My year with swimbaits...so far.

[Garry2rs]

I'm new to swimbaits in the last 9 months.

Since reading Bill Siemantel's book "Big Bass Zone" I have caught a lot of fish on both soft and hard bodied swimbaits. I have not caught anything like the 15 or 20 pounders he catches, but those fish don't live near me!

On the other hand, I've been using the 6 inch models, not the 10"+ baits that the San Diego crowd swear by...grin.

Making these baits work...Gaining confidence in them...Has been the real challenge. Along the way I have had to make some adjustments and learn some new technique that I'd like to share.

The first thing that I found was that I had to slow way down!

This was made more difficult because over the last few years the gears ratios on bass reels have become faster and faster...going from an average of 5.3 ten years ago to an average of 6.3 now. At the same time it seems that every new reel that is introduced is a 7.1 or quicker.

All this speed is fine, but swimbaits, in my opinion, need to move slowly. I'm sure that the big ones will wear you out the same way musky lures do. Even the "small" six inch models seem to work best when you slow them down to a crawl.

The second thing I noticed was that they seem to like a steady retrieve, with just the occasional change of speed or direction.

At first I was using a Skeet Reese type Jerkbait retrieve...jerk-jerk-jerk...pause...jerk-jerk-jerk...

This turned out to be a No-Go!

Winding at a steady rate, then pausing, worked much better. As I recall, most of my strikes came in the middle of the retrieve when I was doing nothing special.

The soft plastic models I tried were a big disappointment. They look great in the water and feel lifelike, but one Pike or Musky pretty well destroys them...That wasn't a big surprise, but what was a shocker was that even a couple of mid-size, 3-4 pound Bass, tore them up quickly.

I have now switched to hard swimbaits. The longest surviving one I have is a Sebile Magic Swimmer. It has caught Pike, Musky and Bass and is still in good shape.

Although they aren't jointed and have a diving lip, the Kooper, Live Target baits, with their super-high detail finish seem to fall into the swimbait category. In my mind they can stand a lot of close scrutiny. I'm sure the new jointed models will be killers when they are available.

In the meantime, stuck in Canada with duty and taxes, on anything I order from "Stateside," not to mention those brokerage house bandits, I've been on the lookout for something a little less pricey that the $18.00US. Sebile baits.

Last week a friend told me he has caught over 20 bass on an $8.00 bait made by Matzuo. It's called a Triple Play. The bait is triple jointed like the Sebile bait and runs a little deeper at 2' to 4' feet. Unlike the lipless Sebile, this bait has a small diving lip. I bought two of the 6" size and they both seem to work quite well for Bass in my area.
Garry2R's