Swimbait Fishing For Bass | Full Seminar | Best Baits, Tricks, and Gear

hey you guys matt allen here welcome back to tactical bass and today we're talking swim baits for fall bass we're talking everything from the pond guy to the guy that likes to throw a glide bait fast baits soft baits everything in between which baits give you your best shot at success how to throw the baits when to throw the baits how to modify them here we go the swim bait is an amazing way to catch big bass these baits have incredible drawing power and it's what makes them so unique big fish will come long distances just to look at them even when they're not hungry and of course they eat them too the swim bait does an unbelievable job of specifically targeting monster bass now we've been on this downsized kick lately because that's our pattern here we've been throwing little tiny stuff but that is changing and in the part of the country that you're in it may have already switched this fall as water temperatures start dropping the swim bait bite comes into play and it goes all the way through the winter and all the way through the spring really you can throw them year round but if you want to have the best odds it starts now and it goes all the way to the spawn now today we are going to break this down first we're talking baits i'm going to call it pawn to baits but it's not just pond baits and we're starting here because pond guys guys on the shore you're often neglected you get talked to the least so we're going to talk about that first but really what that category is is bodies of water that don't have shad that don't have big bait fish so we're going to be talking bluegill then we're talking about multi-joint baits baits that you fish quickly then we're talking glide baits we're breaking that down into two categories what we call cover glides and what we call open water glides [Music] from there we're switching to soft baits soft baits we're going with paddle tails and we're going with wedge style tails two very different styles of baits for two very different jobs we'll talk hardware and then we'll talk equipment the rod's the reels and throughout this entire thing i'm going to talk specifics on how to fish every single one of these baits i want you to come away with this video from this video with an incredible amount of confidence to throw a swim bait because this is something that you can do it does work where you live it has worked for a very long time all over this country people are figuring or have figured that out but a lot of people are still way way behind the times on the swimbait bite and you really want to give it a go now again we've been on that small bait kick lately but this is an incredible way to catch them we've been throwing big baits for a very long time to my knowledge my 17 pounder was the first fish over 15 to ever be caught on an eight inch huddleston that's how long we've been throwing these baits now there are guys that have been doing it longer but a lot of them have come and gone today i want to pour out as much of the knowledge that i've gathered over all that time as i possibly can to help you guys catch more fish so let's start with that bluegill or pond category okay we've got soft baits and hard baits so in the fall almost everything revolves around bait fish there's a time for a jig there's a time for a bluegill bait but in 99 of fisheries it's all about shad profiles trout profiles herring shiner but not everybody's on those bodies of water some people are on those water bodies where the fish are eating panfish they're eating bluegills in that category i've got four hard baits two soft baits and that is it okay let's start with soft baits this is a bait that i fell in love with this year it's a new bait this is savage gears little bluegills okay this one has a jig hook this one has a great big weedless hook hidden inside of there and it is amazing that they get such a big hook to completely vanish inside of such a little bait but they do it both of these are little little i mean they're small bluegill profiles but both of them get bit incredibly well so there are a lot of soft bluegill baits on the market the biggest issue with them is that they're large it's really hard a bluegill profile is a very tall profile it's very hard for a bass to eat that every once in a while we'll be out on the lake we'll see a dead bass come to the surface or a bass come up that's struggling because they've got a bait fish stuck in their mouth and they're choking on it nine times out of ten they're choking on a bluegill a bluegills body shape even a live one is very difficult for a bass to eat so it stands to reason that when you're imitating that it's hard for them to eat your swim bait too so a lot of those tall or larger bluegill profiles when the bass come in to eat them they bounce off them they get a hold of them but they don't get a hook so this little guy is a smaller profile all the way around soft bait it crumples right up but they can get the whole thing in so this is by far the smallest bait we're going to talk about today everything else is way way way bigger but if you're throwing bluegill profiles this is an awesome way to go now how do you choose between them how much grass is in your water if you have a lot of grass the weedless profile is a must if you're deep in heavy cover you've got a bunch of lay down wood and debris in the water that weedless bait is the way to go because it'll come right up and through all that stuff and then when those fish eat it you hammer them and they've got let me pull that hook out they've got a giant hook in their mouth that's awesome and that is a huge hook perfectly hidden inside a little bait now if you've got more open water you're just fan casting throwing by hard cover definitely go with the exposed hook i love jig hooks okay i'm gonna throw i'm gonna tell you that throughout the day given a choice i throw a jig hook the reason why there's a couple of reasons why one is that you have an exposed point and it's sharp so if the fish comes in you're a little bit out of position for whatever reason you've done something wrong fish comes in and grabs that bait there is a shot that that hook point will catch skin on its own okay and even before you go to hit them that fish is already skin hooked and then when you hit them you bury that hook and you've got that fish now the issue is that if you don't have the right gear they can come up head shaking and thrashing and throw a jig hooked bait so if you throw a jig hook gear is everything you need to hit those fish and grind them as hard and as fast as you can go and get them to the boat or get them to the bank if you mess around if you fight them if they're taking drag they are going to win the fight we're going to talk a lot more about that as the day goes on but how you fight these fish is critical do not mess around with a swim bait fish when you throw a swim bait you are not trying to catch the smallest fish in the lake you're trying to catch the giants and when you're trying to catch giants you want to put all the odds in your favor so this is the one time if there's never another time you want proper hardware proper gear proper line fresh hooks fresh knots do everything that you can because sometimes it just goes wrong you do not want it to go wrong over something that was preventable okay now let's talk hard baits i've got four of them here the first one is this guy this is an s waver 168 bluegill color okay now you can see this one doesn't have hooks on it and you can see that it's been beaten to death i've got a lot of baits that i just keep because they've been beaten to death and i have so many good memories with them this is one of those baits so this isn't even a bait that i keep in the boat anymore that's why there's no hooks on it this is a bait that i literally have sitting on a shelf because there's too many good memories with that one i'm afraid to lose it but i pulled it down to show you just how thrashed these baits can get the bass will murder these things if i could only have one hard bait one swim bait in the hard bait category one hard bait one soft bait one hard bait the hard bait would be an s waiver 168 to go anywhere in the country okay now if you're the guy that's fishing where there's no shad there's no trout there's no anything else then a hundred percent it's this bait in this color okay and i'm gonna link all the baits every single one of them down in the video description broken out by category for you favorite colors hook upgrades all those things to make this simple because i'm covering so many baits you couldn't possibly remember all of it and i know that this is an in-depth video okay we are covering it all so the first hard bait s waiver 168 bluegill the second hard bait this is a jackal ganturelle this is a bait that i i slept on for years i did not realize the power of this bait and a couple years ago i saw it i saw it firsthand i was out fishing with some friends and they were smashing them on this thing and i finally connected and it registered stars aligned i got it so here's the deal with this bait if you just straight retrieve it it's got a really tight very odd swim that's not the way to fish this bait now the s waver i'll tell you how to