[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOb03lrPJD8]

I’m not a great trout fisherman, and I haven’t spent as much time with the Huddle-Bug as I’d like to speak with any super authority on the bait, but let me tell you, I’m learning in hurry.  Brown trout are notoriously tough fish to catch.   They are very smart and very spooky and very well in tuned with their natural environment.  They are easily spooked and require an excellent presentation to catch.   It’s been said, catching a 10 pound brown trout is much more difficult than catching a 10 pound bass.  All I know is, I really like crossing over, cross over fishing intrigues me.  Taking swimbait and freshwater applications and applying them to other species and salty waters.

So, here is the Huddle-Bug in a nut-shell.  Very very real.  Very real movement and look in the water.   The Huddle Bug Jig Head fits the bait perfectly and is a combo ‘pea’ and skakey head with a screw lock to make sure your bait rigs and fishes true.  If a man knew where a bunch of big smallmouth and spotted bass lived (not to excluded largemouth at all!) I think he could get well in a hurry with these baits.  Deep fish that eat small jigs, or shallow water, river fish that you have to use finesse jigs and craw presentations.   Not the ‘stroking a jig’ style of fish, but the slowly creep, and pop/hop  style of fish.  The fish that are eating by sight, by realism and by instinct.

This brown trout is NOT a bedding brown or a ‘red’ as they call them.    This is a pre-spawn brown trout, and if you really want to try some really cool fishing, you walk softly along the banks of the White River near Cotter, Arkansas and you look for browns hunkered down, just sitting and occassionally feeding, but sitting really calmly, hardly moving or giving themselves away. If you can spot them, and you make a good presentation, you can catch these fish.  The Huddle-Bug catches them.  The browns showed immediate interest and well, this is just the beginning of this game too.   You’ll notice in the above photo montage/animation the “stalk up on them” cast, throw upstream, and drift of the bait into the fish’s feeding lane and getting the fish to eat with a natural presentation/hop/slide.

My setup:

Bait:  The Huddle Bug  (match whatever color of crawfish you believe the fish are eating, where ever you happen to be fishing)

Jig Head:  The Huddleston Jig Head

Rod:  Shimano Cumara 7’2″ M Action Spinning Rod  (CUS72M)

Reel:   Shimano Stradic C14 Spinning Reel (STC142500F)

Main Line:   Power Pro, 15#

Leader:   Yamamoto Sugoi Florocarbon 10#  (double uni knot to Main Line/braid)