Swimming Solutions

Like a doomed romantic relationship, fishing tackle evolves at a breakneck pace. New lures appear and disappear almost overnight with few examples becoming staples of any kind. Even rarer still are the "back of the tackle box" baits, those lures that don’t necessarily explode into success but remain a part of the production line. Cheifest among this category are the swimbaits. These baits have a tendency to pop in and out of the limelight every now and again when some pro somewhere does something crazy with them, but for the most part they sit on the shelves of tackle stores and gather dust, unknown and unloved.

Well, all that is going to change today. 

Being someone who has traveled all across the country and fished a myriad of waters, I can tell you that any angler who routinely fishes more than one reservoir needs one thing from their lures. Versatility. This is simply due to the fact that carrying a tackle store's worth of kit around with you looks and is completely ridiculous. You need a lure that can cover many situations to cut down on costs and fishing time. While there are many lures that can cover this for individual species (crankbaits for walleye and spinner baits for bass) only the swimbait, in my opinion, can perform the task equally well across not just all species but all situations as well.

But enough with the repetitive introductions. Onto the meat of it.

There are a number of ways to fish a swimbait. When I find myself in a heavily weeded area, I prefer to rig a hollow belly swimbait with a large wide-gap hook. I know some people prefer the hooks with screws in the eye but I find that those hooks have a tendency to tear up your bait faster than if rigged Texas-style. 

If I find myself in open water, such as on a flat, I like to use a soft, small swimbaits, such as the Keitech brand, rigged on a standard lead-head jig. While not as weed proof, these lures can cover lots of ground. Adding a little superglue to the bait and jig helps to keep the whole set-up intact.

Lastly, a great multipurpose technique in shallow water is to attach a swimbait, I like the four inch Swim-Senko, to a Chatterbait. This set-up combines the flash of a spinnerbait with the subtle swimming action of a swimbait to create a great sunfish imitator. 

Probably the easiest way to describe how to fish these baits is to say a single word. Slow. You never want to over fish these baits as they do all the work themselves. All you need to do is to reel the bait fast enough to keep it off the bottom, or weeds, with your rod tip high so as to allow you to fish even slower. It’s like to old Roadrunner commercials, "you can’t fish 'em wrong as long as you fish 'em slow." 

I hope to have a video up on this soon but we’ll see. Until then, good luck and tight lines.