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Now that Mike Bucca has released his new baits I can post a picture of my pb from October 3rd, on a then prototype Bull Gill wake. First time out with the bait, and first cast of the day over one of my favorite spots produced this NH 6-11, incrementally improving on my earlier this summer 6-10 on a 6” Bull Rat.

Just got an Asian arrowana for an aquarium cool cool fish

Took a little test swim session before work this morning. If you like to slow roll glides, this probably isn’t your bait, not saying doing that won’t catch fish but it’s just not the baits strong suit. Definitely more of a rod twitch glide then reel pumps. Not a wide 250 style glide, more of a Tiny Klash tight twitchy glide. With stock hooks it’s a xxxxss, maybe a inch per second on 20lb mono. Bait DOES NOT blow out at any speed, and I mean any speed, reeling as fast as I can with a revo rocket lol. Very tricky to work right off the bat, took me probably 50 casts to get the hang of, very easy to mis glide ( if your trying to glide left right left right etc. it’s common to accidently left right right right left) on the other hand. If you have floating docks and you want to glide it up under the dock or up under overhead limbs etc. ......this is THE BAIT to have. By far the easiest/best glide I’ve ever used to “walk” up under cover. Almost effortless. That in my opinion is where this bait shines

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I don't have much experience under my belt when it comes to fishing for spotted bass, but I have caught a few before on conventional finesse tackle. This past week I was on vacation in the Angels Camp area and had the chance to fish New Melones Reservoir from a new inflatable kayak gifted to my family over the Christmas holidays. I normally frequent shallow water, grassy lakes and streams fishing from shore, so I'm a bit out of my confort zone in deep and rocky waters on a kayak. Fishing all day Monday with no results was a bit of a letdown. We had a big rain come in Sunday evening through the night so I was hoping the trout and bass were pushing shallow with the runoff. I fished a homemade 6" trout glide most of the time anywhere from 0 - 40 feet deep and picked up a small kastmaster every now and then to try locating the trout. Saw a few trout surface in a grassy cove and a local angler pulled in a nice carp, but other than that we saw no sign of the bass. My brother and I almost didn't try again on Tuesday, but the lake was so close to where we were staying we figured we'd give it another go. I wasn't expecting any action at all and was actually focused on catching those surfacing trout that I saw earlier. A few hours passed without a sniff, so I started to mess around a bit tying on a bright chartreuse wacky rigged senko (shame on me) since it could probably be seen a mile away in the crystal clear water. I had no clue where to fish since I had don't have a graph and had already fished most of the nearby shoreline and open water, so I made my way to the only isolated hard structure that I could see: one of the huge bridge pier columns from the highway way overhead. I spent a good amount of time getting a feel for the bottom contour of the shoreline at the base of the bridge first with the senko and really liked what I felt. I was snagging up in some wood and there was a nice deep pocket where the bank jutted out with the bridge. Earlier on I had found a 6" paddle tail swimbait rigged on a flashy swimmer style swimbait hook, so I tied that on to probe deep cover. I paddled out to the first bridge column which was in 150 - 175 feet of water according to a topographic map I found and planned to fish it at the very bottom. Let me just say that it takes a good while for a weightless senko to sink 150+ feet haha. At this point I was just messing around though, so it came to my surprise that I set into a healthy 1lb 10oz spotted bass on my second drop with the senko. This fish was my new personal best spotted bass after only fishing for them three times haha. It only registered in my brain that I actually had a fish on about halfway through the long fight to bring the fish to the surface. I let the fish go after a quick picture and immediately picked up the swimbait I had found earlier, casting it past the column and right along the edge of it. The swimbait hit bottom a lot faster than the senko, and I fished it slowly on bottom right up against the bridge column. Not a sniff. I paddled to the opposite side of the column and did the same thing, crawling the swimbait right along where the bridge column met the bottom of the lake. The bait just about cleared the bridge when a good fish stopped it dead. I slammed my rod back on my new personal best spotted bass at 3lb 7oz and finally got her into the net after a very long and stressful battle. I was a bit worried because her air bladder was pretty messed up coming from so deep and she was coughing up crawdads all over me, but she swam right down strong after the release and never came up again so I was pumped! Probably not a very big bass by most standards, but considering that it was my third time fishing spotted bass and a three pound largemouth is a good fish at our homelake (I haven't caught one here of this size since January 2018) I was pretty happy. To see her able to swim away and get bigger was even better! We didn't catch anything else for the remainder of the day, but that's ok and we'll be back! Thanks for reading!

