Swimbait Tips?

[Tm Customs]

I live in Sacramento CA here most people dont fish swimbait, usally they elect to flip a jig of throw a spinnerbait. I mostly fish the delta, I have cought lots of fish on my small 4'' swimbaits and even some on some 6'' modles. But I have never got a bass bigger than 5lbs on a swimbait and have never cought any thing on the monster swimbaits. Does anyone have any tip or ticks they would share with me on fishing swimbaits, I would really like to fish the big ones more. As I have always loved minnow type lures with a swimming tail, ever since I was a kid I loved sassy shads who have now evolved into our swimbaits of today. Any help will be greatly appricated.

Thanks, Tm

[trick trout]

i live in san diego, CA and for the past 3 or 4 years swimbaits have been the rage. i recently in the last year or so started making my own swimbaits. Over the past couple of years i have picked up many tricks for throughing swimbaits. I will help you out as much as i can with what i use and what alot of the southern californian guys use.

Gear:

1. first of all you definetly need to have the right gear. Using swimbaits on your normal 7' med-hvy rod and a low-profile reel just won't cut it. I tried this for the first couple of years and thought i was in good shape until i bought the right gear and used it. Rods are a little tough becuase you need a rod for 5-7 inch swimbaits and a rod for 7-9 and 9-12 if you plan on using baits that big. First of all for the 5-7 inch baits i would go with a 7'6 rod med-hvy action or heavy action rod with a fast tip. now i am not pushing any of the products i will list now or later but the products i will tell you about are what i have used personally and i have had the best expierience with. For a 5-7 inch swimbait rod i have just recently tested out a new okuma rod specially designed for swimbaits. here is the site to give you and example of lure weight that you may want to use for 5-7 inch swimbaits.http://www.okumafishing.com/products/rods/gs/gs.htm

the bottom two models are the rods specifically designed for swimbaits

Now for the 7-9 inch swimbaits i would go with a rod that is 7'10 at the least and preferably an 8' model. You will want to have a heavy action rod that can handle 4-8 oz. baits with a fast action tip. And for 9-12 inch baits you will need not want but need a 8' rod with heavy action or xtra heavy action and can handle 6-10 oz. baits. The reason all of these rods have to have a fairly soft tip is because if you are using any bait with a lip or bill the tip has to give a little bit to alow the bait to swim correctly. you don't want a broomstick for a swimbait rod because that will give your baits the least bit of action. Also a soft tip is need when setting the hook and fighting the fish. When you set the hook with a swimbait you don't want a quick and hard set, you want to sweap the rod to the side and use your power to put the hooks in there mouth. if you set to quick and hard you risk the chance of ripping the hooks out of their mouth because you are using such heavy equiptment. So a soft tip will give you a better chance of not ripping the hooks out of the fishes mouth.

Reel:

if you are casting a swimabait i recomend only 2 reels because of durability and spool commpacity. The first reel i would recommend would be a Shimano Cardiff 300. The Cardiff 300 is fairly cheap but in my opinion is the best reel on the market for swimbaits for the price. But the all around best reel for swimbaits would be Shimano Calcutta TE 300. This reel is a little bit over priced but castability is great, the gearing gives you maximum power and speed which is needed and a oversized handle which will help you crank in the monsters. But if you are not a shimano fan an would like to stay with another brand of reels than i would still stay with the 300 size or whatever is equivalent to the 300. Again i am not sponsored or am nor trying to push any product i am just stating what i and others have had good use with.

Line:

Line can be a bit difficult. First off i would try and stick with monofilament as much as possible because of the strech factor. I like to use Stren High Impact in the 20 lbs. or the 25lbs. Also Berkley Big Game in the 20 lbs. and 25 lbs. is a good line. But if you have confidence in another line i would try and stick with 20-25 lbs. test or for the smaller swimbaits like 5 and 6 inch i may go as low as 15 but that is the least i would throw.

Baits:

this otta be the fun part. There are many swimbaits on the market and many different styles. There are small waking swimbait, suspending swimbaits, deep diving swimbaits, bottom bouncing swimbaits, weedless swimbaits, wooden swimbaits ( trout plugs), plastic swimbaits, and any other i may have missed. Now i will name some of the more popular swimbait on the market going by the different applications.

