fishratt

Kind of had a similar experience to you, but just with difference species. After fishing strictly largemouth since forever, I moved to Canada and started targeting pike. I still bounce back and forth between the states and up north pretty much every couple of months. Originally, I thought that I could just apply all of my swimbait bass techniques to the pike. Nope. Didn't work as well as the youtube videos featuring Oliver Ngy would lead you to believe. The soft plastic paddletails and glidebaits that I was using never seemed to get the same amount of attention as typical blades, jerkbaits, ect. I'd huck the swimbait all day long and get nothing, then switch to an oversized 1.5 ounce spinnerbait and start smashing them. In then end, they're just different animals. Pike fishing has developed it's own lures and techniques over course of many decades. It was silly to think that bass fishing techniques (which developed for bass fishing specifically) would do better. That doesn't mean that there weren't bass fishing techniques that I was able to revise for the pike. Got on a really good gancraft 230 bite during the winter when everybody else was throwing suspending jerkbaits. Also was able to smash a couple giants on a lunker punker. That said, most of the time the typical pike lures worked the best. There's a fine line between borrowing techniques from other species and implementing them onto your species, or force feeding the fish something that they just aren't naturally designed to be interested in. Tons of bass swimbaits would probably destroy the barras or murray cod, but more often than not, the tried and true will work the best. What're your guy's thoughts on guys throwing big baits for calico? Always seemed kind of silly to me, I don't think that the big bait big fish philosophy applies to saltwater calico. It's not like big bass, where the small ones eat bugs and the big ones eat giant trout or bluegill. Big calico eat pretty much the same things as small calico, so what's the benefit in throwing a bigger bait (not to mention a 250$ glide)?

Anybody know who makes this bait? Found it out of a guy's garage a couple of years ago, here in socal. It's a huge bait, must be about 12 inches long (maybe more). All plastic ABS bait with knockers. Here it is next to a 9" slammer for size comparison. If any of you guys really like this thing, shoot me a message. Standard wakebait kind of swim, cranks a couple feet under. About 5-6 ounces.