fish it when i talk about some of the other baits this one though the way i like to fish it is with a couple hard handle turns and a pause so you crank crank paws and what the bait will do is it'll get that crazy swim and then when you pause it'll glide out crinkle crank glide out i fish this bait around cover i do not fish it in the open water but in a pond situation almost everything is cover driven either i'm fishing it along grass lines i'm throwing it up to visible stumps to dock pilings down the edges of rocks where i feel like i know exactly where that bass is going to be when you crank it so what i'll do is i'll swim it working up to where i think the bass is okay let's say i've got a rock right here i swim it pause swim it pause but i make sure that when i'm here the swim goes right past the rock and then after i pass it i pause okay now follow me on this the reason why is that if you've got a single piece of cover where you know that's where the bass should be now it's not a guarantee but if that's where they should be you want to make the absolute best presentation right at that moment so what i do is i swim past the bass then i pause and that bait will turn and that is the opportunity if that bass was sitting next to that rock next to that dock piling on the edge of that grass right when that bait passes that fish is watching it's watching it swim and it's deciding do i hit it do i not when you pause and that bait turns and it might turn away it might turn towards right when it turns that is the exact opportunity where the bass says this is my moment and it either does nothing and it lets the bait go or it absolutely smashes it that is one of the beauties of fishing tight to cover when you're fishing open water when you're just fan casting you never know when a fish is going to rise up you never know when they're behind it but when you're fishing right up along cover and you're picking the spots and this is something you can do from shore you can walk that bank find the very best spots you can use google earth to your advantage time on the water you identify the areas that should have fish you swim up to them and you do a perfect presentation right on the spot you will get a lot less followers and a lot more biters that is the difference if you swim along and you stop too soon and that fish sees all that happen then it comes by him again and it stops too soon then he watches it go on it's already doing strange things they're a lot less likely to hit it but they'll still come out and they'll follow it all the way to the boat and you'll see them they'll see you they go back where they came from but if you can trigger them if you can speed that up you can time it right you can get that reaction before they ever know you're there two more baits if you want to dabble in a higher end bait this is the bull gill okay mike bucca the bull shad swim bait everybody knows that name he also makes a gill four-piece bait this is a bait that you fish fast i like to fish this bait full throttle burn burn remember and pause burn burn remember pause almost like we fish our tactical crank it's almost speed cranking same concept this bait has a nice s very natural swim and it'll get going so fast and then when you stop it all just kind of bunches up and then takes off again bunches up same deal i fish it ultra fast this you're covering water so if you're a guy standing on the shore you can run out of water to fish with this bait because you're covering it so quickly but if you're on a boat whether that's a john boat or a bass boat you can just go down the bank just burn burn burn burn anytime you get near a piece of cover just like with the gantrel that's when you pause and those fish will just unload on it the very first day i threw this bait i was fishing a public lake a place i fish all the time i had seven fish between five and seven pounds come up and just massacre this thing on the very very first day it was obvious that it had the magic you know some baits have just got it it's one of those baits that when they're targeting a bluegill they just train wreck that thing last bait for this category and this isn't really a swim bait but i'm going to include it okay and i'll explain why this is a mega mass of italian single joint bait it doesn't have that full swim bait profile but it's in the right size category this is a cross between a swim bait and a liftless crank the way i fish this one is crank crank crank stop crank crank crank stop crank stop very aggressive very fast and what it'll do is it'll get a good swim to it and it actually has a like a wobble to it too it's a very different action but it's loud and again they unload on it i've done well on largemouth i've done well on smallmouth we've done incredibly well we took these to the jungle last year and just massacred all kinds of jungle fish on them huge peacock bass arowana all sorts of different things we're just smashing them but this bait has an amazing way of triggering again a feed response now it's not as natural as some of these guys but if you want to cover water and you want to get aggressive strikes and you want to do it on a bit of a budget that's a dynamite way because the word budget is relative right this is not a budget bait if we're putting it up against fishing you know a zoom brush hog or a jig or something else but when you get into the swimbait category sky is the limit right there are baits that cost a few bucks there are baits that cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars their baits that cost more than that so in the swimbait world it's a budget bait and it does get bit exceptionally well by all species so i had to include it now moving right along that's the end of bluegill you will not see one more bluegill bait in this entire thing all right next we're talking about these multi-joint baits and this is a smaller category for me there's only two and it's because i don't do that much of it my forte the thing that i connect with the best for hard baits is the glide bait that's why there's eight of them and there's two of these but i would be doing you a huge disservice to not talk about it especially this early in the fall this is a style of bait you're going to fish right now as that water gets colder we're going to give it up in favor of the slower baits then again in springtime as that water is warming up we'll pick it back up now there are guys especially you know florida guys that can throw it year round because the water never gets so cold that they can't do it guys in the north there will come a time where you definitely need to put it down in favor of some of the other baits but this category is all about getting a fish to come up and just let loose just fly off the handle massacre that bait and it works extremely well in pressured fisheries see if you're throwing a slow soft bait and you're doing it on a fishery where the bass see bait after bait after bait a lot of times they're gonna look at it they're going to follow but they're just going to let it go but when you come by doing something no one else is doing at a speed no one else is doing it just like our speed crank we talked about how when we're cranking those baits it's all about drawing a core reaction out of the fish it's about getting a feed response whether or not they want to eat that has nothing to do with it a slow-moving bait it requires a bass to come up look at the bait eat the bait they actually go through this follow it it's like they're analyzing it deciding whether or not that's a good meal this is the other end of the spectrum this is something's coming what is that eat it or let it go split second that's all they've got so two baits in that category this is again mike bucca's bull shad okay if you're going to do it with this bait the six inch or the seven inch are by far the most i'm not gonna say reliable but they're the most consistent the baits that get bit the most often this is a triple trout and with the triple trap i either throw the seven inch or the eight inch okay so pretty similar sizes both of these baits i fish them fast now you can slow either one of them down and they'll give you just a great mid column swim but that's not where these baits shine these baits shine going fast again that's been the trend so far when we get to the tail end of this we'll get away from that fast business we'll be talking about something completely different so make sure you hang with me but right now we're talking about that warmer water just starting to cool aggressive bass they're moved up they're feeding they're ambushing bait fish whether that's small shad big gizzard shad herring it could be anything if they're up they're around cover they're on grass edges they're on lay downs cover water quickly burn burn burn pause burn burn pause and it's not a long pause when we're running this style of bait you're flying along when you pause you don't want that bait to stop and then sit there like a jerk bait and slow sink that's not what we're after when i say pause i'm just talking about a break in your cadence it's flying along and it breaks and continues that's all it is it's just that short little moment where you pause just long enough that if a fish is doing 100 miles an hour right behind that bait trying to