Randykast

Summary: - These fish were incredibly difficult to hook properly. Their aims were terrible. - These fish were incredibly difficult to land. 10+ hits, 6 fish were hooked, 1 landed. - These fish were powerful and had a lot of endurance. 80 pounder took 1 hour and 20 minutes to land. - Tranx 400 got trashed at the end of the fight. Rod: F5 departure rod Reel: Shimano Tranx 400 Line: 30lb P line CXX + 80lb mono leader Baits: 6" alpha shad, 7.5-9" wcz battles shad and citizen

Each has different purpose. I throw the citizen on the really thick covers or when I need to skip the bait on every cast. It doesn't get torn up as easily as the battleshad from skipping or from getting it stuck on brushes. I throw the battles shad more in clearer water, thick cover (but not too thick), cliff walls, and docks.

How did you work it?

That's a tank! I have caught plenty of 24-25 inch fish and none of them were even close to 10 pounds. That is a unit!

This bait is big in AZ especially around Yuma area.

It looks a lot like billy skinner's cheater. http://www.basstacklemaster.com/Skinner-Cheater-4-Swimbait-p/skinnerbtbc4.htm

I have been throwing battleshads for more than a year now and I have only gone through one battleshad completely. You have to learn how to singe them back together and properly apply mend it. If you do use mend it, you have to make sure that there isn't tensile stress pulling the plastic apart or otherwise, the plastic will rip apart. Make sure you introduce compressive stress by mechanically squeezing the bait together. Not all of them are created equal either - I use the softer ones during the winter and the stiffer ones during summer. This particular one has caught over 10 fish including several in the 6-8 pound range.

There are probably more economical swimbaits out there to skip through heavy cover, but the battles shads seem to pull the bigger ones out.

Thanks Carl, much appreciated. I have learned a lot from your vids!

Hi All, First of all, sorry for whoring this fish out if you have already seen it. Since I'm new here, I feel that this is the perfect opportunity to introduce myself and share a bit of back story. I also have not done a write-up about my catch so this is my first stab at it. Background: I moved to AZ from the east coast back in 2015. I picked up my first swimbait at the end of 2015 (lucky craft real ayu), and started chucking it at urban ponds to try and learn the lure. On my first trip out with it, I caught a decent urban bass and was immediately hooked. I started picking up more and more swimbaits (duel hardcore and swaver) and started catching random fish here and there. These random fish on the "entry baits" gave me the confidence to try more serious ones out there. For many months, I would throw the deps 250 at the salt chain lakes and come home with lots of followers but no fish to show for. As soon as I started seeking advice from an AZ swimbait/tourney guy, Joey, I was catching deps and HPH fish more consistently. 2017 was a year I would never forget as I was able to turn many of the theories that I had learned into real world experience with countless fish over 5-6 pounds and a handful of fish in the 7-8 pound range. I was also doing a lot of kayak tourneys so I would attribute time on the water to my newfound success as well. Fishing in 2017: My two fishing goals for 2017 were to qualify for the Kayak Bass Fishing (KBF) National Championship, which through a miracle I managed to do, and to catch a DD. I came pretty close in achieving my second goal in May when I caught a 25 inch post-spawned fish and in October when I caught a 27 inch battles shad fish (weighing in at 8 pounds). I went out one last time in late December of 2017 to try and accomplish my second goal. Within 15 minutes of launching my kayak, I hooked into a 6 pounder on the deps 250 and felt confident about my chances that day. Seeing how they were aggressively feeding on freshly stocked trouts and swiping at the deps, I switched to a slightly bigger bait (hiro trout). At approximately 10 am, I hooked into a fish that was potentially a DD on the hiro trout. The fish smashed the bait almost at full cast and was racing towards the kayak. I blew my chances 3 times trying to net the fish before it finally shook free. I felt sick to my stomach, went straight home in defeat, and reflected on my mistakes. PB during a tourney: 2018 rolled around and I still had to catch my DD. I started the year with pre-fishing Saguaro for a kayak tourney. I ran into Manny Chee for the first time on the water in January while pre-fishing and started bugging him too about swimbait related questions. I appreciated that he was always happy to answer my questions ...super cool guy. I was throwing all kinds of swimbaits during pre-fishing but noticed that the only swimbait that they were really keying on was the hiro shad. So when tournament day arrived, I brought 2 baits: a half-shell for drop shotting and a hiro shad. I had one backup rod too just in case (3 rods total). Within 30 minutes of launch, I came across a few arches hugging the bottom at around 30-40 ft. I made a U-turn and after 5 casts with the half-shell, I had my limit with the biggest bass at 20.25". I tried to cull a my 14.25" and 14.5" by sticking around the same spot for about an hour but to no avail. At around 8:45am, I put away my fairy wand and started to beat the bank with the hiro shad. I made about 10 casts before hooking into my PB (teetering between 11-11.5 pounds on the boga grip, 26.75") at 9:00 am along a cliff wall. I knew that a 61.5" bag for a 3 fish limit tourney was going to be difficult to beat; so with 4/5 hours left in the tourney, I parked my kayak at the bank and relaxed because of my paranoia of flipping my kayak or dropping my phone into the water (I have a record of dropping nice things into the water like my net and my sunglasses). I won the tourney out of 48 kayaks because I was the only person with a limit that day (I guess it was a tough day for most, and I got really lucky). Takeaway from my experience: Throughout the short time that I had been swimbaiting, I noticed several DDs that were interested but were never going to commit because of poor cast/boat positioning/retrieve/setup (bad angle, no structure to pin, no pinch point, etc.), and with some luck, I had always thought that my DD was going to come from that perfect setup. This DD was caught exactly like how I imagined it. My kayak was just at the right position so that I was able to run the Hiro shad as close to the wall as possible throughout most of the retrieve as my kayak was drifting towards the wall. I also made the right cast when I had the angle. I am in no position to give others swimbait advice at this point since I still have a lot to learn, but one takeaway from my experience of throwing swimbaits for the past 2.5 years would be to make every cast count - as if a DD was hiding behind every ambush point. Swimbaiting has not only reignited my passion for fishing but it has been responsible for some of my biggest catches of all time. I am excited about my progress thus far and hope to catch many more DDs (whenever the salt chain lakes decide to recover)!