Saltwater Bait Type That Slays Smallmouth - Red Fish Magic

[jeffreymcgovern]

I wanted to post this because this style of lure has loaded the boat for us time and again fishing in Canada for smallmouth bass.  I suspect in any nothern waters it will work just as well.  I refer to them a Red Fish Magic style baits since we use not only the branded version from Strke King but construct our own versions from Slayer components and Mission Fishin jigs to name a few.   We discovered the effectivenss by accident back in 2005.  I left in a hurry for the Canada trip and had maybe 20 of the Red Fish Magic baits in my duffel from a saltwater trip a few weeks before.  Tying one on just to see if it would get hit  resulted in fish right way.  Loads of them!  in fact since we started using the bait we have landed walleye, smallmouth, largemouth, pike and musky.  Some of the last two have exceeded 40lbs.  Quite a lure and a real sleeper in northern freshwater.

 

[flyfisher]

Looks like a bigger beetle spin to me   Nice fish and interesting rod for sure.

[Hanover_Yakker]

Thanks for sharing - that technique/lure is not that uncommon in the saltwater world. It is used for not only reds, but also trout, snoook and stipers, etc in the salt. It is sold in the saltwater section as just a normal split tail spinner in the 1/4 oz. size. Strike King, Bomber, Betts, Marsh Works, etc all have varieties of the same thing. I have a couple myself of both the SK and MW versions. A local tackle shop I frequent has a couple of the Betts models left on the rack. I know a couple veteran smallie guides that use large single colorado bladed spinnerbaits in the 3/4 to 1 oz size in muddy water to trigger strikes on big smallies when they fish the Juniata and Susky rivers.

[SirSnookalot]

It's a spinnerbait with a paddle tail, I've used them.  I cross my lures between salt and fresh all the time, bucktail jigs and wildeyed shads work equally well in both environments.

[flippin and pitchin]

I bought some of those baits two years ago and rigged them on football heads and swim jigs for smallmouth. I did a post on it. They make great smallie baits.

[webertime]

Look up Nemire Red Ripper. Lots of things Nemire makes slay smallies.

[retiredbosn]

I do the same thing with regular spinnerbaits, remove the skirt and put a swimming fluke on it, at times it works great.

[SudburyBasser]

As someone who pretty much only fishes northern Ontario waters I'll have to give that a shot.

[SirSnookalot]

Fish are fish, just about kind of lure will catch just about any kind of fish in any environment.  So many of these different "species lures" catch more anglers than fish, it's all about marketing.  Go figure, one of my favorite spanish mackerel lures is an ice fishing jig, and Florida home boy turned me on to it.