catch up to see what on earth that was and the cadence breaks and that fish was right here he can't help but run into it and fish have this core response that if they're two inches behind that thing and it stops they just they open up they do it every time they just open up and slam that bait whether or not they wanted to and that is very unique and that's why you need to know about that category of bait and it is something that should be in your arsenal all right we're moving on to glide baits glide baits are a huge category by themselves we're breaking this category into two again open water glides and cover glides what is the difference this is something we've talked about before but i'll give you the cliff notes version of it okay open water glides are the baits that we're going to throw on the big water reservoirs open water typically clearer water typically places where the bass are eating trout they're eating herring they're eating cocony those are prey species that like open water so a bluegill will tend to be right up against the shore a cocony a trout a herring they'll tend to be out in the open so the bass have adapted to that so the bass on those bodies of water will tend to sit out on the ends of long tapering points they'll suspend out off of corners they'll suspend on bluff walls okay they'll sit on large pieces of structure they'll suspend under docks big open water glide baits are baits that have this wide swim and the reason that you want that is because you're out over such open expanses of water that it takes time for the fish to get to the bait the fish if you've got let's say a slide swimmer as an example slide swimmer's got this big swim to it okay that bait if you're fishing it let's say five feet down over a point that's 15 to 20 feet deep this is a big bait bass will come a really really long ways to take a look at it and to eat it the larger the bait the farther a fish is willing to come to look at it and that's important if you've got this guy right here a bass might come a foot two foot four foot to eat it if you've got a bait like this or like this a fish might come in one fishery they might come five feet eight feet and another they might come 20 30 40 feet and crystal clear water they come unbelievable distances to look at these baits i've had fish come up off the bottom in 40 to 50 feet of water and come all the way up to a bait that's this far under the surface because in crystal clear water they can see it and it's a big enough meal that it's worth their time so they come incredible distances but if that bait's got this tight little action and it's coming to the boat quick and a fish is coming up we'll say 15 or 20 feet to look at that bait the bait will almost be to the boat by the time the fish gets to it so these big open water baits that wide swim spends more time out there in the water the bait is literally going farther to get from a to b and it gives the fish more time to rise and to look at them and to eat them now the biggest issue with those big open water baits is that it's really hard to trigger a strike see when we fish a glide bait we use this cadence where we slow roll and then we twitch twitch so what you've got is a bait that will be swimming along nice and slow and then it'll pop pop okay what it does there what we're imitating what we're going for is a bait that's swimming along doesn't know that the fish is behind it and then it turns and it's a funny that first twitch is just a little funny what i want that fish to be presented with is a bait fish that has busted it in other words if the bass is back here and this bait's just gliding along that bass can swim there comfortably forever deciding what to do with that bait but as soon as you get that funny turn that bass is now presented with a moment where if this was a real bait fish it has seen the bass that next hard twitch where that bait glides off a totally new direction that bass either has to strike or let it go very similar to the reaction strike we were trying to pull with a ganter l or a bowl shad that is the presentation that we like to use because it creates a moment where that bass should feed that's what we're after now the bigger the open water bait so a lot of the custom baits you know you can get 12 14 16 18 inch swim baits they're giant swim baits on the market if you guys follow us on instagram or facebook you've seen some of the monster baits that we own i have this addiction to these crazy custom baits all the way up to a couple of feet long now the problem with any of those monster baits is these glides are so huge that there's no way to twitch them they just can't do it they if you try to do it they like turn upside down or they swim funny or they'll hinge so far around that now they're faced the wrong way you can't get them to come back around so there has to be a balance what i've found is that there's a perfect size range in there for an open water glide that will get the best bites and that is an 8 to 10 inch bait okay and there are three of them that i really rely on the slide swimmer is incredibly hard to get it always has been it's been an expensive bait it's been tough to get this year they're basically completely sold out everywhere but i've got another bait that fishes that same category you guys know this bait has an amazing glide and it has an amazing twitch this is the bait sanity explorer and it's a newer version they redid their tail last year to make it stronger so this is the newer version of that bait i've been really happy with it uh but this bait will give you that big swim it's that perfect balance it's the right size to imitate a stalker trout or a big kokanee but it's got good tight snappy twitches and that is what you want in a big open water bait so this is by far my favorite truly open water only bait these next two are great open water and are also really good tighter to cover because they both still have a very tight twitch when you want it this is the big savage gear shine glide this is the magnum shine glide this is the s waver 200. both are awesome baits you can see this is a big profile bait it's a very tall bait so it presents a really large meal i mean compared to that bait sanity it's not that much smaller this is a fantastic option comes in some really good paint jobs savage gear has come a long long way in the last few years i think we talked about this in a video i don't know sometime in the summer i was talking about how just a couple of years ago if you had told me that i was going to talk about a savage gear beta in a video i would have thought you'd lost your mind because they just didn't have it but that company and a handful of companies really the market has really changed a handful of what we would consider big companies now make amazing custom type baits and this is one of them they've come a really long way they've incorporated some things that you just don't see much of this is stock i didn't even change this one okay see these pads in here i'm sure you can't so i'll just tell you there's a pad in there that's soft this is a hard bait when hard baits turn you get a click click click out of that joint sometimes that's great sometimes i love it the s wavers like that the s waver underwater is a pretty loud bait works really well in murky water the clearer the water gets the more you want that quiet bait so they put these soft pads in here it's a modification that a lot of swimbait fishermen do well this is stuck it's so that there's no sound when that thing is going back and forth they're running double split rings on the back which is something that i do to a lot of my baits what that means is if a fish gets just the back hook if it's a single split ring okay and a fish gets that bait and it goes to twist that's how far they can get okay what is that a half a rotation and it's locked up if they turn farther than that they'll start bending the hook when you go to a double split ring this thing can go way farther around before it locks up so that's a modification that we use on a lot of our big big baits and it's stalk on that bait they did a really good job then again the other one s waver 200 what do i say about this bait it smashes them this is a great size because it's big enough to fish in open water it's small enough to fish around cover now if i was only fishing cover i'd throw the smaller size and we'll get back to that one in a minute but this one will do both tim and i have caught more fish on the s waver 200 i mean countless probably in the thousands of bass on this bait it's just an amazing bait it's not super quiet it actually has a lot of racket in the water it pulls fish up they come to it especially in murkier water water that's got let's say less than six or seven feet of visibility this thing is out of this world it's just that good now when that water gets super super super clear those baits with bigger swims that are quieter they'll pull those fish farther all right now let's transition over let's talk about the cover glides cover glides are essentially the exact same thing in fact a lot of these are just smaller models of the open water glides but they fish very differently much tighter action so the swim is going to be more like this okay none of this big wide s turning business very