Pretty sure that’s who i got mine from and yes it’s worth the price and the hype is legit, i think mine was $35 or close to that (had it for 2-3 years now) the price paid isn’t important to me because this thing has easily recovered $500+ in baits, wouldn’t go out on the boat without it now

Saw the topic and thought this today haha! Congrats on the PB & all around great season Brian.

Here’s mine that i picked up a little over a year ago, 1978 Lowe hustler pro 1748, this was hideous when i got it and the trailer needed some love. I fished it a little the summer i got it but then i couldn’t take the look, plus i didn’t really have a decent size motor for it so i took the rest of the season off and fixed it up, boat was in great shape had a couple of cracked areas that i brazed and sealed, painted the boat with a roll and tip technique that turned out great, added 2 budget finders, put in some new cheap carpet, added a console, picked up a old 35hp and cleaned that up and got it running good, and a 24volt 80lb minn Kota. Then i turned towards the trailer while the boat cured, trailer needed some welding done for a couple areas that where cracked and rusting out, had like 5 coats of paint so i completely striped it down to bare metal, sprayed 2 costs of primer and then 3 coats of satin black rustoleum, new led lights, new winch, new bunk boards, new leaf springs, and a new set of wheels and tires. It was a lot of work but now it’s all looking good. I’m trying my hardest right now to clear my plate of bullshit work (finishing basement) so i can start my deck build after checking out tiny boat nation I’m going to sign up for the patreon account to get the owner to help me layout my entire build. Hoping to start in about a week. Can’t wait for this little rig to be fully custom to what i want. All in all once i gave a deck with storage i think this boat will be perfect for me, i mostly fish alone these days so it was really hard for me to justify getting a nice big fiberglass, plus i don’t really have the room to store a bigger boat and hoeslty water around where I’m at is pretty limited so it would be hard to swallow a big payment on a pro boat. This boat cost me $1200, motor i got for $300, all in all I’ve probably put about $1000 into it so far and I’m hoping my deck build won’t be much over another 1k so for under 4K it’s a perfect boat for me right now.

I have no trouble posting pics in the forum, ever. Just select them from phones gallery and upload. I did have a hell of time finding a picture for the profile pic though. Hope you figure it out. Stuff like that gets frustrating fast.

That’s awesome congrats on the new Pb

Awesome!

That's awesome. Congrats. What's different from the normal wake or billed floater he has? Mike's stuff is the perfect illustration of baits that catch fish not fishermen. Honestly I didn't buy my first Bucca bait until I was schooled on one.

Hell yeah @MrBadExample you had a hell of 2018 season.Looking forward to seeing how well you do in 2019.Congrats on the new pb!!

Very good review....clear, easy to understand

Hell yeah! Was a blast wasn’t it!?!

Think it was 12.4oz which isn’t bad. Can’t wait to chuck it!

Stumbled across this just now, awesome info to have! Deserves a TTT!!!

Congrats! I actually like fishing for spots more than I do large mouth.

Thats a spotted slaunch donkey. Great catch. Those spots only get bigger around from there.

Lol I wouldn’t do that, the slight chance that I don’t like the bait I would trade it for a micro mink or sell it at retail.

Been wanting one of these for a bit. Battleground 320

@chefchris Thanks for the suggestion...

Recently found this Toxic C-walker in trout at a nearby bait shop. I was stoked. My first “bigger” topwater walker. I’ve been playing with the 6” Punker. This is a fair bit heftier.

plano makes a pretty good one for short money, $13.49 at TW. Out of stock now of course. Model is the Plano Z-series Wrap Kryptek I use the Husky 12 in Document pouch from Homies, $3.48, holds a bunch of baits, divider in the center, has a business card holder window on the outside that you can make your own labels for if you wanted to carry a soft bait one, wake baits, etc.

