Ok you swim bait boys

[Supermat]

Senile,

 Didn't mean to talk down to you at all. The point I was making is that its quite common to catch small fish on big baits. How many you catch depends on the waters you fish. There are places where you can catch 20 1-3 lbers a day on a 6-8" swimbait out here and places where you can throw them for 6 months and never get a dink to bite it. Its all location-specific but the potential is there for you to catch a bunch of solid fish if you pick up the swimbait.

[mikel7]

IT'S JUST A GLORIFIED CRANK.

[Catt]

There is either surface, suspending, or sinking

But in order to keep y'all from freaking out

Castaic Platinum Series Blue Threadfin Shad 8 & 10

Castaic Platinum Series Blue Gizzard Shad 8 & 10

Castaic Platinum Series Sunfish 8

Castaic SBT Mad Shad 8 & 10

Castaic SBT Ghost Ayu 8 & 10

Huddleston Prototype 12 Shad

Huddleston 7 3:16 Baby Bass

AC Plugs by Fred Arbogast

Blake Gills Basstrix Night 10

Optimum Suspending 8 Pearl Shad & Texas Red

Original Optimum 10

[senile1]

Senile,

 Didn't mean to talk down to you at all. The point I was making is that its quite common to catch small fish on big baits. How many you catch depends on the waters you fish. There are places where you can catch 20 1-3 lbers a day on a 6-8" swimbait out here and places where you can throw them for 6 months and never get a dink to bite it. Its all location-specific but the potential is there for you to catch a bunch of solid fish if you pick up the swimbait.

Thanks for the info, Supermat and Raul.  Sorry for any misunderstanding.  I think those of us who have never used swimbaits see them as mainly big fish baits, so it's good to know that there'll be some other action as well.  

[Vyron]

http://www.huddlestondeluxe.com/generic49.html;$sessionid$OYQJILIAABCKTTZENUGUTIWPERWRJPX0

watch his videos 2 get an idea on the retrieve

[Supermat]

There is either surface, suspending, or sinking

But in order to keep y'all from freaking out

Castaic Platinum Series Blue Threadfin Shad 8 & 10

Castaic Platinum Series Blue Gizzard Shad 8 & 10

Castaic Platinum Series Sunfish 8

Castaic SBT Mad Shad 8 & 10

Castaic SBT Ghost Ayu 8 & 10

Huddleston Prototype 12 Shad

Huddleston 7 3:16 Baby Bass

AC Plugs by Fred Arbogast

Blake Gills Basstrix Night 10

Optimum Suspending 8 Pearl Shad & Texas Red

Original Optimum 10

With all but two of those baits my retrieve would be VERY simple. A swimbait isn't like a ripbait, jerkbait, etc... You're not trying to imitate a minnow with a bait that big and as such, you don't want a lot of sudden movement. I rarely see 10" fish darting and flashing like you do with shad, I see them do 3 things: swim fast, swim slow, sit there. For me, the sitting there is BORING so I swim fast or slow depending on how the fish are responding. I don't add jerks, pops, etc... as I think it takes away from the realism of what your bait is doing.

Now, your 3:16 Baby Bass, you can either slow roll him on top or twitch him, both are EQUALLY effective and should produce.

The only other bait I'd treat differently is that 12" huddleston. That bait I would put in a glass case, set up really high where no one will bother it, and then let my grandchild go through college thanks to it.

Those are my recommendations, its about the 6th or 7th time someone has given it to you straight in this post. One of these times you're going to have to believe that 95% of the time the most effective thing you can do is throw the bait out there and reel it back at a slow to moderate pace. There isn't a "secret retrieve", there isn't some secret time of day, I definetely can't tell you your "secret spots" but if you take your baits out and just do the chuck and wind you'll eventually succeed.

[Catt]

That Huddleston Prototype 12 Shad cost me some of my hidden stash of discontinued baits and a 4 day guided trip on Toledo Bend. I've had some of these baits for quite awhile but have only tried them on rare occasions with limited success. The main problem is I usually fish with my life long fishing partner Pat Miller who refuses to even try a swim. Three or four days ago I was in my closet looking for some thing when I noticed the box of swim bait and decided this will be the year of the swim bait for me even if I have to fish alone.  

I have several spots on Toledo Bend that have consistently produced double digit bass; at least a dozen spots that have produced at one double digit, and one that produced the lake record of 15.32 lbs. So I know the locations, I just gotta do it

Thank to all for the info and I apologize to all for being an AZZ

[Raul]

One of the problems you encounter with big 6+ inch soft plastic baits is that the fish strikes the bait but doesn 't engulf it completely or hits it in the mid section of the body or from the tail, the result is you get the hit but you don 't hook the fish ( do not set the hook imediately ), the reason is simple, opposed to hard and hybrid baits where you 've got several treble hooks dangling from the belly most soft plastic swimbaits only have one hook. What you need to do is to add more hooks to the bait for those kind of baits, trap hooks do not dangle from underneath the bait ( which can cause the bait to run crooked ) but they are imbeded into the bait body and aligned in the middle line of the bait:

Attaching the hooks like in the image does not alter the action of the bait and icreases dramatically the number of hooked fish, the drawback is: you catch more fish but smaller ones.