tight short movement and when you snap them they are extremely dirty baits now cover glide is something that we just started saying a couple of years ago that's not an actual category but it's how we describe this class of baits i've got four for you and the this is one okay i just brought a couple of them i want you to see this is a sneaky pete it's a g-rat bait both of these baits were brand new at the start of this year and have just been brutalized by fish so many teeth marks i've had to change hardware so many times i'm just wearing out hooks both of these baits just have got the mojo no way around it so this again is a loud bait listen to this it's got an actual knocker inside of it there's nothing subtle there's nothing quiet there's nothing sneaking up on the fish about this bait that's a cover bait this is a bait that again much like what we were describing with bluegill baits you want to throw at targets if i'm out in 20 or 30 feet of water throwing this for open water fish it will work it will pull fish to the bait but it works so much better in let's say less than eight to ten feet of water and it it is unbelievable when you get right up along the cover again where you can select the most likely places and you can swim along nice and steady nice and slow see that piece of cover coming swim past it and then twitch twitch and if that fish is there more often than not they will let loose on that bait that is how all those teeth marks got into that bait you guys might remember tim and i this spring we were exploring some of these smaller glide baits these cover glides we did a video where we were just fishing side by side and just sticking fish and that's what we were doing was swimming right up twitching right up against cover and drawing that reaction so that is an excellent choice another great one is that smaller shine glide the standard shine glide it's a 185 size again softer joint it'll absorb tons of flash it's a great bait it reacts well it twitches well if you've got those golden shiner herring some of those taller profiled minnows that is a really really good option bait sanity you've got the explorer and then you've got the little antidote the antidote is another killer bait this one fishes i've got fish blowing up right here i'm so passionate about this i'm going to keep talking about it instead of grabbing a rod and firing on these fish but i will see them in a little while this is another great bait that is really twitchy now it has a tendency it comes in an ultra slow and a slow sink so it is meant to be fished high in the column it's not a bait that you're going to get down 8 10 12 15 20 feet you're just not gonna do it some of those bigger open water glides you can count them down and you can fish them lower in the column this guy not so much you're fishing it up shallow right up against cover this to me screams dog fishing i love where you can throw it right up shallow behind the dock slow swim it that's the beauty of a glide you're not covering an insane amount of water slow swim it behind the dock all the way down the edge and when you get to that last corner piling twitch twitch and draw that reaction last but not least is the s waver 168. it's the smallest of the bunch okay but going back to the start of this video if i could only own one hardbait this little guy is it this one bait i said we've caught thousands of fish on the 200. i can't even begin to tell you how many fish we've caught on the 168 and giant fish double-digit largemouth mega spots mega small mouth huge fish on this thing all over the country it is the most reactive twitchy aggressive glide bait that i've ever fished i love this little guy when we first got our hands on this bait the damage we did with this thing was was out of this world we caught so many big fish in more recent years where you have so many options right it's countless swim baits that you can throw where this has really stood out and where it's really shined for me is well one it smashes small mouth day in and day out everywhere they live it catches them but talking giant largemouth because that's what most of you are doing what i found is that even on a trout lake even where they're eating big profiles if everybody is throwing a swimbait if you show up to a tournament and you start seeing glide baits sitting on the decks of all these boats i go down to the little guy and it just flat catches them if i could only have one color it's this color right here s waiver 168 light trout it's not pretty it looks more like a banana than it does a trout and it catches fish from coast to coast top to bottom well farther than that we have destroyed them in mexico with that bait it works everywhere now you notice this one has a red hook that is a modification that i will sometimes do i would never do it with a slow rolling soft bait i would never use it for that i only do it on aggressive baits the s waiver the way we fish this bait four handle turns two twitches one two three four twitch twitch that's how we fish it nice steady swim two hard snaps continue the swim two hard snaps that's how that bait goes particularly spotted bass spotted basket so angry that it's like they just want to kill everything and they don't even take the time to aim a red hook can make all the difference when you're fishing these baits if you fish a red hook on the front when you're twitching that bait they are so much more likely to eat that red hook and really get it good and then get a second hook somewhere else and you've got that fish pinned versus coming up and just smashing that thing head first or t-boning or clipping the tail they'll eat it 80 different ways but that guy right there will help dial them in because a lot of times what they're coming up they're tailing that bait and then when it does the twitches that's their moment and they just hit the first thing that stands out it's usually the eyeball they aim straight for the eyes if you're hanging a red hook it's the red hook they'll end up getting a mouthful of just that hook you'll catch a mass that's only two pounds it'll have its mouth pinned shut all three hook points in the lips and the swim bait hanging on the outside that's when you know it's working right your hook up to land ratio is excellent with that but again the s waver 168 has been the most consistent glide bait for me for years and years and years all of these baits are excellent they all have a time and a place and a lot of them didn't even exist almost all of them didn't exist when we were building confidence in this bait so these days we throw a lot of them you know i picked this thing up to throw it so much now but you know a few years ago it didn't exist it wasn't even an option so we were always throwing this guy let's move over to soft bait and then we're going to circle around we're going to get serious about modifications and then about gear soft baits should we talk boot tails or should we talk wedge tails first i'm thinking boot tails wedge tails is the most specialized but it's also the smaller category less of the country will benefit from slow roll in a wedge tail so let's start with boots and then we'll go there now we're going to start from the top down bigger baits down okay the first one is a mag draft is a mega bass bait big wedge tail what's the deal with a wedge tail bait the deal is that you get a big wide kick out of that thing some of the baits will have body roll to match some won't it's just that big kick okay but it's a lot of flash there's a lot of vibration there's a lot coming off of that tail you've got less hardware than a big hard bait there's just less metal there's less hooks you've got a more subtle action and you've got a whole lot less sound so if you're trying to creep up on those fish a hard bait can be excuse me a soft bait can be an amazing choice typically these baits are just fished on a steady straight retrieve if you're trying to stop and go you are doing it all wrong okay talking specifically about these boot tails throw it out crank it back that's it if you see a great big follower come up make a mental note you're going to fish that spot again either from a different direction or with a different bait a little bit later but there's not a lot of triggering a reaction now there are some exceptions to that rule you can snap these baits really really hard and take a bait like this if you rip the rod hard enough it'll overwhelm the tail and the tail will turn flat and this thing will turn into a giant fluke a giant jerk bait and every once in a while i can get a really big one to strike that way where he's just swimming along behind the bait and i just start ripping that rod but more often than not the bait will not do what you're hoping and that fish will just bail off so i typically reserve that for when i've already seen a big fish he's followed me to the boat i come back a few days later i raise what looks to be the exact same fish on the exact same spot it happens again he doesn't eat somewhere in there i'm thinking i've got this fish figured i know where he lives i know his spot i know he's interested in a big bait next time i see him i'm gonna try ripping that thing it's almost like a big muskie right you're hunting one bass now some lakes you don't really see that