntersville. Mark Rose’s insights, JT Kenney’s insights, and winner Alex Davis’s insights all made me realize little subtle things I found interesting, about how to find, locate and catch fish on Guntersville and the Tennessee River at large. Look at the results here. It wasn’t a wack fest out there for the vast majority of the field. Some schools of big fish out there, and only a handful of guys with the knowledge and ability to find and catch fish out of those schools.
Justin Lucas, his Berkley Hollow Belly Swimbait (hitch) and a 3/4 ounce head swam around schools of suspended magnums.
My friend Casey Martin was not himself all week leading up to the tournament. He was giddy and acting ‘guilty’ and that told me he either had just robbed a bank (which isn’t likely, knowing Casey) or he was around some really big fish and knew he had a shot at winning, which was the case. You will notice the Top 10 on Day 3 pretty much all had addresses that give them excellent access to ledges on the TN River. You have to understand you just don’t pull out deep and get on fish Guntersville. There are all kinds of things I am still learning, but most importantly, you need side imaging to find these deep fish, something I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t been able to afford yet. Casey was telling me he was on schools of 4-5 pounders. Catching all kinds of fish about the same size. I’d seen this before the few times I’d gotten around them on Kentucky Lake. I really believe a bigbait, not just a swimbait, would get more of those 5-7 pounders to get fired up and eat. Casey was bummed with 23 pounds, like that was a small limit the final day. “I caught like 20 four pounders”…. Kills me!
Lake Guntersville brim that one of Justin Lucas’ fish coughed up. Bigbaits. Big fish eating big bait.
Justin Lucas capitalized on a single, well placed, swimbait to catch 2 of the heaviest stringers weighed in, in the entire event. Suspended fish with a swimbait, TN River style. Very interesting. Mark Rose and Alex Davis were using castable U-Rigs with Shadalicious swimbaits to catch suspended fish. Casey was using the Picasso School E Rig with Shadalicious swimmers too. Suspended fish are a common theme of the TN River, and the Alabama Rig exposed how many big ones lives in no mans land, and now there is a tool to catch them. But as Justin Lucas showed, a well placed single swimmer can trump even the U-rig, and I wonder what an 8″ Huddleston or a larger swimmer like the Sledge Hammer swam in those same schools might do? 40 pounds? Anyway, I found Guntersville extremely ‘interesting’ to say the least. I learn something new every time I fish that river, and I’m finally getting my feet under me a little bit.
Show and Tell, Lake Guntersville style: “Hey that spot you left at 9:30am? Yeah, we pulled in there at 10am and wacked 25 pounds quick”. Lots of Huntsville and greater Guntersville area anglers in the Top 10. JT Kenney is just that good.
My tournament involved the 8″ Triple Trout fished over milfoil mostly. I had some opportunities at some 5-7 pound bites. Some really nice fish came close to biting, but ultimately I weighed in 15 pounds per day, and for the first time weighed in all 10 fish in a tournament on a bigbait, which was a ‘moral’ victory. I think if you got to the grass BEFORE the big ones had moved out deep, you could really do some damage and showcase what bigbaits could do up shallow on Guntersville. That bite is there, no doubt. However, it’s May and getting toward June which means even more fish will migrate to the ledges and get offshore. The Tour heads to Kentucky Lake in June, and I’m waiting to see who embraces the bigbait mentality on the ledges, or perhaps it won’t be necessary at all? These guys catch really big sacks on 3/4 football heads and Strike King 6XD cranks, but shoot, my limited experiences has showed me the bigbait, stroked or swam around the schools, which I rarely find, gets mega bites. Sometimes its about finding ’em, sometimes its about catching ’em, but most times it’s a balance of the two, and the Tennessee River is proving to be another ground zero where swimbaits and bigbaits are on a collision course, in a tournament environment.
