I’m not a musician. I have tried, but I just don’t put in the time. I am a fisherman. I am trying to teach myself way too many things to add music on the list. Even still, I’m learning how to edit and cut and splice and transition music. I just want to outsource the making of the music part and keep licensing simple and easy and free.
Sending out an SOS to the World. Are you or any of your friends in a band? You guys have any songs that are good? I don’t care what style of music, let me figure out how to work it in. I’m looking to ‘license’ music for YouTube style videos on an ongoing basis. I like using music, and would love to have access to more.
Here is how this works:
I receive music on a CD or as digital files or point me to your website where I can hear samples of your work. No clue when or how exactly it will be used. I will maintain a music library and use stuff as it happens.
I use the song or partial song in a YouTube video and give the band, artist, record label and whomever ‘credit’ for the song in the YouTube video
The album/band/song/ and links to download and buy the song (if applicable) will be included in the blog post that accompany the videos that I publish
No money exchanges hands, this is all about getting your music heard, help your music/band get ‘found’, and digital copies of your music sold/downloaded. In exchange, southernswimbait.com has licensing rights to use your music in our work, except for in DVD. DVD would be a totally different conversation than this one, this is about YouTube and public internet facing video clips.
Example, please look at the video and blog post for the 3:16 Sunfish by clicking HERE
What Am I looking for:
Don’t know exactly, surprise me. Thinking country, rock, bluegrass, gospel, reggae, jazz, whatever mixes and deviations thereof but seriously, the techno and totally digital driven stuff is growing on me, so whatever is clever and works. I’m no hard core conservative guy, but the music needs to be legit and a bunch of cussing and controversial topics and themes is not what I’m after.
Instrumental. Fun and upbeat/tempo instrument only stuff seems to be pretty cool to work with, buy lyric driven is great too.
Good People who work well with me and my style. I prefer people who can email and work collaboratively on projects and don’t need lots of hand holding and deliver fabulous results. This is simple, send me your music, and if it’s good and works with whatever I happen to be working on, I’ll include it and hopefully get 1000s of hits and your music gets heard, your band gets some exposure, you sign a big record deal, and you fly Matt and a few pals out to party in NYC and celebrate.
The Perfect Fit would be the starving musician/artist type who are working their butts off to make good music and make a living/career from their work. They use computers and treat their music like a business and are embracing the social enterprise.
I’m totally messing with you on #1. Please be a critical thinker always and when someone tells you some statistic about their website (or any web analytic for that matter), take it with a grain of salt. Take a look at our YouTube Channel and video plays HERE. YouTube views are an excellent unit of measure and less subjective to tampering. Our YouTube channel is approaching 200,000 views and has it wasn’t really active until about a year ago. Some of our videos on have hundreds of hits, some have thousands.
Our Facebook Page has 550 + fans (and grows by a couple each week) and has daily stuff going on.
southernswimbait.com is and will continue to provide video clips to other media outlets with much bigger and broader audiences, so you benefit from getting exposure thru some of our 3rd Party business partners websites and media.
Contact:
email me: southernswimbait (at) gmail (dot) com to get a conversation started. Put something obvious in the subject line, please
Owner Hooks has done something pretty cool with the Flashy Accent Trailer Blade series. The Flashy Accent is meant to compliment and add flash to any bait. You can add a flashy blade on a barrel swivel to just about any bait you can imagine. I cannot at all claim to have even scratched the surface of what these Flashy Accent’s are capable of. There are just too many baits and applications.
You have two willow leafs and one Indiana blade to choose from. Way too much still to explore, but pretty neat how well these compliment small baits, and even fish well stand alone.
Senko Upgrade:
Its hard to beat a Senko. Any accessory that will actually compliment one of the Top 3 fish catchers of recent history, is something to consider. Keith Poche put a blade in a Senko and put together an awesome 2012 BassMaster Classic as a result. A simple modification to a simple bait to give it a different look and fingerprint. The Flashy Accent is perfect for job to Poche your Senko. The Senko is so do nothing, so neutral buoyant, so simple, that adding flash to it and changing its original is always going to have drawbacks, but shoot, it’s going to have advantages at times too. Around current, where the blade is going to be flopping and turning and churning in the eddies and fast water sections, the Flashy Accent is going to really liven up and enhance what the Senko might do. I love how the bait helicopters straight down. Looks like an arrow or missle or something headed straight toward the bottom, but also uses the blade to glide along. The bait (and this happens when you’re drop shotting too) will rest on the face of the Flashy Accent and use it to plane as it falls sometimes. The other times it tends to helicopter the blade, blade end first, of the Senko and I really like that look. I tried to capture that in the video above. Fishing the 5″ Senko on a #1 Owner Mosquito Hook with criss crossed O-Rings that you put on with a Wacky Tool.
