I just saw this and had to share. The Super Slammer, are you kidding me? The beauty of the MS Slammer, and the wood bait thing, is that in a 12 or 14″ bait (14″ is the size of the Super Slammer) it doesn’t weigh that much. I’m shocked at how easily the 12″ MS Slammer fishes, so this 14″ big daddy Super Slammer makes sense to me. 14″ Big Wood baits will fish far easier and low impact on your body vs. composite material or soft plastic baits of this size. I think the striper guys will go nuts over this Super Slammer, but so will the guys who hunt big largemouths. Walk, stall, pause or just straight retrieve…..day or night, rain or shine….I’m gonna get some of these and test them out, I suggest check you them out HERE
It’s getting really hot, really muggy, and the grass is getting way thick. I always look for the cleanest/blackest water I can find with the most beautiful hydrilla, and usually the fish are there. I found a few instances where I could fish the XL Nezumaa around isolated clumps of reeds and buggy whips. The bottom is just carpeted with wonderful hydrilla, that really good green hard and crisp hydrilla, and the water is by far the deepest and clearest water I’m fishing the XL Nezumaa along walls of reeds too, and just trying to get a big bite where I can. As the heat sets in, I highly suggest rats and big wakebaits, like MS Slammers or 3:16 Hardbaits. Big topwater baits basically, the can catch a big one at high noon, blaring heat in the right conditions. And rat baits are super fun to fish-my favorite. Just super fun fishing and helps endure brutal conditions and heat.
I do like fishing certain bigbaits on snaps. I really find the Owner Hyper Cross Locks fit this bait, and my application beautifully. I like to walk and stall my rats. I do like to slow reel and wake them too, but man, I just can’t help but make that bait look alive and struggling out there. I only have small pockets of fishable water, I don’t usually have long runs of clean swim lanes to bring a top water bait thru, a bait like the XL Nezumaa, I can throw it right on the ‘point’ of a good isolated clump of reeds and usually there will be a hole in the hydrilla around the reeds enough to fish it out a few feet or more. You just don’t get 15-30 feet of swim most times, you only get 2-6 feet at times to work with, so you need a stallable bait, and a topwater is the bait, the ultimate stall bait. So around grass, or isolated layown trees, or around shade pockets, you want a bait that hangs in the little ‘pool’ you have to work with, and where too, you can get maximum action out of your bait when you do decide to walk it and really jerk it. The XL Nezumaa is violent and raucous, and you get a lot of action and noise and the bait only moved 4-6″ toward you. And with the right wind or bow in your line, you can float a bait like the XL Nezumaa rat in place. I am fishing 80# straight braid on my XL Nezumaa and recommend a Low Down Custom Rods 8′ XH if you haven’t ever tried one of those rods for lobbing a BIG bait like the XL Nezumaa or Slide Swimmer 250.
I’m hanging tough in Florida. I thought I’d share some pictures over the last few months. I am working full time at full speed with my software gig. Business is good and I’m just going with it. Hope to get out fishing more, and continue the search:
Ledge Zeppelin: Physical Graffiti. This 5″ Bay Smelt Big Hammer on a 1 oz head got tore up. This is the baseline, the 5″ Hammer. Go bigger from here is my advice.
I’ve been sitting on this footage, unsure of how or when exactly to release it, and finally just sat down and cranked it out. I was concerned this information might hurt me, but I’m starting to think completely differently than I used to about sharing information and ideas.. I am not headed to Kentucky Lake anytime soon, and it appears to be ‘good timing’ all things considered. Stroking baits is something you don’t learn in San Diego. Stroking a bait, literally means jerking/ripping it 1-8 feet off the bottom and letting the bait settle back down to the bottom. Think about snatching rattle traps in the grass, where you snatch the bait clean of the grass and the fish eat it on the fall. Stroking football head jigs and spoons on the Tennessee River is a staple and it took me some years to clue into. Some local tricks you pick up instantly at the gas station, other things, you somehow miss for years. Stroking is not something I’d done ever, until I arrived at Kentucky Lake in 2011. Stroking is now one of my presentations of all baits I fish. It just makes sense. To really snap and snatch your bait hard off the bottom, and then let if free fall back to the bottom seems to be a truth of fishing….it just works at times.