Waking: some of the soft plastic waking swimbaits on the market are the Osprey swimbait in all of the sizes they make which are 6,7,9,12 or i think they make a 6 inch model, the 3:16 Rising Son swimbait which almost floats but when you throw it, it throws off a big wake, the SR Plastics SR swimbaits like the SR5,SR7,SR9 are all good waking swimbaits, the Megabait Charlie Sr. swimbait which is 8 inches long and is like a large buzzbait in how much water it throws but still looks like a fish, and the Castaic Soft Bait Co. makes a bait known as the Castaic Swimbiat but it has a hard head with a bill or lip and the back 3/4's of the bait is soft plastic, this bait floats and when reeled in will dive a little bit under the surface at a medium pace but at a slow pace it will wake.

Deep Diving Swimbaits:

Some swimbaits on the market say that they are deep diving swimbaits but really aren't becuse they have no bill and with a medium retrieve will want to rise to te surface, but then some baits that are weighted properly will stay down deep. But just in the last few months 2 companies have designed swimbaits that are all soft plastic and that have a lip or bill like a crank bait would. These two companies are SR plastics and they make the 8' Dagon and the other Company is Jerry Rago and he has the 9.5' Soft Live Trout.

Bottom Bouncing and Weedless Swimbaits

There are two swimbaits that can really be usedas a bottom bouncing

swimbait. 3:16 makes the Mission fish which is a virtually weedless swimbait and the SR plastics SR7W which is also a weedless swimbait that can be used as a bottom bouncing swimbait.

Wooden Swimbaits:

Wooded Swimbaits are some of the best swimbaits you can buy for many reasons, you can wake them, get most of them to dive down to 5 feet or more, the quality is usually better than plastic, and are very durable. The most used and probably most well known wood swimbait is the M.S. Slammer. The M.S. Slammer has 4 different sizes which are 7, 9, 12, and just recently introduced 13.5 inches. These swimbait are well known for how well they swim because they can wake and you can pull them down to a couple of feet and they will swim just as well under water as they do waking.

i am not affileated with this tackle shop but most of the products i have listed on this post can be found on Tacklewarehouse.com

well i hope this helps you in trying to get started with swimbaits

[siebler_custom_baits]

heavy rod 20 lb test minimum. slow roll it near the surface most of the time. Dont set the hook, reel down fast to get the hook set. And buy SRPlastics. lol. so whats the next size your gonna make?

[Tm Customs]

I may try for a bigger swimbait next or some different styles. I want to get my desings down before I go making tons of them. I would also like to experiment with different shapes and profiles weights ect.

Tm

[Tm Customs]

Thanks Trick Trout,

I am currently using 2 rods fop swimbaits

1. Daiwa heartland z Japan model 6'7' heavy, calcutta 251 17lb test

2. Tica 7'6'' heavy, curado 201b 20lb test

as for swimbaits I have only used the megabaits which I dont like and castaics nice but I have only cought a few fish on. My own 4'' which I have cought tons of fish on biggest 4lb smallmouth and a 5lb largemouth. What I need to know is where to fish them? I would like to know if you have any opnions of this... I fish a cannal man made 25ft deep it has almost all kinds of fish a few trout crappie bluegil carp squa fish who knows what else but there are huge possible record bass there the sides are cement and slope very fast. I was going to try fishing it all night sometime in the near future with swimbaits what should I use and how deep should I fish it keep in mind that the only structure is hydrilla on the bottom.

Thanks, Tm

[Eldon]

crawl the big slammer and watchout for the birds.

[Mattlures]

wow that thread was 3 years old. Taylor has already advanced and become quite the swimbait stick.

[willie525]

i got to see one of the new loomis swimbait rods, they are really, really nice.

[smirkplug]

Slowroll is usually best, If you have a slow sinker, try a sink then lift retreive. They usually get bit on the drop. try a smirkplug (wood see gallery) when they follow or swirl and don't strike, swimming it faster so they react like its getting away then hit it hard. if your fishing deeper water you might try a big wakebait to get them to look up. sometimes i get bass to come 20 feet up to strike a topwater. also if you get swirled on leave the area for 20 min.-1 hour then toss a faster bait past where you got swirled. good luck !