Tournament time again. I’m unusually optimistic about stringing together a good tournament. I have been catching fish, not in great numbers or size, but I think the fishing is generally pretty tough out there. Guys who I know can catch them are struggling, which I’m not suprised. This leg of the journey has been tough. Yes, there is a shad spawn, and yes the bass are bedding, but Seminole is a different animal than most lakes. This year, the grass on Seminole has not grown up and it’s relatively barren compared to the other times I’ve fished here. What that means is you cannot go pound the grass and milk fish out of it. Grass lakes without grass can be confusing. Keeping it consistent and being able to have solid sacks of fish for 3 days is the goal.
My gameplan: Fishing Small, getting a good solid limit, and then breaking out and fishing Big. I have various areas where I can fan cast finesse style baits and get it done. I have areas that are in danger of being ruined by muddy water coming down Spring Creek, however, I think I can adjust and fish the moment and conditions. We have relatively strong winds and thunderstormy type day forecasted for tomorrow. That means the bed fishing will be tough for the most part. Not game over, but the bed fishing on Seminole that I’ve experienced is pretty fickle. The fish are really smart, trolling motor aware, and require extreme stealth and skills to get to bite (the big fish anyway). Ideally, I get a good limit with enough time to go have some free time to go hunt some big ones. I am hunting them with Triple Trouts, 3:16 Sunfish/Bluegills and the 5″ Big Hammer sight fish rig (bed fish). The big swimmer bite has been tough, but it’s out there. I need a good 2-3 hours of chunking and winding to get a bite, and that assumes muddy water and muck haven’t messed with my water. Muddy water and muck (ie, floating grass niblets the ducks pull up, or snot grass pieces, or just wind blown garbage are the doom of the swimbait at times).
I’m fishing for a Top 10 and God willing, am able to pull off a Top 5 or better. I think I can be consistent. Worst case, I get 10-12 pounds per day, but best case, I think I can get 15+ a day, and sustain it for 3 days in a row. I think 28- 30 pounds, two day total, will make the Top 10 cut or slightly less. Guys are going to have some big sacks, but I don’t believe they can do it 3 days in a row, let alone 2 days in a row. We shall see. I feel good about catching some fish and competing.
Click the above image to be routed to Tackle Warehouse, buy a copy of Southern Trout Eaters (and whatever else you might need), check out, and you'll be entered to win one of two 3 Dot Triple Trouts. Raffle Ends 2-29-12.
Thanking Mr. Whitmer for his contribution to our film in both person and in bait, and thanking him again for allowing us the opportunity to give away a couple of beautiful baits that anyone would be stoked to have. The Triple Trout is a hard bait. Hard Baits require much more scrutiny than do soft baits. The Triple Trout catches fish in all latitudes and longitudes trout or no trout, and is a bigbait you need to be fluent in. We featured the Triple Trout in the Southern Trout Eaters DVD of course, and show how we fish it in ‘moving bait’ conditions and in straight up Southern heat. S-Swimmers are part of the tool kit, and the Triple Trout is right next to the set of wrenches.
CLICK HERE to view the page to buy your copy of our Southern Trout Eaters DVD, and see the banner at the top of the page that outlines the raffle from Tackle Warehouse. Bottom line is, buy a copy of Southern Trout Eaters in February and you’ll be entered into the drawing to win one.
Owner ST-36 Stinger Hooks and Hyper Wire Split Rings added to the raffled baits for your fish hooking and landing pleasure.
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 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.
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.
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, Fall of 2008. Working on the blueback herring bite around long sloping red clay points.
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.
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, 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.
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.
Chartruese bass 8" Triple Trout. Lake Seminole sand bar fishing, the mouth of Spring Creek.
Here is tutorial that might be elementary to some, but might be useful to others. We use a ton of 20-25-30 pound P-Line CXX Moss Green Copolymer line for our bigbait fishing. We change line often, and usually only use a ‘top shot’ of line, meaning we are only changing the top 75 or so yards of line (vs. the entire spool). You just don’t know when you are going to get ‘the bite’ and believe changing line relatively often necessary because of the physics involved in lobbing baits that weigh 5 ounces. The line take a beating just by casting it, stopping it with your thumb on the spool, etc.
The 10" Triple Trout, in purple trout, from our film, Southern Trout Eaters..."If the Vortex don't get ya, the Lightning Bolt will"
There is one swimbait that started the “S” swimmer revolution and whose simplicity is its genius. The Triple Trout is an absolute staple in our swimbait fishing, our practice approach to tournament swimbait fishing, and a bait that compliments our efforts to explore big and small bait fishing. The 10″ Triple Trout is a BIGBAIT and probably one of the more tiring lures you’ll ever commit to and learn to fish. This bait can be a workout to fish, which is all the better because most don’t have the nerve, the physical conditioning or the guts to commit to a bait like the 10″ Triple Trout.
