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!).
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, 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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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, 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
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.
Mike Shaw, the "MS" in MS Slammer, in his workshop. The MS Slammer was a wakebait before wakebaits went mainstream, and they've been catching tournament and trophy bass since the mid 90s. You won't find a nicer, softer spoken man, or a workhorse swimbait like the MS Slammer.
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 tail of the 12" MS Slammer is big, bulky, pushes a lot of water, and produces it's own unique vortex
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.
Top View, 6" Weedless Trout, hook completely hidden, yet the collapsable air chamber makes for high hookup ratios and plays into our theories on Ken's Vortex.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.
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.
We showed dock skipping the 6" Weedless Trout in Southern Trout Eaters. Braided line, Curado 300 and Shimano 815XFA (sadly no longer available).
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, 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.
Down from the Mountain: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
I thought this was a smoking hot YouTube clip of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings from the documentary film called: Down from the Mountain. Down from the Mountain is documentary about the music and people behind the music in the film: O Brother Where Art Thou
When you travel this country, you realize we indeed are individual States. For as many people who think they are so American to the core and so on board with patriotic righteousness, it never ceases to amaze me how much insecurity and ignorance abounds among Americans who have neither traveled to or spent any time other than the comfort of ‘home’. Or when they travel, they stay at resorts and get the “Hollywood” and capitalist view of a place and think they got a feel for California by spending the weekend at Venice Beach staying at some 4 star hotel and going to every tourist destination possible, for example. Nope, you are a kook. You have to be able to filter out the garbage and noise, just like in swimbait fishing. It’s really lame to talk trash about a places and cultures you’ve never lived among or experienced, and it shows your ass. It is along the lines of reviewing tackle or talking about fishing techniques that you have no experience in or have even caught a fish doing. We celebrate the many cultures, lifestyles and people that make each State, and try to Unite the States via sharing each State’s people, places, culture and fishing.
We don’t pretend bass fishing is an extreme sport or that we can land a switch stance fakey reverse shove- it 720 tail grab in the vert competition in X-Games on a skateboard. Pretending bass fishing is extreme is silly. It’s really hard to talk about bass fishing and culture. We attempted to capture and celebrate the music of the Appalachian and Ozark mountains in Southern Trout Eaters, and the funny part is how many of my sophisticated and super cultured colleagues in the industry (who don’t fish much, have any bigbait skills, or basically are the reason why bass fishing culture is so phony) choose to pick on the bluegrass music of the film as their number one talking point, critique, or feedback. Really? What about the fishing? How many films come out each year? How many bigbait films have ever been produced? How many from outside of California? There were no other topics that came to your mind from watching the film? Do you even fish? Do you own a fishing rod that is 8 feet long?
If you need fireworks and loud music to get yourself fired up and pumped to go fishing, please know you won’t find that here, ever. Fabricated extremeness and a phony spin on fishing is exactly what we are trying to avoid. Take a listen to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings performance above. Probably one of the most profoundly sincere and honest performances I’ve ever seen, and I thought I’d share, in the case you are actually secure enough with yourself and your abilities to stray outside of pop culture’s and bass fishing culture’s norms.