Stroked and Choked Big Hammer Swimbait on the ledges of Kentucky Lake, but ultimately a good choice for any of the TN River, or any open water offshore bite.
So here goes, another meandering, long winded, ‘first chapter’ of a thing I’m calling Ledge Zeppelin I, Stroking Swimbaits. This footage is post 2011 FLW Tour on Kentucky Lake, and my 2011 summer in Southern California, where I did some saltwater fishing. I blended things together to share how and where I got the methods and tools that ultimately led me to start stroking my Big Hammer swimbaits, instead of just swimming and jigging them along:
If you are ready to stroke swimbaits off the ledges of the Tennessee River, or any other offshore lake, this stuff applies lots of places (the Ozarks, Champlain, Great Lakes, etc), here is what you need:
Big Hammer Swimbaits (Bay Smelt, Silver Phantom, Great White are my favorites, try the 5, 5.5 and 6 inch. The 6″ is a bigbait for sure)
Hammer Heads (recommend at least 3/4 oz, but go up to 1.5 ounce)
Robo Ocean Swimbait Tails (Ghost Minnow and Keylime, more rounded boot tail, a bit more finesse vs. the Big Hammer square tail, a good 1-2 punch is to have both)
I was stroking my Big Hammer swimbait on a Medium Action 8 foot rod and Shimano Calcutta 300 TE reel, and 20# P-Line CXX….however, this is something you can do with standard low profile reels and I always recommend 8 footers, and braided line. Especially adding a short leader section to your braid. I am slowly migrating all my fishing over to braid, in case you haven’t noticed. You have more sensitivity, more hookset, more torque, and more guts to do more with your bait with braid.
My buddy Brian Somrek was as stoked as I was on the bite. We were learning as we were going. Brian was catching them on the 5.5″ Big Hammer, which to many out West is the best Big Hammer swimbait.
We speak to Warbaits and the effect their swim jigs will be having. You are seeing the future now. When Strike King, Spro, and Berkley come out with a swim jig that is >1 ounce, it will be as a result of the Warbait Slayer Swim Jig. These things are legit and taking the West by storm. You have an early warning and heads up. You need to check their Slayer Swim Jigs and Weedless Swim Jig Heads out. Just by having a weedguard, you are helping yourself out in some cases, because exposed top hook single swimbaits are really sticky around wood. Swim jigs are just awesome and popular and catch fish, so why not fish them out at 20-30 feet, instead of 1-3 feet? You can stroke them or just fish them on the slow grind, and look out. Fish love baits with skirts.
I cannot say enough about the Warbaits Swim Jigs, and I’m finding the more rounded paddle tail of the Robo Ocean Swimbait Tails are a fine swimming and stroking combination.
Thank you for your patience, I have been lagging on updating the blog and just providing some fresh content. Doing a lot of behind the scenes work for short, medium and long term plans I have with southernswimbait.com and related projects, and I like to fish a lot so there you go! Here is the first hardbait featured in our swim signature series. Hardbaits are much harder to film and get the true swim of the bait, especially fast moving hardbaits that require a lot of stalls and pauses and speed to really show them off. You need to be throwing the Triple Trout like you need to be throwing the Huddleston Deluxe 8″ Trout. You need a full bodied sinking softbait and a full bodied fast moving hardbait in your life. The 10″ Triple Trout was featured in Southern Trout Eaters. I’m still learning all the nuances of fishing the bait, especially as I’m tackling current and moving water situations. The 10″ Triple Trout is the workhorse trophy swimbait from Scott Whitmer. Scott makes all kinds of shapes, sizes and colors of Triple Trouts, but the 10″ is the standard bait trophy hunters grab to tangle with giant largemouth, spotted, smallmouth and striped bass. Trout or no trout, the Triple Trout is an excellent swimbait and bigbait. We have done a poor job documenting the swim of the Triple Trout, until now.
