Mattlures

Carl that was a great detailed review. My only complaint is you showed a very old version of my Ultimate gill.

For dirty water or at night I like baits with a lot of feed back and or noise.. Obviously I am bias towards my own baits so... besides my Hardgill, a good rat bait, a good wake bait like a slammer or Wake Jr. A Triple trout or a top water walking bait. Subtle quiet baits will still work without good visability but I have a lot more confidence when I can feel the bait thumping or hear and or see it.

Ok guys, I have to cut it off. I have gotten a ton of PM's. I have to go buy more stamps and then I will ship out eyes to all the guys who sent me a PM. Please no more though. If you sent me a PM and you don't get the eyes in a week or two check back with me in case I missed your PM Moderators can you delete this post please Thanks Matt

I just received a shipment of eyes and they got one of them wrong. I will give some away for free. I would prefer you made your own baits to use them on.

That's cool looking. Is that a saltwater catfish?

Bill Murphy went out of his way to be very quiet, so did Crupi and Kodata. From watching the Butch Brown videos I am pretty sure he is being quiet. I like to sneak up on a spot weather I am in my boat or walking the shore line. I want to increase my odds even if its just a little bit. It adds up.

That little guy makes the fish look huge! That's a great pic!

We all have our own way of pricing our baits. I price mine 1st by how much of my time goes into each bait. 2nd by how much money goes into each bait. R&D is barely factored into the price if at all. I want my baits to be available to the guys who want to fish them. I don't want my baits so expensive that only a handful of guys can afford them. If I priced them too low then they wouldn't be worth my time to make. To high and I wouldn't has as many customers. Its a balancing act. Right now I sell the baits I make and I rarely am able to accumulate any stock. This is how I like it. The flippers make money off of us and there doesn't seem to be a perfect answer for fixing this. Some things help but if there is a buck to be made then there will still be flippers. Economics 101 supply and demand. I have experimented with out sourcing before to meet demand and I have never been totally satisfied with the results so I make everything in shop and I like it that way. I may not ever be able to meet all my demands but I can focus on quality. I doubt any swimbait makers started making baits because they thought they were going to get rich. I am blessed that I can do what I love and pay the bills. It is more gratifying when a customer sends me a big fish pic then when they send me money.

Some very cool paint jobs in there

I have had many pro tournament guys tell me they will get them riled up with a bluegill swimbait then toss in a small bait to seal the deal. Its a one two punch

Congrats, great fish

Ceaser is right. Randall there is a reason you have a big demand. It speaks volumes of the quality of your baits.

Just finished reading this thread for the first time. Ha wow this is what happens when you only get one side of the story. Before all of this happened. About 12 years ago I had made an 8 and a 10in dead stick bait of a similar but much more ugly then my current design. A while after that, Probably a couple years, Mark sent me a rubber tuna and asked me to make a mold for him so he could make a bait out of it. So I did. Mark then made a finished bait with a wooden core and sent it to me and I painted it for him. It was very crude. Sometime around this time Huddleston had released his big floating dead stick trout and Rago had posted pictures on Calfishing of his big floating dead stick trout. Then about 6 years later I made my 13in deadstick bait. I started showing some fish I caught with it. Mark contacted me and told me I should name it the Giagantoid. Unknown to me was that Mark had shown his tuna bait to rod and called it the Giagantoid. Then Rod contacted me and told me he invented the bait before me. He also said he never released it and only showed a few guys. He believed Mark showed me his design when he sent me the rubber tuna and he was up set about it and he was really upset about the name Giagantoid. I had never seen one of Rods baits before and then he sent me a picture of his bait. I had seen the Hudd and the Rago but not Rod's. My bait looked nothing like his and even my core was completely different from Rods The only similarity was that they were both floating soft trout. Mine had an open mouth and flared movable fins and was much thicker and it was painted. Rods was basically a Stocker trout with out the joint and wings. Durring that time this all blew up, Rod was in bad health. We talked on the phone just about each day for a week. He was most upset about the 13in deadstick bait that I was planning on releasing because his big floater had been his secret weapon and he was really upset that I was using Giagantoid as its name. So out of respect for him I told him I just wouldn't make anymore of the 13 in deadstick baits(Giagantoids) and to this day I still haven't. I gave away most of the few I had made. And then I went another direction completely and made my dead twitch. and my other dead stick baits. The rest is history

There is no drama with the shad baits. Mine is still very much a prototype and I am in no hurry with it. It sounds like the 30 Acre bait will be available soon. Nobody is claiming to have been copied.

Hey guys I have had a bunch of guys asking about this bait. I am sorry to say these are just prototypes and I still have some tweaks to do and dial in the glide action. They are no where near ready for production. Sorry for the tease. I just wanted to see if I could paint a shad and I liked the way they came out so I posted them on my FB page. If you want a great shad glide then I recommend getting a Gliding gizzard from Randall or a Hinkle shad or possibly trying one of the new 30 Acre shads. Eventually when I do start producing them I will donate one to the site for a contest. Again sorry for the tease.

Rago generic trout OG Basstrix boot tail Rago tool / BBZ Bull shad Baitsmith Mag Hinkle trout in a few years HPH glide in a few years and of course the reaction strike bass harasser

Besides the ones you listed My Ultimate gill My Hardgill Rago rat. Stocker trout AC Plug. Castiac hard trout Castaic Hard head trout Original line through Osprey Mission fish Deps 250 Punker (if you consider it a swimbait)

Cool video Tyler. Thanks for posting

Ha I like that guys buy and use swimbaits but it was cool when I could go to a lake and not see anybody throwing them. That store is now East county bait and tackle. Very cool store. I never realy had any issues fishing all the SD river ponds. Over the years I have gotten kicked out a few times but never anything where I thought I was in danger. Of course I rarely fished them at night and I always had friends. If I were to go now I would be armed.

Nice fish love the pic with the Hardgill. Thanks for posting

Those ponds used to be called huck finn and they would allow kids to fish there in groups. There was a caretaker guy who lived there in shacks and I am guessing that's who you are talking about? who ever used to own doesn't anymore and the shacks and that guy have been gone for a long time. I used to fish that place hard from about 6years old into my twentys and then that's when they changed the ponds. Last time I went there they were gone dried up.

without seeing the inside of the front section he possibly thought he was unscrewing the "screw eyes". but he was actually just bending/twisting the metal loop pieces.

Yeah those aren't screw eyes that will unscrew. Something has to break if you go trying to turn one of those. From the video Butch posted they swim good. The don't look like they would need any adjusting.

When I am testing I use a clip and have not chipped them at all. I have fished them but mostly rotating through baits testing the swim. I have only fished a few of them for more then an hour at a time and none of those chipped either. I imagine with more time though its bound to wear the paint inside the mouth. I preffer to use the clips but again mostly because I am rotating through baits and I don't want to retie that often. I am sure you could rig a clear sleeve over the clip if you were worried about it. Maybe a 1/4 in of aquarium tubing to slide over the clip.

If the Orso's have collector value then a signed one should be worth more. If the Orso's don't have collecter value then it wouldn't matter