Hey, guys, Bryan New here. I'm with BassResource. Today we're going to talk about hard swimbaits in the springtime. You know what? A hard swimbait. Obviously, it's a swimbait that's hard, but, you know, we can go so many different routes with that. You know, we got the glide baits. You know, that's a big thing nowadays. It's a single-joint bait that glides. We've got multi-jointed baits which is a bait that's near and dear to my heart. We've got, if I can get it, the SPRO Sashimmy Swimmer. It's got three joints. That's completely different than a glide bait. Of course, there's two joints and five joints. There's all different versions. But a hard swimbait does so many different things.
So here we are. It's a springtime... A glide bait is a bait that I'm going to reach for in the springtime. And what I'm going to do with the glide bait, you know, to me it's not a cover a ton of water bait. It's a target bait. I'm going to throw it down the side of a dock. I'm going to throw it at a stump. I'm going to throw it at a lay-down. That type of deal. Or a shade line. You know, shade lines are good. If you're on a bank and it's clean water and then where you see that water color change because that's where the break is. That's the stuff that I'm going to target with a glide bait. And so a glide bait, it's a big profile bait. It draws a lot. It's got a lot of drawing power. Fish can see it from a long way away. And with it just kind of cha-cha-ing back left and right and left and right it almost kind of mesmerizes the bass to some extent from time to time. It is a bait that a fish will follow a lot and not commit to. There's a lot of different things that you can try to get that fish to actually commit when you do see it following. You can chop it like left right left right or just a slow steady wind. Chop, chop. There's so many different ways to use this bait. I've been doing it for many, many years before it got popular and I kind of got away from it.
Well, now it's a big thing again. Guys are winning tournaments. Guys are catching a lot of big fish in tournaments. And, you know, I'm kind of kicking myself for not dedicating more time to it since I was ahead of that curve with it. But when we're talking glide baits, big glide baits, big hard swimbaits, you need the right equipment. And ARK has a rod. It's a glide bait special. It's a seven-foot ten-inch. It's a heavy action rod but it's a soft heavy action. So, you know, it's got the power. It's got the power to handle that heavier bait and those bigger fish that you're looking for. But it also, you're dealing with treble hooks. You're dealing with the bait that the fish just swipe at a lot. They don't eat, like, full on eat it. And you don't want to rip those treble hooks out of that fish. So having the right rod is definitely a big deal. Whenever I started using this rod it's helped me land a lot more fish. It's got a longer handle. You know you're able to make those longer casts. And as far as gear ratio reels, you know I try to six four to a seven. You know, this is an ARK Gravity G7 reel. This is a six four to one ratio and it kind of helps me make sure that I don't overpower it.
There are times that I will go to a seven if I'm chopping it a lot and moving it pretty fast. Line, 20-pound Sunline FC Sniper is pretty much my go-to. You know, 20-pound is, it's hard to break 20-pound. You can do it but it is hard. You could go bigger. I mean there are times that I step up to 25 but I'm typically using a much bigger glide bait. But this SPRO Chad Shad, you know, the Chad Shad is, you know, the original Chad Shad KBG is probably the most popular if you want to call it garage bait company glide baits on the market. Or in the market. So they teamed up with SPRO and now we have an ABS plastic version that's much cheaper. It's still very high quality but it's a great bait. But it's not super heavy. I mean, I have less than two ounces. But KGB also makes several other glide baits, and bigger. And that's when I'm using those bigger ones is when I'm going to step up to that 25-pound just to, it's a lot heavier bait. You know we're talking three, four, five, six-ounce baits and you just need a lot more power.
The glide bait, it's also great for when you're sight fishing, when you're looking for fish on the bed, going down the bank. It will get those fish that you can't see with your eyes. It will get them to come out and show their self. You can kind of see the direction that they came from. Maybe there's a stump there or there's a deep light spot that I really couldn't see what was going on. The glide bait is going to help you do that.
So kind of moving on from the glide bait, you know, I live in South Carolina and we have a lot of blueback herring lakes. The springtime, the blueback herring spawn. And, you know, they get up real shallow on these flat clay points. Really just anything hard but flat clay points are, you know, one of the number one targets. And I designed the SPRO Sashimmy Swimmer just for blueback herring lakes. I mean, it is a bait that I can go down the bank fishing as well but that's not what it was designed for. It was designed for blueback herring fishing. So this is a pretty simple bait to use. You throw it and you wind it and that's it. It's got a real tight action, like where that glide bait glides left, it glides right. Well, the more joints that you put in a bait the tighter it is. So, you know, if I had two joints it's going to swim more of an S pattern. Three joints like the Sashimmy it's going to be even tighter. A blueback herring doesn't swim like this. He's real tight. That's why we went with the more joints here. It's got that blueback herring profile, long, not super tall. And, you know, yeah, straight reel, cast reel, cast reel, and pretty quickly.
You know, I throw this on an eight to one gear ratio ARK G7 reel. I throw it on a seven-foot two-inch medium action rod. It's got a regular taper. Once again, because of those treble hooks the fish swipe at it a lot. You don't want to take that bait away from the fish. You don't want to rip those trebles out of the fish. And 16-pound Sunline FC Sniper. That 16-pound on the 125 size has kind of really been my deal. What I've found to be the best. It allows it to get down just enough. It's got enough strength.
