Northern Strain Largemouths Do Eat Trout Swimbaits..

[deep]

Caught a nice bass this morning at the crack of dawn from my favorite reservoir. I was fan-casting a spawning cove with a 6" Spro BBZ Jr rainbow trout floater with twitches, pauses, slow-rolls, and pauses.

This fish sucked in the bait on the pause after a slow-roll. She went 7 lbs 01 oz on my Berkley handheld digital.

A really cool thing happened when I was reeling in the bass. Another 6+ class fish almost tried to take the bait out of the hooked fish, and a 3+ class fish was following the two of them rather closely. I wish I had another person with me to try and catch one of them; I already had a rod rigged with a wacky senko as a follow-up bait. The other two bass disappeared as soon as I landed my catch.

This is also the first big bass (anything over 5 lbs is big in my book) that I caught on a swimbait. It's only fitting that she ate a bait designed by Bill Siemantel, and was landed on a Mattlures swimbait rod. These two guys are sort of my swimbait heroes, and Bill's book was what first got me started on swimbaiting.

Set-up: Mattlures medium-heavy power swimbait rod, Shimano Curado 301E spooled with 20 lb P-line fluoroclear.

[00 mod]

Nice! I still want to get into swim-baiting! I have recently bought some new ones and will try as the season progresses!

Jeff

[J Francho]

They also eat them in "non trout" waters, LOL.

[joshholmes]

wow. WTG! that fish is about the same size as my PB and all i fish for is northern strain here in NY, other than the one time i get to fish in florida every year on vacation.i was wondering, was that a spawning female? also heres a little secret i found. as you found out bass are very jealous fish and don't like seeing another fish eat. the secret is if you have an old rapala, take the hooks off but not the split rings and tie you line to the rapala. then attach a 12"-18" leader to the back split ring and tie on you swimbait to that leader. the bass will think that its chasing down the rapala and will attack it. although the logic may seem strange it does work very well.

[Rippinglips]

Wtg congrats

[Fishmaster10]

Great fish and WTG

[fishingkidPA]

p-line gets it done

great fish!!!

[deep]

Thanks everyone.

Josh, I think it's a spawning fish; you can see her bloodied tail fin in the photo. I'm not sure why she (and not the male) came up to hit the bait though. And idk why two other females (spawning too I'd guess) got turned on by her feeding. All three bass were really fat - not really apparent from the photo I took- and I don't think they were spawned out, yet.

Thanks for your tip. Your idea seems to be good, on paper, at least. I did try a similar idea once, with two 4" hudd shads. Bill Siemantel displayed a 2-fer rig once on a TW video with 2 little BBZ shads as well. Sad to say, the experiment failed. The baits got tangled too many times for my liking, and casting distance was horrible; I mostly fish from the shore. It was purely operator error though. Threading both baits on the same line like you say, and using a bobber stopper or something like that might probably help with the tangles. I'll have to try that out again.

[Mattlures]

Congrats on another great fish. You have a great fisherie there. Judging from the looks of those fish I bet you can get another PB maybe even a DD

[deep]

Matt, thanks for taking the time to post in the 2 threads. It means a lot to me. Now for that elusive DD! I hope she comes in on one of your baits.

[Mrs. Matstone]

Congrats!

[ICU812]

Great fish!! Caught my pb (in my avatar) on a spro floating swimbait in Maine, so I can attest to the fact that the northern strains eat swimbaits for sure! Way to go man!! Great fish!!

[ICU812]

Hey did I see a post from you on tac tical b assin?