What Kind of Swimbaiter Are You?

[mjw2121]

3 minutes ago, bassbass said:

Didn't write that to hurt anyone's feelings or to make anyone feel bad. There is also alot of pressure on many lakes and ponds. Just trying to help.

I know.Didnt hurt my feelings.Just thought I would give some insight as to a possible reason guys go through it. Also thought of the YouTube video and made me laugh.So figured I’d share.

[Rogervang]

1 hour ago, surfk9 said:

"Fish are not perpetually keyed in on a big meal.  You will waste many a day if you don't allow for the fact that huge fish also eat plenty of small things. "  KeepinItReelFishing has a great point...Two of my fishing partners (brothers actually ) love to fish for stripers with minnows, whereas I chuck & wind while they dunk away...I catch fish sporadically compared to them....but they occasionally snag a beauty ...of which I remind them "It doesn't count cuz you caught it with a minnow" lol...michel ...Go Fish!!!...by the way the biggest Iv'e landed on a swimbait is 10lbs...so i have a ways to go to equal their "don't count minnow fish"

Those are some nice "dont count" fish

[Big baits = BIG FISH]

1.5 for me

[MartinG]

GREAT TOPIC AND A GOOD READ! 

I guess I’m a hybrid, trophy chaser, species chaser, in love with the hunt and I’ll use what ever it takes to get the big bite! 

[Jonister]

I'm a 3. Somewhere in between. It seems these days I like making baits more than fishing them, so when I get out I throw whatever is fun. Sometimes I just bring my swimbait rod and have at it, whereas other times I'll throw anything. Most days I spend more time screwing around and tweaking with baits over actually focus fishing. I sure do learn a ton. Either way I'm having fun, it sure beats work and whatever else needs to be done. @danthefisherman I looooove spybaits! My favorite bait to make and throw. 

Edited April 17, 2019 by Jonister

[danthefisherman]

30 minutes ago, Jonister said:

I'm a 3. Somewhere in between. It seems these days I like making baits more than fishing them, so when I get out I throw whatever is fun. Sometimes I just bring my swimbait rod and have at it, whereas other times I'll throw anything. Most days I spend more time screwing around and tweaking with baits over actually focus fishing. I sure do learn a ton. Either way I'm having fun, it sure beats work and whatever else needs to be done. @danthefisherman I looooove spybaits! My favorite bait to make and throw. 

Same! It amazes me what quality of fish I can pull in on such a tiny, do-nothing bait. A friend gifted me two Duo Realis Spinbait 80s a few years back that I absolutely fell in love with. Too bad I broke one bait in half on a fence and a different friend casted my last bait off about a year ago, so I haven't fished a spybait since. I've since started using an old Rapala Xrap of mine about the same size and have absolutely whacked fish on it. Now these two baits are my go to confidence baits.

But I'll stop talking about spybaits and jerkbaits now before people get angry 

[Jonister]

I had a duo but lost it to a log. They are so versatile too! Throw em like a jerkbait or fish them like a spinnerbait. Can't go wrong! Your right. swimbaits, swimbaits. 

[Dsouth]

A few years ago I was a 90% SB guy with 10% going to jigs, frogs + double buzz-baits, now I’m a 75% SB 25% other baits guy. There’s a lot more guys in New England waters working big baits so the bigger smarter to catch LM see a lot more over size presentations, a down sized bait can fool a GIANT + it’s fun to play and landing a big LM or SM on 4-6LB test line. Go Big or Go Light or Go Home.

 

  

[GreenPig]

Went this morning and threw swimbaits for 2 hours hitting multiple key spots and never even had a follower. A couple hundred yards away I see surface activity and troll over. It was hybrid bass so I tied on a pearl white super fluke and caught so many hybrids, LM, spotted bass, and stripers in 2 hours I had to stop and take a break. I prefer fishing swimbaits but not enough to pass up that experience. 

[BamaChild]

My thinking is pretty clear. Larger lakes and higher pressured areas are for swimbaits only. If I am fishing a pond where I know for a fact the fish are stacked, I typically throw conventional gear. I'm just trying to catch a big bass regardless. If throwing conventional has the same odds as catching a big bass as a swimbait, I'll throw conventional because catching fish of any size is fun to me.

[BrierBob]

I'm the kind that doesn't catch squat and drools over the pics of all you guys with monsters. Y'all have a good weekend.

[dheath2]

I'm mostly swimbaits most of the time but I've been known to dabble with other stuff.  Probably 85/15 swimbait/anything else ratio.  And I agree with the sentiment that a swimbait is not always the right tool for the job.  But with the caveat that you can pattern with swimbaits similar to how you would with anything else. 

Patterning fish-evidence of repeated bass behavior in a given period of time.  Their behavioral patterns from our perspective. 

Depth > Speed > Vibration > Profile > Color…refer to In-Fisherman

Casting angle is in that equation as well…visible shoreline cover or offshore structure, parallel to the shore or a 45 degree angle from shore/to shore. 

Another key consideration is current weather patterns and some indirect correlations with moon phases.  Date, time, Air and water temps, winds, barometric Px are probably the most critical to keep track of.  That way when prevailing conditions exist that you have caught fish on in the past you may be able to repeat that pattern.   Key word being “may.” 

It’s a matter of what’s working or isn’t working and adjusting your presentation until you can entice a fish to strike via its own reaction or demonstrating a feeding behavior.  Large, expensive/rare hard baits are popular because they play on a fish's reactions.  And because they are rare and expensive...And Carl is 100% right.  Big baits are for big fish.  Not for the sake of catching swimbait fish...but that's what the market has catered towards. 

One must also pay attention to his/her fishing...be analytical with what you're doing.  Casual fishing with any bait will produce casual results.  Chuck and wind without further consideration and analysis may get some fish, but you could have a better day or at least learn a little more about the area you are fishing. 