fish travel a lot more but especially on trout and kokanee lakes sometimes a monster mass will live on the same spot year after year after year and you get to know those fish and in fact you might catch them multiple times over the course of their life and you'll see that fish growing so that time where i've raised the fish repeatedly and i feel like you know i'm probably just not ever gonna fool this fish that's when i'll try that giant ripping aggressive rod snap to try and again my bait's swimming it's doing its thing overpower it get it to cut a couple of times essentially turn it into a glide bait very briefly and you've got one shot where that fish you've never been able to catch might just lash out so the magdraft is an awesome option this is a bait that again like that gantrell i overlooked for a long time last year we did an underwater comparison of a bunch of boot tails and this one stood out and i put it into the arsenal so fast tim and i learned from those underwater videos just like you guys do so i i take note because it's not like we see this stuff underwater every day we're the ones shooting the video but what we see underwater when we get back to the computer what you guys see when we put that video out is just as eye-opening to us as it is to you half of the time so that's what got the magdraft back into my arsenal and it comes in a couple of great sizes there's a little guy you've got the eight inch there's an even bigger one that's a great bait for pulling fish up a long way and this color i just love that color it's awesome all right next up the trash fish now this is the big trash fish this is the big one this is the fat trash fish the little fatty okay totally different profiles and there's a handful there's a regular trash fish but these are the two that i like the most i like the big one and i like the fatty now tim did a very in-depth video about these time flies probably two years ago but this is an amazing amazing bait that is so overlooked now the trash fish if you try to fish it fast and mid column like a mag draft it's not happening the tail will blow out it's so soft see i can just turn this bait into nothing it's so soft that the speed will just overwhelm it and that tail will kind of lift up and it'll just have like a little waggle to it this bait is meant to be fished slow on the bottom let it hit slow roll you're fishing it on a beast hook okay weighted beast screwed into the nose when you fish it slow along the bottom rigged like that it will come through almost anything it'll come over logs it'll come over rocks and you just fish it slow every time it bumps into something all the fins are moving the tails back they're wagging and it just plain gets bit it gets bit much like the wedgetail style baits but it does it with a much more bait fish profile so that is an amazing bait that is overlooked by a lot of people they don't even understand what it's for because if you tie one on and throw it out and wind it back it doesn't look very good you're going to pass on that bait but if you understand that its job is to get down low and to go slow and to work your way through where you already know their fish the fish are at maybe you already graft them with your electronics turn around set up throw that thing out and just slow crawl through those fish they will eat it it's got a huge open cavity in here you see that i mean there's just nothing in there as a result even with that weedless hidden hook your hook up ratio is great everything just collapses out of the way and then again those are the two sizes that i like the little fatty is another excellent bait i like fishing him up around shallow water up around the grass but the exact same presentation next up is a kytek this is the 6.8 there's also a 7.8 well there's everything from a 2.8 on up but the 6 eight and the seven eight are what we were talking about today bigger baits the 6.8 keitech is a phenomenal bait you can rig it on that same beast hook or you can put it on a exposed jig head i throw it on my matt allen swim bait head three quarter ounce that's what i throw it on the most if i'm fishing open water if i'm fishing faster i fish it on that if i'm fishing up in the junk i fish it on a beast hook typically the adot beast but that bait does not have a ton of body roll it has a huge tail kick so murkier water it really shines a couple more and then there's one other thing i want to talk about and that is this treble hook on the belly i want to come back to that i'm saying it out loud so i remember but a couple more baits for you this is the osprey six inch top hook talon this bait has worked for as long as the huddleston has worked even longer the top hook talon has been around a really really long time we've caught countless fish on it we catch them in the daylight we catch them in the night it's got a great jig hook again jig hooked baits it is important that you fish them on the right rod when you fish this bait we typically fish it on the bottom throw it out let it hit the bottom start winding you don't have to stay glued to bottom it's not like a trash fish where you need to just slow touch every rock and crawl over them this one once it's down there you can speed it up and you just want to tick bottom once in a while okay just a medium retrieve cruising along good tail kick clip in rocks once in a while and it'll just draw those bone jarring reaction strikes when you feel them hit this bait really any of these baits there's an incredible argument about when to set the hook how to set the hook do i sweep it do i smash them nobody can seem to agree and i'm pretty opinionated on the matter i smash them and i smash them the second i feel them when they so much as breathe on that bait i hit them with everything i've got every single time and more on why that is when we get to the gear but with a jig hook with an osprey hopefully you guys can see through that bait hopefully there's enough light shining all this lead up here you can see it inside there all the lead is forward so when you stick that fish all the weight in that bait is out in front if you're not pulling hard enough against that fish when they come up to thrash that thing will turn and it'll pull itself right out you'll lose that fish so with a jig hook you've got to plant it and just grind grind grind grind all the way to the boat hopefully you've got a net man ready to go if you don't a lot of times that's why you see us boat flipping those giant fish because when you get them to the boat and they start turning around and twisting that's where they're gonna come off so get them in the boat now again that sounds like a negative to me it's not i prefer a jig hook i love to plant that hook bury it i've got that fish stuck dead to rights and i'm just going as opposed to a treble some people like one some people like the other now the last bait is this guy right here this is a scottsboro this is the six-inch scottsboro fishing it on a big beast hook this one that same video where the mag draft stuck out i'd already been catching a bunch of fish on this bait but i didn't actually realize how magical it was i mean i knew it worked i knew i was catching fish but it wasn't until i saw the underwater swim i went that bait's special it just had this body roll that went with the tail kick it just screams eat me it's just got that secondary action so tail that's primary some baits only have primary on a real fish the fins moving gills flaring sparkle coming off the scales when they turn all of that is secondary on a swim bait you almost always have primary if a bait has got something else it's got a little waggle to it maybe it's got a head bob anything that gives it that secondary just takes it one step further into that magical realm where when a fish is pressured when it sees a lot of baits it is way more likely to eat a bait that's got that secondary action than one that only has primary okay a bait like a keitech now this is a proven bait it smashes so don't don't take this the wrong way this will catch fish but it is mostly primary action huge wide tail kick huge whereas this has got that smaller twisting tail kick and it's got that body roll it's got something else extra going on now here's a trick for you with this bait this one i rigged stock note the hook you see how the hook lays flat on the back if i run my finger most of the time it won't catch on that hook point okay this one is one that to me is ready to fish the difference is so subtle i took that beast hook and i held it in my hand i took a pair of pliers and i just ever so slightly bent that hook up it's almost nothing but it's everything when i come across that thing i catch every single time it sticks there's no way around it that hook point is going to bite that little nothing change will take your hookup ratio through the roof if you're going to fish this style of bait a little kick up on that beast hook makes all the difference essentially what it does is it gets the hook going the right direction when a fish comes up and eats this whole thing they've got a lot of plastic in their mouth if they get this one it's a gamble whether or not that hook point is going to get buried down on the plastic or come up and out this one almost always no matter which way it gets