The 10″ Triple Trout is a standard. It’s like the Huddleston Deluxe 8″ Trout. When you talk baits and bites and rods and gear, it’s one of the benchmarks. Get into it. Don’t accept imitations and kook knock offs.
Recommended rigging for the 6″ Huddleston Deluxe Top Hook style trout swimbait. The #2 Owner hook fits the bait well and is about as wide as the bait, and of course is balanced, so it rigs cleanly with one treble in the belly, two prongs out, in perfect symmetry.
The 6″ Huddleston Deluxe Trout is sweet candy bar sized swimbait that fits certain applications in swimbait fishing. Namely, smallmouth, spotted bass, tournament largemouth, and trophy brown trout. The 6″ Huddleston Deluxe Trout, whether you are fishing the ROF 5 or ROF 12 model, both have a top hook. So, you don’t necessarily need a bottom trap hook, however, in a lot of open water situations or situations like smallmouth or spotted bass fishing where the fish don’t always inhale the bait, a good stinger hook/trap hook setup helps with hook up percentages and just get those short and underside bites in the boat.
You can bet I’m working on a matrix and blog post that speaks to treble hooks and swimbaits. Until then, let me try and simplify this. I always will use an ST-36 treble hook when I can get away with a 1/0 or bigger sized treble hook. The ST-36 is just superior sharp, well balanced, and hooks fish for me. However, when faced with using a #2 sized ST-36 treble hook, I assess my rod, my reel, my line and what I’m hunting, because you can bend out a #2 ST-36 treble hook using a Shimano Calcutta 300 or 400 TE, 65 Pound Braid or 25 Pound P-Line Copolymer, and a medium sized 8 foot swimbait rod. That is just the physics of swimbait fishing. Not to say you bend out a hook every trip because I’ve successfully caught many nice fish on #2 ST-36, however, I have recently began using the Owner ST-56 treble hooks in places where I need small, strong and uber sticky trebles, and don’t need something as heavy duty as the ST-66s we use as part of our Huddleston Rig. So, if you are fishing for big fishes, like 4-6 pound spotted or smallmouth or really big brown trout or are fishing straight 65 pound braid and have some decent largemouth going, consider the ST-56 because you won’t bend out a hook if you happen to hang the fish on one treble and things to the wrong way for you which occassionally happens when just the right amount of torque happens on one treble. You never know when or exactly why, just too much stress on it and it bends. This happens to all lighter wire hooks by the way. That is why hooks are made in 2X, 3X, 4X etc configurations. Physics is a much bigger part of fishing swimbaits because the baits and fish are so much heavier, and so are the rods, line, gears and torque of the reel. I would fish the ST-36 Stinger Trebles if I was fishing for money. Meaning, if every bite and getting every fish in the boat, and was likely after 3 pounders or even good solid 2+ pounders, where just catching the fish, where you not likely to be catching ‘trophies’ because you’re more in a tournament mode of hunting bigger fish, I’d go ST-36 because the odds of bending out a hook are rare, but it does happen. I’d take on the risk to gain the reward of the sticky-ness of that treble hook. It is incredibly sharp and perfectly balanced, so it rigs very cleanly.
24.5″ Brown Trout, Cotter, Arkansas choked the 6″ Huddleston Deluxe Top Hook Trout. You don’t need a trap hook when they eat like this, but I like to have one on there, because they won’t always choke your bait, especially when it comes to smallmouth and spotted bass. Trap hooks just help, and the Owner Treble Hooks and Hyper Wire Spit Rings are a staple in my swimbait fishng and trap hook rigging, and have been for years. I’m getting better at matching my terminal and other tackle, it’s a system and mindset based on experience.
