Randall

This fish was caught eight times that I know of out of my boat and I have had friends like the ones in the photos that have caught this fish as well. This isn't the only DD fish I have caught more then once. I had someone ask me how many DD fish I had caught a few months ago and I counted this fish twice since it was over ten pounds twice when I caught it. Now if I caught a ten pounder off the bed twice in a one day I probably wouldn't count it twice. I don't feel right about it if its on a bed but do if it's not.

Last week I had some time one afternoon to do some afternoon fishing at Tribble Mill Park. Senko77 lives nearby so he came out to see if he could get a swimbait fish. We had a hard time getting a swimbait bite so we fished some worms and got some good fish on worms. Pretty soon though we got some clouds and a little breeze blowing and the fish turned on. So we threw the swimbait for about thirty minutes until the sun and slick water came back later. About five minutes after throwing the swimbait we both caught a fish. As many times as Ryan has been fishing with me this is his first swimbait fish!!!! It wasn't huge or even big by my standards but now he knows how to catch one so I know he will get some more. Another swimbaiter is born! Here are photos of our two best fish from the trip. Not bad for a hot summer day.

Welcome back!!!!

What usually keeps people from catching swimbait fish in dirty water is that they don't get the bait in the smaller strike zone of the fish. In clear water fish will move over a longer distance to hit a swimbait. In dirty water the bait has to be closer to the fish. I have caught some big limits on swimbaits in murky water but it takes knowing exactly the depth and location the fish are at and being able to keep the bait at that depth close to the fish. All the fish in the photo were suspended in murky water but if the swimbait was running higher than the fish were holding you didn't get bit. Get the bait down to the exact level of the fish and you got a strike.

For $60 you can get two Mattlures Woodys. 3:16 makes good wake baits as well. You could also get a Tru-Tungsten bait and have a sinking bait also without buying another bait.

If you want to go real value based and spend about fifty bucks Tsunami makes a saltwater rod I use that is good for big swimbaits. Downside is it is only seven feet long so you lose some casting distance. I use it for short pitch casts in areas with overhanging trees etc. so I like the shorter length.

;D Here's a link to Matt's Woody. ;D ;D ;D http://www.mattlures.com/woodwaker.htm

Thanks Matt!! That means alot coming from a guy like yourself. It is in my future plans to enter one of the HBC tournaments but not right now. Maybe the tournament will come to Florida, SC or GA sometime.

The only ABT I use any more is the Hard Wag-Tail. Its different in the fact that it wakes the surface with just tail movement like many soft swimbaits. Another hard swimbait that is affordable is the Mattlures Woody. 3:16 wake baits are good also but cost a little more. I like the Tru-Tungsten baits as well.

I had one before they were King Kongs. ABT made the first baits and Strike King put their name on them later. They will catch fish and will catch big fish but I prefer others now. There are way too many baits in the same price range that I like much better now. My suggestion for a bait that is made in the same style as the King Kong (floater with a bill)but swims much better is a Mattlures Woody for around $30.

Here is the big one.

Here is the second photo.

One of my favorite lakes has always been at Tribble Mill park. I used to fish it all the time but haven't been there during the summer since the hydrilla started to grow in the lake. It has made the lake a great summer lake since the fish stay active in the grass during the heat of summer. Funny thing is everbody still calls it Tribble Nibble since the lake has a reputation for nibbling small fish but I have never had that problem. ;D I had an hour or two to go check the lake out since I was over at Stone Mountain which was just a few miles away. I threw a big perch colored swimbait at Stone Mountain and got one fish that weighed around seven pounds. We were just looking for a big one there and didn't try anything else. It was the same way at Tribble Mill throwing mostly a big 3/4 oz jig and a few big swimbaits on my favorite big fish holes. I did catch a couple small ones on worms as I moved from spot to spot around the lake. Got there around 3pm and started catching them pretty good around 4:15 and got them figured out. Then it was time to pull out the big baits and the swimbait rod and see what would happen. By 5:15 I had put some good ones in the boat including one in the 7-8lb range and one that was right around 10lbs or over. I didn't have my scale with me but here are the photos so you can be the judge since I just guessed. I had about ten three pounders like the ones in the first photo that hit a bunch of different swimbaits on the surface and sub surface. The lake has always been full of three pounders and still is. The second photo is one that hit a Mattlures Woody on top after following it for about half the cast. Swimbait fishing takes some good nerves as you see the fish following the bait but will not hit. I tried a little trick and got it to hit. The last photo was the big one that exploded on the Woody. Nothing like seeing a big fish explode on a topwater swimbait and trying to fight it to the boat with water being thrown everywhere. Best part was there were some bank fishermen and fisherwomen cracking jokes about my big baits and the splash they were making for my first few casts with them. They pretty soon stopped laughing and started cheering everytime I hooked a fish on my shark baits and tuna rod. Also, these were just the fish I landed. I had three more big ones come off after they got in the thick grass. Here is the first photo.