eaten when you set the hook and you're going to pull that thing through the mouth that hook point is catching that's critical all right now before i forget let's circle back here let's talk about baits that have treble hooks on the belly now this one is set up on a swivel a lot of them are lined through we'll jump ahead here here's one that's lined through okay so well had a line on it actually that line went in the nose out the belly and then it's tucked in okay if you're fishing belly trebles please only fish one hook so a lot of baits guys want to rig stinger hooks and a few years ago we did this incredibly in-depth rigging video where we showed you how to place hooks up here how to place them back here which wire to use how to twist it completely different than everybody else does we have a very different system that we use well now lots of people use it it's been a couple of years but when it came out it was very very different i will link that video for you in the video description because that rigging information is critical you don't want to stick a monster bass on a stinger hook and have it break and that's horrible you've gone through all the effort all the expense all the time you just don't want to go down that way but on the belly of a bait if you put a hook here and you put another hook back here the farther back that hook moves when these fish eat these baits they are very likely to eat them whole especially a big big largemouth they just come up and just just take it all the farther back that hook is the risk that you will hook them in the gills goes up exponentially please do not run two hooks please do not run a hook farther back once in a while you might miss a bite because of it once in a while but it's rare especially the fish that you actually want to catch that giant fish she's eating the whole thing the fish you want to catch that's big enough to be worth it they're going to get it either way that little fish that's just slapping at the bait he's finally going to get it on your stinger hook and you're going to kill him and if you do that and you hook a 10 or a 12 or a 15 or an 18 pounder and it dies because that second hook stuck them you're gonna feel horrible about that it's even worse sometimes you get them in the gills sometimes the bass are so committed to these things that you'll feel a tick on your line that's it just tick you freight train them get them to the boat and that little tick was that fish eating that whole thing and swallowing it and you get them in the boat and all you see sticking up out of their throat their lips are way up here it's just the nose of your bait if you give it just the tiniest little pole you'll get that hook exposed you can get it out but if you had a second hook it's clear down in their stomach that fish is dead you do not want to go down that road so belly treble baits you have to do it if you're fishing high in the water column if you're fishing over weeds you have to do it one treble as far forward as you can get it please do not add a second if you want stinger hooks put them on the back and we do have a video again i will link it in the description and that description today is going to be loaded all of these baits are in there the gears in there the hooks the stuff we haven't even got to yet it's all in there for you this video will be there but just use that knowledge wisely these fish take a really long time to get big the fish you're out there searching for she didn't grow that size overnight so don't kill these fish take care of them get them in the boat get them back in the water just as fast as you possibly can all right that's enough preaching let's talk about the last category of soft baits guys we are going long today but i really wanted to do this one time i just wanted to dump the knowledge out there for you you can absorb it you can take the pieces that apply to you you can go out there and catch the fish of a lifetime so the last category is these wedge style tails the huddleston was the beginning you got the 10-inch the 8-inch 68 the 6-inch all the way down to their little shads and by the way if you didn't realize it their little shad with a top hook that's been out of stock for years and years and years i'm talking i haven't seen him in stock in probably five or six years is a hundred percent back in stock at least it was at the moment that i shot this video so i'll include that in the video description if you're a guy that throws the hud shads and you haven't been able to get them you can get them right now back to the huddleston overall the eight inch is by far the the bread and butter bait if you will the 68 is also really good that's the six inch bait but with an eight inch tail so it's got a bigger wider kick these baits can be fished a multitude of ways by far the most common is as the water cools down we tend to get away from the boot tails the boot tails work as the water is cooling let's say as you get into the low 70s upper 60s the bite really comes on and they'll already start eating this there too but as it gets even cooler as it drops into the low 60s and then dips below that the boot tails will start to fade the wedge tails come on really really strong the wedge tail bite will continue all the way down until your water gets another big old blow up right here on a shad oh on a bunch of shad still chasing them that's all right let's focus so the wedge tail will work all the way down to water temperatures in the high 30s you can throw this when a guy is throwing a jig fishing ultra slow you can throw it when guys are throwing the float and fly and you can throw it when guys are speed cranking like tim and i like to do all the above this bait will work through all of that so again we typically throw boot tails as we're headed through fall i spend all my time there i don't throw a wedge at all once that water temp really starts to crash the grass is really dying back the fish are backing off of the bait fish they're starting to be more structure and cover oriented they're sitting on hard rock bottom they're sitting up against boulders they're sitting on lay down trees they're sitting on transitions or the ends of long tapering points these are all important places when the fish get out on that hard structure rather than chasing bait fish i switch over completely to that wedge style tail and i put the others away that wedge will carry you all the way through winter the number one way to fish it is ultra slow throw it out let it go all the way to the bottom let it hit the bottom and then start the slowest most painful crawl you can imagine and for years i want you to take this in okay this is one of the most important things i'm going to tell you if you're throwing a huddleston and you're throwing it in the winter and the water is cold and you're cold slow slower than slow i've had countless clients come out on the boat with me and we go to throw a huddleston and we start into it and they're going slow well they think they're going slow and i tell them slower okay now go half of that okay now go half of that now go half of that every single time we go down that road that person says i've watched the videos i've listened to the words i just didn't understand how slow you meant i'm talking it can take so long pay attention to my hand to make one handle turn i'm not exaggerating this bait sits upright on the bottom on its own this hand is still going we're almost halfway through a handle turn now there were at the bottom of the turn it sits upright no matter what and it is just crawling across the bottom crawling there's a handle turn for you that's how long it takes when this thing is going that slow the tail is really i mean if it's doing anything it's next to nothing but when it bumps into something it sends the shiver down the bait and that tail wags they just eat it it just works it works the best around rock we fish it on rock piles we fish it on rocky points fish it uphill coming out of creek channels anywhere where it's contacting bottom now of course we snag them and we lose them i mean there's no way around we carry good bait knockers good lure retrievers and we do our best to get them back out but i mean if i had to try and put a number on it this is not a joke i'll bet in the course of my swim baiting i have broken off three to five hundred huddlestons that i bought at retail but we have caught so many big fish on them it's just worth doing you take the cost of buying a mass boat buying all the you're buying all the stuff in hopes of catching a 10 pounder you take that dollar amount and then you compare that to buying a john boat and the 10 or 15 or 20 or 50 or 200 huddlestons you might lose in your life trying to catch 10 pounders i mean it balances out it sounds crazy but the math works these baits work when you get them down and you go slow and you fish them where they are going to get stuck get good with a lure retriever to get them back out but sometimes you just lose them when you're fishing it this way when you're going that slow when you feel that tick i don't care if it's the faintest tick you've ever had or it is a freight train you hit them with everything you've got this is the rof-12 that is my favorite bait to throw of the huddlestons rof-12 with a jig hook by