We also have other sizes. We've got a 105 size. And when I switch to that 105, you know, it's obviously a smaller profile. I go down to 14-pound FC Sniper. It's a smaller bait. You know, a little bit smaller line helps it get down and not overpower it. When I reach for the smaller one, obviously, it depends on the size of the bait fish you're trying to target. That's one key. If it's super clear water. If it's a very bright sunny day. You know, that's a time. If it's highly pressured. If it's a place that you know a lot of guys are fishing, the 105, you know, I'm going to reach for that. Same deal. Keep it pretty fast. Pretty fast. I'm throwing that on the same rod and the same reel as well.
There's a lot of little tricks that I can do that I do with the Sashimmy Swimmer. One, you know, is I put a feather treble on it sometimes. And when I put the feather treble on it, this is one that I hand-tied on a Gamakatsu G-Finesse treble hook. When I put that on it, it does a few things. It gives it a bigger profile, but it also tightens that action up slightly more. And it also slows the bait down somewhat. You can still move it as fast as you want. But you can also move it a little bit slower. So the bigger profile slows it down. And, you know, it also keeps it a little higher. This is something that's kind of new to me. I haven't done it a ton. I'm learning more and more about it. I always love tinkering. You know, even when I feel like I have something figured out perfectly, I still always feel like there's something else I can do to make it better. So the feather treble is one trick that I play with from time to time. I don't have the exact science down to when I need to do that always. Now, if it's a little bit off-colored water. If it's a dark day which we somewhat have today, I need a little bit bigger profile, something they can see a little bit farther away to get a little bit more drawing power. That's the time where I believe the feathered treble is going to make a difference.
Another thing that I do is sometimes I'll add a weight. You know, this is just like a free rig weight, a open eye drop shot weight. Obviously, various sizes. You know, this is an eighth ounce. And that's, of course, it's going to get the bait down a little bit deeper. It's going to let you speed it up to keep it higher if you want without blowing out. You know, that's a pretty neat deal. Actually working on a fast sink version but I don't have it yet. So a little sneak peek on that. Maybe I shouldn't have told you but I did. But adding that little drop shot weight is something that I really like to do from time to time. And if it's very windy, you've got a lot of waves going on, you need that to keep it down a little better, t o keep it from coming out of the waves. An important deal, I've used a lot of different things but this is one of the very slender tungsten drop shot weights. The reason that's important is you're putting that on your hook hanger there. You don't want this big weight that's going to get in the way of your hooks and take away that bite of your hook. So the smallest, you need the weight that you need but you still want it as small as possible. And I just put it on there with the split ring or on the split ring with the treble just like you would if you were replacing your trebles.
As far as colors, I'm a bait guy. I love all the fancy stuff. I love all the pretty colors. I've got a box full of custom-painted sashimmies here. But at the end of the day, you really need a handful of colors. You need a natural herring. This is one of my favorites, the natural herring. It's a solid color. It's a white-based color. It stands out good on dark days. Somewhat stained water. That's when I'm reaching for these white-based solid colors. It just stands out a little bit more. Of course, you've got to have chrome. You know, on a herring lake, chrome is very, very important. When I'm reaching for chrome it's going to be those bright bluebird sunny days. It's got more flash which is going to have more drawing power. Chrome is no secret on herring lakes. That's the number one color. Bright bluebird sunny days is when I'm reaching for chrome. And of course, you need a translucent color. The tangled-up translucent herring here, you know, it's clear. You can see straight through it but it's got that same herring color. They're called blueback herring. I have no idea why. Because they're actually a brownback herring. And this color resembles that really well. I've got a lot of custom-painted translucent colors. But another little sneaky deal, we have a clear sashimmy swimmer. And when I'm reaching for that clear color sashimmy is on those super clear lakes. Super bright bluebird days when the chrome is just a little bit too much. When the pressure is just a little bit too much that clear, it's definitely a bait. It's a sleeper. It catches them. But kind of getting back, I kind of jumped the gun a little bit. The translucent colors is going to be those clear, highly pressured days. That's when I'm reaching for the translucent colors.
So that's the herring deal. Something I really love. It's so fun. Even adding in with LiveScope that we have nowadays. Now, I'm not a LiveScope lover by any means. But we get on these points and we see these big schools of fish chasing herring. And you throw that sashimmy over there and you wind it fast over the top of their head. And when 40 fish come up and they're all fighting over it, it's pretty dang fun. It is. But once again, I told you it's not just a herring fishing bait. Spotted bass lakes, it's out of this world good. Something about spots, they just cannot stand that action. Largemouth as well, they're not as aggressive as the spots, but they do bite it. And then even going farther up north in the smallmouth country, the coontail perch are a big, big deal. Smallmouth eats so many of those. We even have a perch colored that I made just for up north. And you get on those flats, those same flats that the guys are throwing the little fluff, the little hair jig up north for smallmouth or a fluke style bait. That's when I'm reaching for this. It's something that they haven't seen. And it looks, I mean, it's dead on a coontail perch. So it's a very versatile bait. I've caught fish from Florida to New York and everywhere in between. Yes, it's a blueback herring designed bait, but that's not all it's for. So try those out, some of those tips out, those tricks. And yeah, SPRO Chad Shad, SPRO Sashimmy Swimmer. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Try it out this spring.