I agree and would use Tim Chandler or Spinnerbait Kid as a guide. Tim has more experience and many of my clients have gone out with him in the past and were happy with their trip. You will save a little money with Spinnerbait Kid but he is good and always seems to be on good fish. Guntersville seems to be the hot lake this year in the South and will still be good at that time with all the grass in the lake.

I believe I noticed on the Mattlures site that Matt is selling Woodys again. Its a must have double jointed wake bait. I use the trout color and don't even have trout in most of the lakes I fish. Tru-Tungsten bluegill is a must have as well. Also a must have is a slow sink lipless bait with double joints like a BBZ, Kong, Rago etc. Just get the bait of these three that matches the forage in your lakes best. I don't use my King Kongs anymore since there are so many other baits that do what the King Kong does better.

Here is the swimbait fish from early last week.

I have been fishing Horton for a few days over the past week or so. The fish there are fat and healthy and feeding well. The Hydrilla is starting to get up in shallow water and there are a few other types of grass growing out to eight to nine feet deep. Last week we did well on a bunch of different baits. Topwaters and surface type swimbaits were working early and as the clouds came in. There was also a little schooling action down near the dam around mid morning. After the sun gets up there is a good deep water bite on crankbaits, jigs, and jighead and worms. Friday I had five fish that went around twenty five pounds in about ten casts after finding a school of big fish on a channel ledge. Some of the long points with deep timber are also working later in the day. We also got a few big fish early in the week on swimbaits fished on shallow creek ledges. We have been fishing anywhere from one to twenty feet and catching fish. Sunday my tournament partner Adam Stanton (aka Doghouse) and myself fished the JBA tournament at Horton. It was tough early and our swimbait and topwater bite didn't work out so we moved out to some deep timber in twenty feet of water and put three fish in the boat on a splitshot rig. Then we decided to move to a creek ledge as rain and storms moved in. We didn't get anything on a crankbait at first but put on worms and caught over twenty fish and got soaked as the rain fell hard for the next few hours. We finally culled up to a fourteen pound limit which was enough to win. Second place was around thirteen pounds and they also caught their fish from the same area we were fishing. We missed big fish by just ounces as a 4.25 won big fish and ours weghed 4.10. First photo is our two best fish from the JBA tournament. Second photo in the next post is a swimbait fish from early last week. Didn't have the batteries for the camera with me on Friday when we were really wearing them out and had six or seven big fish over four pounds.

At the time I figured out how to make the Strike King/Lucky Strike baits work better the Berkley baits were just getting ready to be released. Since the Strike King baits had different sizes including the big one I never tried the Berkley baits and we were killing them on the Strike King baits. But, Looking at them in the store it looks like Berkley did the best job and made the baits much closer to a Basstrix.