far my favorite next would be the ro f5 also with the jig hook some people prefer to put a stinger up here clip the jig hook or get an rof5 put that treble on top i don't like that rig i like the jig no stinger but regardless when you feel the faintest bite you hit them with everything you've got here's why the smaller the bass the more likely they're going to freight train it okay because a small fish will try to kill the bait they'll try and pin it to the bottom the monster the fish that you're out there looking for they come up they get close when it's going that slow they get right up to it and then they don't hit it they suck they vacuum and the bait literally comes to them and into their mouth the faster the bait's going the more likely that a big one will hit like a freight train the slower it's going the biggest of the fish will be the subtlest bite it could be the softest tick it'll still feel like a bite you don't need to second guess yourself but it's going to be a tick and what that is is she's come up she's followed she's decided to eat it she vacuums the bait goes in you felt nothing and then her lips go tick on the line when her mouth shuts and that is why i set with everything i've got the second i feel anything because i'm not worried about the small fish that popped the bait and only got half of it and now he's gonna suck the rest in and if i wait and wait for it to load up i'll have him that fish doesn't matter i can catch that fish on a thousand different things but when the fish of a lifetime comes along and she vacuums it up and it goes tick if i hesitate the next thing i feel is when she goes and spits it back out and i have watched countless people i'm watching their rod tips because i've guided for so many years i see it i see that on that rod tip i yell set the hook there's hesitation and you see the second one and that's when they spit it and it's harder when they spit than when they vacuum it up and that's when the people swing and there's nothing there they think the fish missed i think the fish that they came for just vacuumed it up and blew it back out set right away we don't usually hammer these things home like this i'm hammering at home today because you are going to be so invested in this style of fishing you put so much into it you want it to go your way so couple more baits oh one other thing on the huddleston if it's a trout fishery throw the trout obviously if it is not a trout fishery you can still throw the trout but i have had the best success with any of the blue or gray or green backed colors not the actual trout this one shasta trout or whatever they call them there's a bunch of names for them but the blues and the grays excel it does not have to look like your bait fish this does not look like a shad this does not look like a herring does not look like a lot of things that mass eat but it's close enough and it's big enough that a really big fish will take the shot two more for you and we're done with baits okay this is savage gear both of these are actually savage gear has got a trout profile and this one is a line through so you can put that big old hook on the back or you can put that hook on the belly and you can run it through either way and then they've got a shiner profile that just rocks i just started playing with this one recently it's a big fat bulbous body but that tail just gets back there it just thumps so good i really really like this bait also a line through belly hook or back hook both are great profiles but these are both really good options i also saw i was on tackle warehouse and of course we watched you guys know i'm a tackle junkie i watch new gear releases constantly i spend more time looking at tackle than i do fishing it's madness but there is a jig hook version of the savage gear coming out and you can pre-order them so i'll include that as well and they make it in a six and eight and a ten they make it in a big bait they're all fairly inexpensive especially for swim baits great profiles you can do it as a jig hook or as a line through but it's an awesome option and again i really really like that shiner profile it's just that fatter body it's short it's a seven inch bait but it's got mass i mean look at it compared to a that's a six point eight ki-tek that's a seven-inch bait i mean they're just not even in the same realm right it just it just speaks to those big fish and it speaks to me now let's talk hardware and then gear gear is critical with swim baiting hardware upgrade your hooks okay i mean i just can't say it enough ways upgrade your hooks upgrade your split rings if you start buying these baits and you go out and you fish them with stock hardware and a monster bass bends you out you've put in the time you've put in the money you've put in the energy and now you've got the heartbreak to show for it one of the things that you can do that moves everything exponentially in your favor is to use the right hooks and split rings so that they cannot bend you out the number one hook that i use with swimbaits for my stinger hooks for all of my treble hooked baits across the board it's an owner st56 okay that is my number one swimbait hook by 10 times i mean this entire row is st56s so these are st36 that's a 1x hook this is a 3x hook st-56 is a three-time strong hook they are heavy wire that is what you want when you stick those fish you do not want hook failure that wire is thick and it will get the job done i upgrade i'm a little bit obsessive about this probably not a little bit probably a lot i upgrade literally every single hook and every single split ring on every swimbait that i own and if you knew how many baits that was it's a disaster i've gone broke just buying hooks and split rings let alone the baits but it's just not something i'm willing to risk i've done this for so many years i've learned every hard lesson i've learned it the wrong way first every which way you can do it wrong i've lost a big bass i mean i'm i'm talking i've lost a 12 to 16 pounder every which way you can do it wrong i've learned the hard way so i upgrade everything anything that i can put in my favor i do every single hook at a minimum should be hooked to a hyper wire split ring an owner hyper wire well none of these are stock i don't have anything to compare to a hyper wire split ring is so much stronger than your stock split rings if you've ever had a big one take a split ring and turn it into a figure eight you come back and yours looks like this and your hook is missing you know that gut wrenching feeling hyper wire split rings will avoid that they're just a stronger wire they do great owner last year created something way stronger so you've got stock then you've got hyper wire then you've got these guys ultra wire i don't know if that'll show up for you or not ultra wires are a swim baiter's best friend i've started switching everything to ultra wire just as that added assurance now my small small stuff like a s waver 168 i'm throwing that on a lighter rod so that is still hyper wire but all my open water baits the cover glides that i'm putting up against really big fish anything i'm throwing for a striped bass anything i'm throwing for a really big fish all of it is ultra wire split rings it's just that much more in my favor it really does make a difference it's something that you can control that makes a tangible difference now on to gear i do all of my swim baiting 100 the entire category braid to leader i run heavy braid and i run heavy leader i used to run all mono leader now i run you guys have seen me talk about this this is system leader fc100 this is the leader i run almost all the time all my swimbait setups have either 65 or 80 pound braid almost all of them are 80 anymore and the reason why is that i went to power pro max quattro so the 80 pound is the same diameter as a regular 65. so if somebody else is throwing 65 and i'm throwing 80 max quattro visually we're throwing the same thing my line is just stronger and then i tie a leader on the end of that here let me pull this one out i've got an old leader on here there it is okay this is 80 pound max quattro that's pound fluorocarbon leader but again it's that fc-100 the reason why i use this is this is shock leader it's clear like fluoro but it stretches even better than mono it is made to stretch made to give and come back again you want to do everything you can to put the odds in your favor now some of you are hearing me say 80 pound braid you're thinking i've lost my mind you hear me say 35 pound leader now you know i've lost my mind but here's the thinking okay 65 pound braid we know they'll eat they'll eat that with a frog you can throw a topwater out you can throw a jig on that you can punch with it you do all these things you know a bass will eat it now i add the leader for visibility and i add it for shock absorption more for shock than anything but i run a long leader so that the bass never even sees the braid anyway it's not even part of the discussion okay so eight to twelve feet of leader and i reel it all the way through my guides all the way into my reel and i never have an issue i tie that with a blood knot nine loops both ways it's a hard knot to cinch up but if you practice tie it loose wet the entire knot cinch it in one motion she will cinch up tight as you break your braid in as that braid wears down over time it gets it gets more limp and it gets easier to cinch those knots fresh braid is the hardest to tie so keep that in mind if it's driving you crazy it does get easier but again 80 pound braid to 35 pound leader the reason why is that i've experimented for years and i know the bass almost always are not afraid of 65 pound braid with a leader and i know that almost always if the bait is say seven to eight inches or bigger the bass do not care about thirty pound line okay they just ignore it they're so focused on the bait they never look ahead of the bait the only issue is if they see the line before they see the lure that's where the fluorocarbon comes in it's clearer now i keep throwing two different sets of numbers i keep saying 65 and 30 but i keep saying i use 80 and 35 here's why the 80 pound braid again same diameter is 65. 