Pit boss, I am late to the party, just took the right size lol

[Cgolf]

For the life of me I couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about, I had been using the 4" bait and only got a Smallie or two with it on the river and barely got any hits. 

 

This year I picked up a couple packs of the 3" model and have started to get a bunch of hits and am landing some fish with it. Took me a bit to figure out, but I saw the same pattern with the a Yum Crawbug where the fish wanted the smaller bait. The bigger one would produce the occasional bite, but it was just a miss. The smaller bait caught both numbers and size. 

 

The pit boss on a slider head must imitate a craw, so I will stick to the smaller size on the river and try the bigger size on flat water for largemouth. 

 

Do you all treat them as a craw imitation?

[Munkin]

I fish them on a T-Rig with a bullet weight and so far they work but not as well as a smallie beaver.

 

Allen

[RoLo]

 

Man has a vivid imagination, and lure manufacturers exploit that vulnerability.

Lure makers would have us believe that a bass mistakes a crawdad-colored Bomber for a crayfish.

They'd also have us believe that a bass mistakes a bluegill-colored jig for a bluegill.

This I know for sure, bass have a lot better perception than me, and I would never make those mistakes.

In my opinion, bass are opportunistic predators who mistake our lures for something to eat...period.

 

Roger

[Cgolf]

28 minutes ago, RoLo said:

 

Man has a vivid imagination, and lure manufacturers exploit that vulnerability.

Lure makers would have us believe that a bass mistakes a crawdad-colored Bomber for a crayfish.

They'd also have us believe that a bass mistakes a bluegill-colored jig for a bluegill.

This I know for sure, bass have a lot better perception than me, and I would never make those mistakes.

In my opinion, bass are opportunistic predators who mistake our lures for something to eat...period.

 

Roger

 I sometimes agree with you, but 10 years of river data shows the Crawbug to be the runaway number one soft plastic. I fished the pit boss in the same manner and got bites, slow popping it off snags, but of course craws appear to be the number one natural forage on the river. Typical match the hatch situation.

 

Why the Bandit 100 has caught almost as many fish as the Crawbug, goes to the opportunistic feeding. No perfect answer, but I do try to match the hatch more often than not 

 

 

[Bluebasser86]

I put the little 3" version on a 1/8oz swinging football head that I pour just for small plastics like that. The hinged head gives it a jerky action that looks a lot like a little craw scooting away. It's a great presentation that I probably don't use often enough. This is the 3" Pit Boss and a 2.75" YUM Craw Papi on the same size heads. It's a 2/0 Owner short shank rig N' hook and it fits perfectly. 

[Cgolf]

5 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

I put the little 3" version on a 1/8oz swinging football head that I pour just for small plastics like that. The hinged head gives it a jerky action that looks a lot like a little craw scooting away. It's a great presentation that I probably don't use often enough. This is the 3" Pit Boss and a 2.75" YUM Craw Papi on the same size heads. It's a 2/0 Owner short shank rig N' hook and it fits perfectly. 

How snag resistant are those heads? Most of my time is spent fishing a swift rocky stretch of river that eats jigs. So far the most snag resistant has actually been a slider spider head that pops free from rock snags much more often than other jig styles I have tried.

[Bluebasser86]

5 minutes ago, cgolf said:

How snag resistant are those heads? Most of my time is spent fishing a swift rocky stretch of river that eats jigs. So far the most snag resistant has actually been a slider spider head that pops free from rock snags much more often than other jig styles I have tried.

I use them just because of how snag resistant they are. One of the main lakes I fish for smallmouth in has some of the snaggiest rocks I've ever fished. If I fish a shakyhead, it's almost a cast per bait, but with the swing heads I can keep it to 1 or 2 heads a day. 

[CTBassin860]

Throw them on the back of a swim jig or chatterbait.Pitch,flip or T-rig them.Cant fish them wrong.

[Subaqua Adinterim]

I had great success yesterday using the 4" size on a size 3/0 Skip Gap hook fishing shallow water on a local lake.  I pegged a 1/8 oz. tungsten bullet weight in front of it.  This was weedless and I had great hook ups with it.  I am going to be using the Skip Gap hooks in a variety of different ways to see what the best application is for these.  I can say at this point that the Pit Boss is an ideal application for these hooks.

[Fishingintheweeds]

I've had pretty consistent luck with them any way you could think of, including topwater. On the 4"...not so much the 5. To me, the 5 just seems too big.

 

Somehow, it wasn't until this year that I saw the 3" though and I felt like I should have some. But I wasn't sure why, exactly. Until these posts, I'd never heard of so many saying that downsizing this got more bites.

 

Thanks!

[Dangerfield]

I like em on the back of a swimjig or a chatterbait but I've only used the 4" model. I just picked up the 4" Skywalker for black and black/blue jigs and 3" Blue Shiner Gold for everything else. Didn't notice I purchased 3" in the BSG until they arrived, it looks good for a finesse swimjig or a bitsy bug. I've got a dirty jigs finesse swimjig in Crappie, i think they'll pair up nicely.