These are what I have been using along with the SU ones. I know these are bigger than you were referring too, but you can't ever have ever enough baits with you! https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=nomad+lure+wraps&_sacat=0

I am trying..nice wild beats by the way

Only 30?

A few new baits I’ve been working on. Wake and crank trout has some crazy big action, and gill is a heavy float which I’ve never done before A6A21AB6-FBCE-479C-A6E1-0E186CFCC61F.MOV

So it’s actually an old school striper plug made by snook bait co. called the giant weasel. Which is/was based an oversized atom 40 (made by bob pond in the late 40s, 1945 actually) with a flattened tail section to throw a bigger wake to mimic big baits like bunker on the surface. I tried making one that was a two piece bait, but the tail was too thick and basically acted like a rudder instead of throwing water and waking. There’s a thread in here somewhere about it. So this time around went with a 3 piece version, shorter mid section than usual and thinned the tail out. It’s still thick enough to where if you casted it into a rock/structure it wouldn’t break. Havent added any weight yet as I want it to wake hard on top, but might need some in the front section to help create a pivot point and help the swim. It’s been sealed and hopefully swam this weekend. I know it looks like a slammer/pats clone but it’s not intentional they just happen to be shaped like atom plugs and most old striper plugs. Here’s a pick of the atoms/actually these are pichney versions, but same shape. then this is the original small size weasel, the one I’m using as a reference is the giant weasel these are some giant weasel clones made by Dave Anderson at Surf Asylum Lures, he does awesome work Finally here’s the 3 piece jointed version I’m working on. I may have to go to a closer version of the original if this one doesn’t work out.

They are expensive but they aren’t a hudd. They look similar but the action is different and they get bites sometimes when a hudd doesn’t. I can’t explain why but there’s something about the baitsmith, they get bites. At this point I haven’t been able to find a good substitute. The hudd is still number one for me but they are different baits and each has its own place.

Wildbeats arrived!

Probably screwed up the address somehow. But waiting 5 months to do something about it probably isn't going to help your cause

Sprayed the paint this weekend, currently is hanging in the new spinner box curing went with a bright pink sides and belly, black and white web on the sides for accents, flo green top for a vision strip, and some purple face/head color, then the whole thing got a healthy dose of holographic clear spray. Will get half assembled and epoxied this week, epoxy will have some sort of pearl/color shift, then once the epoxy is cured, full assembly and if the weather cooperates fished this weekend went with bright colors so it’s easier to see and tune and also most of waters here are root beer lakes/ponds or lightly stained so the colors will be muted once in the water

Definitely agree with bassman on the Dobyns 867 suggestion. Great treble hook bait rod, really throws and fishes them well.

I've gotten a little further on my bait this last week. Went back and did the final detail carving and body work and made molds. This about was about the same size as my last shad glide, so I had a good start on my ballast/resin/micro balloon ratio. It wound up at 8 1/4 inches and 4.25 oz. The bait in the swim vid is the second pour and I've added some suspend dots and strips to compensate for no eyes, clear or paint. This bait swims best with just rhythmic pulses from reel handle with a slow gear ratio. I'm getting some pinching in the joint from too much front weight in the tail section and possibly also from using a plastisol tail. I don't know if a plastisol tail will float more than one out of Flex 30. The tail did fall out and sank to the bottom, although not very fast. Need a little more of the ballast towards the tail. I guess a new tail out of Flex is the next step. I'll keep dialing it in. So a little about my pond. Water temp 40*, I'm swimming the bait in about an 11 x 5 foot area by four foot deep. That being said, it can be hard to get a true sense of the glide potential in that short of distance with that little line out. I've noticed when I throw this type of bait in the lake with 25 yards of line in the water instead of 3, the glide is significantly more stable. This has been true of all baits I've test swam, not just mine. So those are my excuses, LOL. Here's the good , bad and the ugly...

You can see this like just needs to get it's final weighting and swimtest.

The Phenix Classic 800H is a very nice rod. I use to have one till I jumped up and started throwing the Deps 250. That’s when I made the switch to a dobyns 867 mag. I would strongly recommend the dobyns 867 mag over the 800H. The 867 was made for the larger treble hook baits like the Deps 250