35 pound shock leader same diameter as 30 pound mono it's the exact same diameter as 30 pound maxima or cxx some of the other lines that you would use for leader material that i used to use for leader material so i'm getting away with a stronger line at the exact same diameter why not do it what i have discovered over the years is that i push the limit and push the limit and push the limit to the heaviest gear that i can get away with until i start getting less bites and then i bring it back one notch so i'm i've resulted with the heaviest gear that will still get the bites and that's 80 pound max quattro 35 pound fc 100 or 65 pound braid tied to whatever 30 pound mono i don't use normal fluorocarbon as leader material for swim baits because it does not stretch enough you can shatter it if they eat close to the boat you can shatter it right when you go to flip them at the boat or if they turn and dig hard at the boat that's the number one place that that fish comes off is right at the end of the fight that's where you're going to lose them that's the worst time because you've already seen them in your heart you've already caught them you know what you're tied to and then they're gone so you use the right gear to maximize your odds that's all you can do now sometimes those fish are still going to come off most of the time you're going to get them but if you've put the odds in your favor and they still come off you've done what you can do at least you got to interact with them but if you lose one over something silly that you had the ability to control that one burns for a very very long time we've done fail stories where i've told you about fish from 10 years ago 15 years ago that still burned and it's because i did something wrong so last but not least is the gear i'll tell you flat out my favorite combo is the tranx 300 on that loomis imx pro 966. that said this combo is virtually impossible to get this year i'm still going to link it for you so that you can check back and see if they're in stock because it's such an incredible combo it's the only rod i've ever used that is really really good for big soft baits and big hard baits it does both well and that just didn't exist previously i've always had a jig hook rod or a big soft plastic rod and a big glide bait rod two different rods this one will do both but kovit has destroyed the supply chain of everything that we do in life this is no exception they are really hard to get this year they'll be back soon so do check back but it's an amazing combo that said there are some other great options on the higher end one of my favorite rods mega bass destroyer the onager onager oh nogger however you pronounce it phenomenal softbait rod what's so interesting about this rod is it has this extremely stout tip section but a misleadingly soft mid so when you're fishing with it it feels like a broomstick i mean it feels like it's a pool cue but when you set the hook all of a sudden the mid will load up and it actually loads really really nice now this is a higher end rod again i pair it with that trunks some people prefer a round reel that's a great option as well you can go round or low profile but that rod is a great rod that will do all of the soft baits and the bigger glides it'll do all the open water glide baits i wouldn't take it below that it starts to be too much rod at the other end on the budget end this is the rod that i've had the most success with oh wrong combo let me keep moving same color this is a dobbins fury and you can pair it up a lot of different ways i have another tracks on here but you don't have to throw a trance on there there are a handful of really good reels there are some budget options i used to use a calcutta 400b which is a round reel it's an amazing reel caught countless double digits on that reel there's also an even more budget version down from there in a round reel that does a great job so i'll link that in the video description but this is the fury in the 806. it's not quite perfect for the biggest soft baits it's a little too soft but you can get away with it it's awesome for the big open water glides all the way down through all the mid-range stuff it's awesome for all of that and for the price i mean it just you just can't touch it that fury is a budget rod that performs so well it is definitely worth every penny that you spend on it and then again you've got options for pairing it up to the real the biggest thing is that you want the right swimbait rod now the smaller baits you know stuff like a vitalian [Music] a small bluegill remember that small bluegill we talked about that like an hour and a half ago this this video is no joke i'm giving you everything i've got all at once the s waiver 168 those are size two treble hooks they're not monstrous stuff like that you don't need a dedicated swimbait rod that stuff will throw on a jig rod anything larger than that as soon as you step up to a size one hook or bigger dedicated to a mate rod it'll make the difference now i'm not saying you can't get away with it the first i'd have to go back and look at the notes it's been so long but the first 10 or 12 double digits that i caught on a swim bait i caught on a jig rod i mean almost a glorified crankbait rod i put a lot of treble hooks on them i mean there was nobody helping back then we didn't know so i put stinger hooks all over the place hooked those fish any which way i could and there were enough hooks and enough bend in the rod that somehow i would land some of them and i was landing giants but i lost way way more than i landed if you get a proper swimbait rod it'll pay for itself over and over and over and over and even if it only pays for itself once that was the time that mattered so guys get out there throw these baits you can catch these fish other ways you can speed crank them through winter and it works incredibly well but there's something special about throwing a swimbait and one of the biggest things about throwing a swimbait is you specifically target a certain size class of fish yes a little one will eat it but nowhere near as often as the giant the giants want that bigger bait and they will follow it they'll come up they'll show themselves on a fishery you've fished your entire life and never seen a monster you go out with a great big open water glide or a 10-inch mag draft you throw that thing all day up high in the water column and on a lake you fished your entire life and never seen a big one they will just come up out of the woodwork just to look at it whether or not they bite it it will blow your mind what's swimming in your waterway and the swim bait is the best way to see them and one of the best ways to catch them i hope i answered a lot of your questions again all of this in the video description will be broken out by style because there's no other way that i could do this without it being completely overwhelming for you but i'll do the very best i can to separate it out and even for all these baits give you favorite colors to make it quick i love trout profiles i love those chartreuse shad profiles obviously with the bluegill baits you know what to do light trout will catch them anywhere it does not matter if they've ever seen a trout and if you are striper fishing and you do not throw bone you are blowing it i'm not saying it's the best every day but i'm saying that it is the best overall across the country guys if you enjoyed the video hit that like button subscribe to the channel we do things like this all the time just sit down and pour ourselves out and give you everything we've got for free over and over subscribe to the channel share it with your friends we appreciate you and we'll talk to you [Music] soon you

Channel: TacticalBassin

Views: 464,854

Rating: 4.8815789 out of 5

Keywords: bass fishing, fishing, swimbait, swimbaits, swimbaits for bass, swim bait, swimbait fishing, how to fish a swimbait, best swimbait, glide bait, glidebait, swimbait tips, swimbait tricks, swimbait modifications, best glide bait, how to catch bass with swimbaits, bass swimbait, trout swimbait, bluegill swimbait, bluegill, trout, bass fishing tips, beginner, beginner fishing, advanced fishing, how to catch fish with swimbaits, Tacticalbassin, tactical bassin, Matt Allen, fishing lure

Id: oIck1onpMNs

Length: 89min 22sec (5362 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020