[Brad S]

I finally got to try the banjos out on striped bass and here's my report:

There's an area near where I live here in Rhode Island where people (including myself) have been snagging and live lining adult bunker/menhaden/pogies (whichever name you prefer) very successfully for big striped bass for the last month or so, so I saw no need to use the Banjos and, to be honest, I didn't have to much confidence in them, but as the water's warming up there've been days where the bass won't even take a live lined "pogie".

I had two days like that in the past week or so, and I pulled out some of the large 9" Banjo minnows and guess what? They worked and worked well both times!!

They don't cast very well, but I trolled them off my kayak with sweeps of the rod tip and the bass were slamming them.

I wonder how well they'd work on a "good day" instead of as a last resort when the fish don't seem to want anything?

I didn't use the hooks that came with them, I used a couple pairs of pliers to bend some salt water jig hooks that I had around to make some jumbo "worm hooks" and texas rigged the banjos with a "hitchhiker" on the eye of the hook. This eliminated most of the short strikes I was getting when I had nose hooked them.

Using braided line you can feel the rapid beating of the tail as you sweep them and then drop the rod tip back to prepare for another sweep, so they act very much like a darting baitfish.

I.M.O. they're great, and I'm looking foreward to finding some effective ways to fish them down deep where the big striped bass usually lie.

Brad