First swimbait bass

[Weld's Largemouth]

First bass on my dobyns swimbait rod. I've had the rod for a few months but haven't had the chance to use it until today. I just arrived in florida today, and on my 2nd cast I hooked into this 5.26 lb largemouth. Caught on the savage gear 6" line thru.

 

 

[gulfcaptain]

Nice fish.  Could never get that 6" to run correctly so gave up on that size Line Thru.  Looks like the dirty silver color.

[Weld's Largemouth]

7 minutes ago, gulfcaptain said:

Nice fish.  Could never get that 6" to run correctly so gave up on that size Line Thru.  Looks like the dirty silver color.

Thank you. That's odd... it runs straight for me. And that's actually the hitch color, it's hard to see.

[jbw252]

Sweet way to start off your vacation. 

[gulfcaptain]

Slow sink or floater?

 

[Senko lover]

Dang, nice work Welds!

[Weld's Largemouth]

3 hours ago, gulfcaptain said:

Slow sink or floater?

 

fast sink

[deep]

Well done.

[Bluebasser86]

Got to love a swimbait bite! I have several of the 6" Savage Gear Line Thrus and they all swim perfect. 

[FloridaFishinFool]

On 12/26/2015 at 2:48 PM, gulfcaptain said:

Nice fish.  Could never get that 6" to run correctly so gave up on that size Line Thru.

Yep, a nice fish for a first swimbaiter!

But, since it was brought up and this thread has now been hijacked away from strictly one-fish appreciation and into how swimbaits run, I'd like to ask some of you why is it important that a swimbait swims straight? I find this curious for several reasons.

I am a swimbait fanatic here in central Florida. I catch a lot of bass on swimbaits and my 2 biggest bass of 2015 were caught on swimbaits and in both instances neither fish hit on a straight swimming lure. I go through swimbaits faster than I can change underwear! Seriously. One fish can tear a swimbait up in seconds, bite the tail off, etc. so I go through a ton of them and sometimes I'm tying them on one after another so fast I don't even know if it can swim straight out of the package.

But here's the thing... I honestly don't care if a swimbait swims straight out of the package and I don't mess with them to get them to swim straight either because from my own experience the hungry fish don't seem to care if the swimbait swims straight, off to the left, or off to the right. It has never mattered one iota to me or to the fish.

My biggest concern is bait weight. I fish a lot in the St. Johns river and sometimes with strong current and I want the bait to be heavy enough to sink down deeper on retrieve sometimes bouncing them off the bottom is where the bite is at.

A lot of time I am using a swimbait I am using it in a way that I don't want it to swim perfectly straight. Sometimes I am jigging them off the bottom and sort of jerking them into motion for a strike. And I am often using my rod tip to make the lure zig zag swim as I reel it in. Sometimes I am ripping them in right on the surface like an escaping baitfish tries to jump out of the water to escape a pursuing bass. Point is, a lot of what I do with a swimbait to get a strike does not even involve swimming straight to catch a fish.

I am simply trying to use that lure in such a way that presents an apparent food source that looks something like the other real baitfish they are eating on a daily basis and trick them into biting it. To me swimming straight and true gives the bass too much time to get a good look at the lure and possibly reject it. I don't want them to have the time and opportunity to examine it like that. I want to trigger their instinctive strikes by an element of surprise by constantly changing up the movement of the lure to anything BUT straight!

So I am curious about the comments here about being concerned whether or not a swimbait swims straight out of the package. Does it really matter?

 

[Bluebasser86]

Generally, referring to them swimming straight is in reference to baits that roll, swim on their sides, or blow out, even on a slower retrieve. Most all of my swimbaits I retrieve at a fairly slow pace as I'm trying to emulate a natural swimming speed of a baitfish that isn't aware of any danger or is possibly wounded/dying. So a bait that doesn't swim properly isn't very likely to be effective. 

[gulfcaptain]

26 minutes ago, FloridaFishinFool said:

Yep, a nice fish for a first swimbaiter!

But, since it was brought up, I'd like to ask some of you why is it important that a swimbait swims straight? I find this curious for several reasons.

I am a swimbait fanatic here in central Florida. I catch a lot of bass on swimbaits and my 2 biggest bass of 2015 were caught on swimbaits and in both instances neither fish hit on a straight swimming lure. I go through swimbaits faster than I can change underwear! Seriously. One fish can tear a swimbait up in seconds, bite the tail off, etc. so I go through a ton of them and sometimes I'm tying them on one after another so fast I don't even know if it can swim straight out of the package.

But here's the thing... I honestly don't care if a swimbait swims straight out of the package and I don't mess with them to get them to swim straight either because from my own experience the hungry fish don't seem to care if the swimbait swims straight, off to the left, or off to the right. It has never mattered one iota to me or to the fish.

So I am curious about the comments here about being concerned whether or not a swimbait swims straight out of the package. Does it really matter?

 

Not to hijack his post, but for me large swimbaits such as the Line Thru's and Hudds or any of the other larger swimbaits (not refering to paddletails and hollowbelly baits that you add a hook or put on a leadhead) the baits are supposed to swim straight, and the suttle action of the bait is what makes them appealing.  And as I was typing this Bluebasser beat me to the main point of why.

[FloridaFishinFool]

Its OK that you did, I am sure most of us can still appreciate the first bass while also discussing swimbaits that you hijacked this thread off into:

Bluebasser86 said: " ...a bait that doesn't swim properly isn't very likely to be effective."

And GulfCaptain said: " ...the baits are supposed to swim straight, and the subtle action of the bait is what makes them appealing. "

While I can understand this line of thought and how humans can come to this conclusion that only straight swimming baits are appealing to fish, in my opinion there is not one shred of truth to it. This is a case of a human making a determination and then behaving according to this one conclusion from then on out.