The Triple Trout is hand crafted, painted, and tuned in Long Beach, California. Scott Whitmer is the man behind the 22nd Century Bait Company (named in relation to a song from “the Briefs”) . Scott is old school in the Southern California trophy scene, and Scott continues to have fun with his fishing (well, he doesn’t fish anymore, according to him) and bait designs.
Here is a picture of Scott, from out interview session that was featured in Southern Trout Eaters:
Mr. Scott Whitmer the man behind the Triple Trout and Nezumaa Rat, at home in his shop, Long Beach, CA
Scott’s style is very Southern Californian. Long Beach in fact. In South Orange County, we have a punk rock scene, but Long Beach always seemed a bit more rockabilly and 50’s greaser style, which is cool with us and we share a lot of mutual DNA. Scott is a craftsman. He has a strong and loyal following. He prefers to keep a low profile and make baits and quietly expand his business. His baits catch fish, period, and there it was no accident that Scott and his baits (the Triple Trout and Nezumaa Rat) were featured in our film, Southern Trout Eaters. The film leaves no doubt of the 10″ baits effectiveness for big fish and numbers, and covers topics like changing tails and shows us fishing and catching some serious studs on it.
The Triple Trout was conceived around being a jointed swimmer that required no bill and provided switchback and erratic jerkbait like actions and stalls that would fire up the Southern California trout eaters to chase and eat. There is something special about the 10” Triple Trout. It’s a known big fish bait, getting it done in places like Diamond Valley, Casitas, the Castaics, Don Pedro, San Vicente, Clear Lake to name a few. Our message is around simplification. The Triple Trout is on a short list of baits that have proven themselves to catch teen and double digit sized fish consistently—AND it’s a HARDBAIT. There are a LOT of JUNK hardbaits out there, so pay attention to the ones that are actually catching fish. That says it all right there. You have to separate baits that actually have caught really big ones into a separate buckets and then analyze soft vs. hard baits. The Huddleston, The Triple Trout, 3:16 Baits by Mickey Ellis, the Lunker Punker, MS Slammer, and Rago Baits pretty much cover 95% of fish catches on bigbaits when you drill into it.
From Top to Bottom: The 10" Triple Trouts from the film, Southern Trout Eaters: Silver Trout, Blue Trout, and Mackerel Trout
Our Film, Southern Trout Eaters, explores fishing the Triple Trout for the Blue Ridge and Ozark Mountain trout eaters. There is no doubt that bass in the MidWest and South are crazy and fired up about the Triple Trout. We have been throwing the Triple Trout since 2005 in the South, and it’s a bait we’ve put the most time throwing, next to the Huddleston Deluxe family of baits. We’ve caught the trout eaters on the Triple Trout, but the really exciting stuff is catching the blueback herring eaters, the big gizzard shad eaters, the brim/perch eaters, etc with the Triple Trouts as well. There are 6-7-8-10″ versions of the Triple Trout, and you can expect us to have a write-up for each.
One of the largest spotted bass I've ever caught, and it was captured on film and included in Southern Trout Eaters. Get your head and gear right, because the 10" Triple Trout will expose weaknesses in your mental and physical approach to bigbait fishing in a hurry.
Strengths: The 10” is an excellent BIG FISH bait. Double digits, teens, and the 7-8-9 pound fish will eat this bait. You can cover a ton of water with the Triple Trout and look for followers and movement to understand what reaction the fish have a bigbait. Excellent durability and fishability. Can be fished at night, good thumping swim.
Ideal Conditions: Water temps above 60 degrees or so. The warmer the water, the better for the Triple Trout. The fish need to be in a chasing, topwater, or otherwise positive mood where they’ll move to get a bait. You create the bite with the Triple Trout at times, using a start stop and jerk bait like retrieve to turn neutral or negative fish into biters. The clearer the water the better, but don’t fool yourself, this bait has enough thump and vibration and color choices that even the dirty water guys will be impressed.
Notes: If you want to get serious about trophy hunting, add the 10” Triple Trout right under 8” Huddleston Deluxe. This bait separates men from boys. When we recommend the 400 TE for bigbait fishing, this bait is a prime example. In order to fish this bait effectively and not wear your arms and wrists out, you need the right rod and reel to match the physics this bait brings—and the fish that will commit to the bait.
When they get the front hook on your 10" Triple Trout, you know they are liking the color you are throwing. 10" Triple Trout in "Purple Trout"