Swimbaits can be broken down into a few categories:

Wake baits: BBZ floater, Slammers and others.

Glide baits: Hinkle, Deps, Shine Glide, Sneaky Pete, R2S…etc.

Multi Jointed baits: Triple trout, bullshad, hard gill

Boot tail soft baits: Smash Tech, 3:16 RS, Osprey and many others

Wedge tail soft baits: Realprey, Huddleston, Hammer tail, Burrito baits, Rago...Baitsmith is working on coming back

Others: Segmented soft baits, billed diving baits…these are less common.  Some may classify things like crawlers as swimbaits, I do not. 

My theory on how to figure it out…during this whole time I look like a crazy person in my boat talking to myself and working through my presentations. 

Start with what you know or have the most confidence in or really just want to catch a fish on.  One piece of experience that is worth sharing is that you should never set a bait specific goal (I want to catch # fish on this bait)…common advice in swimbait fishing is to take one or two baits and leave all the others at home.  This is good in theory and truthfully practice as it forces an angler to learn how to work a bait but will result in more skunks than necessary as not every single bait will produce every single time out.  I do and don’t advocate this common advice given to beginners.  I digress…

For example I’ll use a soft wedge tailed bait first.  Start low and slow.  By slow I mean watch your spool turn.  Not quite stitching slowly with your fingers.  Cast to visible cover, parallel to shore and 45 degrees out from the bank on a long cast.  Do this until you’re convinced that this isn’t working in this particular area.  This may be cast or time based…it’s a bit of a personal judgement call.  Unless of course you get a positive reaction like an aggressive follow...or catch a fish.

Next, count the bait down a few seconds and just roll a medium retrieve.  Repeat your cast angles.  Then, burn the bait under the surface through the same cast angles in the same area.  If this doesn’t elicit a reaction in your area, don’t worry.  It can be just a matter of timing or bait profile/action. 

Since we only have so much time to fish on a given day we have a couple choices.  Try to repeat the same thing in a different area, or change it up.  Either is acceptable.  In my case, I’m going after bait profile and action of the soft bait and I’ll repeat all of the above with a boot tailed bait with or without some flash (Owner flashy swimmer).  I’ll repeat the process through the various bait categories until the fish tell me something positive via their reaction to a certain category of bait fished a certain way.  Everything builds and develops until you figure it out...depth, speed, vibration, profile...

Eventually the timing and/or presentation will be right.  Or it won’t and your day is either over or it just wasn’t a swimbait day or your timing was just off in the areas you fished.  It happens. 

Also of note, swimbaits can replace a lot of things that conventional tackle will do.  However, you can't work them over slop or punch through heavy cover.  You can really only fish edges with baits that are actually swimbaits.  Otherwise, you should consider still keeping your frogs and punching gear.  Or accept lost opportunity.

Some may disagree.  My opinions are my own, feel free to share and adapt/interpret.  I could go on.

Bill Murphy caught giants on little worms.  Read his book. 

 

 

[danthefisherman]

Bumping this up because I've been catching a lot better quality fish on swimbaits recently that makes me think, "Hey, I might actually stick my pb on a swimbait soon!"

To explain: I don't pride myself with catching big fish and my pb is only 5lbs (caught on a senko of course). Even being from California only two hours from Clear Lake and still closer to the delta, I grew up fishing a small man-made lake where a 12-15" bass was a good size. Or I would fish small local ponds where I'd get lucky if I could tag one bass on a dropshot. I fished only from shore and didn't think beyond that. So I guess I unconsciously got into swimbaiting more as an artform without me really expecting to catch bigger fish. My long standing swimbait pb was a bass only a bit over 3lb and a big channel cat from Clear Lake. Catching trophies with big baits was for the big sticks, and I'd be happy to stick anything over 15" on one.

For a long time I was perfectly content catching swimbait fish here and there that were minnows compared to others being caught. I'd enter every SU tourney just for kicks and never once had a fish caught during the competition. That all changed when my brother and I got kayaks the start of this year and we started fishing the upper reaches of the delta system. The place is just so rich with life and laden with fishy-looking cover. It was so unlike the barren man-made lakes and ponds I was used to. It's a well-known and easily accessible spot so the bite has its ups and downs, but testing one of my homemade swimbaits there has been producing some good fish...way more big fish than I've been used to. I've been learning to read patterns in the tides, cover, and fish activity to maximize my time on the water and hunt for those bigger fish. Just in this past month fishing twice when the smoke wasn't so bad I broke my swimbait pb twice with a 4.5 and 4.8 that both had empty stomachs and will for sure weigh a lot more in a month or so with full bellies.

Anyways...I can now say for myself that swimbaits aren't just an art form but can really be a powerful tool to catch bigger fish. Sorry you had to suffer through my short essay just for that. I'm just really stoked that I actually have a likely chance to break my wee 5lb pb mark after all these years haha. I'm not sure if you can really call that "trophy" hunting, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. And who knows? At the this rate maybe I'll jump from 5lb to 10lb! 

[WaterWolf44]

I live 10 minutes from a trophy Pike Lake and I'm also a stickler for realism. So I started using the Savage gear line through baits. What inspired me to start throwing big baits was seeing a big trout get annihilated by a monster Pike. And for me part of the fun of fishing is thinking outside of the box. Many of the guys around here use the conventional stuff like rubber worms and senkos. That style of fishing although effective is really boring to me so I started looking at other baits I can pretty much guarantee people aren't using around my area. So this inspired me to start buying from across the ocean from places like Europe and Scandinavia where pike fishing is a religion. And I got to say I found some really cool stuff that has caught me some good fish.

[NikLaw1]

I'm definitely #2, 95% swimbaits