I had been fishing the Basstrix swimbaits for a few years. But after word got out about how they caught fish and the small local tackle shop I had been getting them from couldn't get them anymore ,due to Basstrix policy of only selling to one shop, I had to find a substitute. Then all the knockoffs started coming out but most were different in one way or another and didn't have the same action or catch fish the same since they were missing the hollow body, right size tail, appearance , etc. So, I started looking at different modifications I could do to make use of these knockoff baits. Out of the knockoffs I found the Lucky Strike/Strike King bait was the only one that could get close in appearance and design at the time but they made some major mistakes when making the bait that caused problems. The tail was way too large to get the right swimming action and the body was way to thick for a good hookset. I soon started cutting on the tail to make it smaller and trying different hooks and rigs. I soon figured out the weighted hook makers didn't know what the baits needed to work and they were doing the same thing the swimbait knockoff companies were doing which was just getting something on the market fast and not doing anything new to make the baits better. They just took big hooks and added weight. I knew what I needed in a hook to work on these baits but nobody made it. Then one day I went fishing with Tom Branch who is the Prostaff Manager of Fish Harder Companies (Picasso and Tru-Tungsten). Tom gave myself and my tournament partner Adam Stanton some baits to try one of which was the big Ish Tube which came with a Picasso 12/0 tube hook. I looked at the hook and thought I had something I could use but didn't have time to try it. Funny thing was we were discussing the mistakes companys were making trying to copy and make Basstrix type baits and then he handed me the tubes. I saw the hook and a little light bulb turned on in my head. So, that afternoon I took the 12/0 hook added a 1/8 oz weight and put it in a the biggest Lucky Strike swimbait with a cut tail and it swam perfect. Now the problem was finding hooks for the smaller size baits. I went to Bass Pro Shop and looked around and found that my favorite hook company makes a hook with the same type design. So Now I had an 11/0 Owner oversize offset worm hook for the 5.5 inch size baits and a 7/0 for the next size bait down. The longer shank would give a better hook set and tighter action to the bait. I also had pinch on weights to add weight and could use heavier or lighter weights to adjust the speed and depth I wanted to fish. Here are the photos of what the finished bait rigged should look like, the cut tail, and the hook. This is the 5.5 inch bait with an 11/0 Owner. I used super glue ,pliers and pinch on weights to add the weight. Just cut the tail like the one shown in the photo. You can experiment with how much tail you want to cut off since different amounts cut off will change the action. Notice how the hook comes out of the head with no bends in the way to catch grass. These are deadly over grass but it's a pain to fish most other swimbait hooks with weight added because they catch grass where the hook comes out of the head. See how when the hook point is farther back there is less plastic in the way for the hook to get through and past since the bait is thinner here. Its also father back when the fish overtakes the bait from behind or just gets the tail. My hook-up ratio is very high since I started using this hook. More than doubled the number of fish hooked. The longer shank hook and cut tail together get rid of most of the roll over which was a problem on many of these baits. It has a nice tight kick and allows for a lighter weight and slower retrieve to be used. I often just use 1/16 oz weight on larger baits and no weight sometimes on the small baits. I know Tackle Warehouse carries the hooks of both brands if you want to try them. There are a few companies that make the pinch on type weights. I got mine from a local shop. This should help you catch more fish and stop wasting money on hype and things that don't work. I have caught five twentyfive pound plus five fish limits off of this setup this spring and summer so this works for me. Now the Basstrix are a little easier to get then they were a few months ago but I have decided I like these better with this setup.

I have had a wake shad since the first king shads came out. ;)I heated up the bill with a hot knife in the back until it melted and bent down the bill so it would wake. Works much better that way. Looks like my secrect got out.

That's sick! Post up the pics! Mattlures bluegill caught this one out of Lake Varner which is east of Atlanta last year.

What lakes do you fish? What types of forage do the lakes have. I know what works as far as swimbaits on most of Atlanta's lakes. Fishing here is different than fishing in California but I do catch fish on big eight and ten inch swimbaits. They are not always the best baits though and I catch plenty of big fish including a fifteen pound twelve ounce fish on baits six inches or less. I am as low budget as they come but it's the biggest waste of money to buy something cheap that don't work. You might need a swimbait rod and you might not. You might just need to fish a different lake or a different location in the lake and use a worm or jig to catch a five to ten pounder. But a swimbait is a good tool and often the best tool when used in the right place and time to catch big fish.

I am still here. Just started back fishing this past week after we had the baby. Spent two days down in Henry County at Towaliga and caught over thirty one day and over fifty another day. Caught them on swimbaits, soft plastics and jigs. I will get around to posting more reports soon. It's just been real busy with a new baby.

The producer of the Video was Jud Bender. You might try his phone number at 318-747-9641 to get a copy. It's a good video.

I know some of you here were wondering if my wife had decided to have the baby yet. Well, here is another future fishing partner for me in the Kirkpatrick family along with my other two best fishing partners. She weighed 6 pounds 14 oz and everything went fine with both mom and the baby. Her name is AnnaBeth Joy Kirkpatrick. Notice the outfit she wore home from the hospital has a fish on it. ;D