Years of fishing have shattered this straight only myth for me.

So the working theory is, that when retrieving a swimbait or lure, that the tight line forms a straight line into the water and any lure tied on is required to follow the straight line perfectly or it won't catch fish and is not appealing to the fish, etc. So if a lure goes a little to the left or a little bit to the right, it is now some how unappealing, no longer working properly and therefore will not catch fish and should be rejected or tampered with to bring it back into a straight line.

This is what I am getting out of the straight only conclusion. And all I am trying to say is I totally reject this type of thinking and have for more than 25 years of fishing.

When I buy soft rubber swimbaits, how many of them are perfectly straight out of the package? The paddletails are often sagging heavily off to one side or the other. I'd bet that out of a bag of Zoom swimming fluke Jr's, that no two are even shaped the same out of the bag- original mold shape yes, squished in bag shapes, no. How many weeks and months has a rubber bait been smashed down twisted around sideways and now stuck in that bent position when it is pulled out of the bag to use?

So if it is not straight I am suppose to not use it? To reject it out of the package because I- the human- have made a decision that fish simply will not like it with a bent tail? I think this is a pattern of thought or a rut that some of us can get stuck in when in my opinion we should be more versatile and open to fishing with lures that don't all follow a straight line behind the line.

And in terms of what is straight or not, who holds this perspective? Does a fish look at the line and think to itself that it will only hit on lures that follow the fishing line in a perfectly straight line behind it? Or, is this a purely human perspective looking down into the water that it is we who want it to track straight?

How can a fish determine, know, or ever care if a lure is tracking to the left or to the right? I don't want the fish to be distracted by my line. I don't even want the line to be an issue when fishing. So how can any fish I catch put two and two together like that to only strike or hit on lures operating and tracking in a perfectly straight line behind the line? In my opinion they can't. A bass can not determine if my swimbait is tracking slightly left or tracking slightly to the right or perfectly straight. In my opinion this is completely irrelevant to my fishing.

I will use every swimbait in a package and I do not care if it swims right or left or if one swimbait paddle tail wiggles more than the next one. I use them all. And if there is a shape variation like a bent tail that causes it to swim improperly or differently then I am the one who adapts to it and I am the one who makes that lure act how I want it to so I can catch fish with it.

I am sure there are those who could care less and will say so...

 

[gulfcaptain]

23 minutes ago, FloridaFishinFool said:

 

When I buy soft rubber swimbaits, how many of them are perfectly straight out of the package? The paddletails are often sagging heavily off to one side or the other. I'd bet that out of a bag of Zoom swimming fluke Jr's, that no two are even shaped the same out of the bag- original mold shape yes, squished in bag shapes, no. How many weeks and months has a rubber bait been smashed down twisted around sideways and now stuck in that bent position when it is pulled out of the bag to use?

So if it is not straight I am suppose to not use it? To reject it out of the package because I- the human- have made a decision that fish simply will not like it with a bent tail? I think this is a pattern of thought or a rut that some of us can get stuck in when in my opinion we should be more versatile and open to fishing with lures that don't all follow a straight line behind the line.

And in terms of what is straight or not, who holds this perspective? Does a fish look at the line and think to itself that it will only hit on lures that follow the fishing line in a perfectly straight line behind it? Or, is this a purely human perspective looking down into the water that it is we who want it to track straight?

How can a fish determine, know, or ever care if a lure is tracking to the left or to the right? I don't want the fish to be distracted by my line. I don't even want the line to be an issue when fishing. So how can any fish I catch put two and two together like that to only strike or hit on lures operating and tracking in a perfectly straight line behind the line? In my opinion they can't. A bass can not determine if my swimbait is tracking slightly left or tracking slightly to the right or perfectly straight. In my opinion this is completely irrelevant to my fishing.

I will use every swimbait in a package and I do not care if it swims right or left or if one swimbait paddle tail wiggles more than the next one. I use them all. And if there is a shape variation like a bent tail that causes it to swim improperly or differently then I am the one who adapts to it and I am the one who makes that lure act how I want it to so I can catch with it.

 

 

Once again, I believe Bluebasser and myself weren't discussing small package swimbaits.  A swimming fluke(small paddletail baits) and a 6-10" swimbait aren't the same baits.  Big baits such as hudds and line thru's are visual presentations. They cue in on a natural suttle swimming action or in my case looking visually for stocked trout (where I'm located) that are swimming slowly and make for easy targets.  A hudd or line thru that spins doesn't have a "natural" suttle action.  You're not fast cranking these, you're slowly swiming them and if they don't swim right, spin and lay on their sides, or role you aren't getting the right presentation.  If your crankbait roles, the bill breaks, or constantly blows out are you going to continue to fish it?  No, it must run correctly to be productive. Once again, I can care less what the tail of a swimming fluke or any other small 3-4" paddletail bait.   Not even in the same class or presentation as a big swimbait.  

If you really want to have this discussion, post it and ask other memebers why large swimbaits need to swim correctly and not role, spin, blowout, or swim on their sides. 

[FloridaFishinFool]

22 hours ago, gulfcaptain said:

I can care less 

 

Hijacked! Join the club!

[MIbassangler30]

Thread officially hijacked 

[Sam]

Way to go! Congrats.

We all dream of doing what you did.

Now, go for an 8-pounder today!!!!

Happy New Year.

[gulfcaptain]

10 hours ago, 03cole said:

Thread officially hijacked 

 

Hopefully not anymore.

Weld, looking forward to seeing a few more pictures of the fish you're going to catch while you're in FL.  Once again, congrats on your fish.  May have to try the fast sink version of the 6" Line Thru.  

[jignfule]

Great fish, what's that green stuff in the background.

[A-Jay]

Nice Fat First Swimbait Bass

Congrats

A-Jay