Part One: Cut #1 Paper Clip. Use to pin the Flashy Swimmer, thru the swivel, you can even remove the plastic keeper if you want and save it for using as a hook keeper, the paper clip will hold the swivel metal to metal just fine. Super Glue paper clip into bait with Flashy Swimmer, very carefully, for added insurance.Part 2: take the horse shoe cut paper clip and shove it down snugly into the end of your Senko. Use your pliers to narrow up and make the horse shoe longer, etc to best secure the Flashy Swimmer into the bait.Completed Rig. Snug down the horseshoe and go fish. I like the larger of the two willow leafs for the 5″ Senko. The smaller willow leaf Flashy Accent would look great in the 3 & 4″ Senkos.
Head Spins:
The Fish Head Spin is quietly and consistently catching lots of fish in lots of places. Grass, hard bottom, river, whatever. Places where the A-Rig is now catching them, which is lots and lots. The beauty of the Head Spin is adding some bladed flash to a swimming bait. Now, with the Flashy Accent, you can turn your drop shot baits into mini ‘head spin’ setups. Especially when you use full bodied drop shot baits. As well, with the Flashy Accent Senko Rig ala Keith Poche’s 2012 BassMaster Classic performance, you are turning your Senko into a head spin/spinnerbait of sorts. Notice how the Flashy Accent causes the Senko to fall blade end first, and how the blade turn and spins or helps the bait glide back to the bottom. The Flashy Accent is helping us blend styles and techniques, and your only limitation is your imagination. Here I am fishing the 1/2 oz Fish Head Spin with a Little Dipper as a trailer and the larger of the two willow leaf Flashy Accents.
How do you make a Fish Head Spin better? If “Fish Head Spinning” your Senko might make a Senko better, in some cases, how about Alabama Rigging (multi-rigging) your Fish Head Spin? Where you have a sorta bait ball appeal, the Flashy Swimmer gives another blade and flash to the Fish Head Spin.
Drop Shotting:
You can drop shot the Flashy Accent Trailer Blade as a stand alone bait. When your drop shot bait is on the bottom, you can do mini ‘strokes’ and the Flashy Accent fishes like a mini spoon, like guys who stroke spoons off ledges off the Tennessee River. Pretty cool drop shot refinements and integration of a few techniques into one. When you add a Flashy Accent Trailer Blade to your drop shot softbait, you give your softbait a look it probably hasn’t had much. I found the Flashy Accent compliment full bodied shad style drop shot baits like the Yamamoto Shad Shape, Jackall Clone Fry and Owner Wounded Minnow really well. If conditions call for a more horizontal and castable drop shot approach, you can sorta slow grind/hop your drop shot to make it a swimbait with this setup. Swimming your drop shot rig. It has given me the idea that I really need to lighten up the drop shot weights I’m using, especially in shallow water/current situations where you want your rig to tumble and come over gravel well. A well matched, l drop shot weight could be used to literally allow you to swim a small drop shot worm, like a fish head spin/drop shot combo, 1.5 -3 feet off the bottom from 0-100 feet. Anyway, that’s what I saw in the Flashy Accent in its action and fishability with the Wounded Minnow. I’m fishing the Wounded Minnow on a #2 Mosquito Hook. You could definitely sorta ‘stroke’ your drop shot too, which is wild.
Drop shot the blade only and ‘stroke’ the blade on slack line with a drop shot setup. Pretty cool action and a new twist on drop shot fishing.Owner Flashy Accent turns you drop shot into a head spin/swimbait of sorts, if you use a full bodied shad style drop shot bait. This is the Owner Wounded Minnow I’m using to show how the Flashy Accent compliments a drop shot bait.
Alabama Rig:
If you look at the implications of umbrella rigs and what the Alabama Rig did to our fishing, you realize we are foolish to not be using teasers and dummy baits at times give the appearance of a school of bait. The Flashy Accent provides you a mechanism to ‘A-Rig’ whatever you want, like a hard bait, or any hard bait you can think of. You basically are only limited by your skills with rigging, but the hardware is now there to add little blades to baits that otherwise had none.
Indiana Blade Owner Flashy Accent on a 3″ Big Hammer, which tells me it can be fished on the Alabama/Umbrella rigs too. Why not add blades and additional teasers to swimbaits in some cases, especially umbrella rig cases?
The Rig Affect
You can say things about the Flashy Swimmer that put it in the same conversation as the Alabama Rig. You are creating multiple flashes within one castable lure. You’re re-arranging the way blades are being strung up and hung…lets see we have inline blades and safety pin framed bladed baits. Underspins and Head Spins quietly join the party. Look at what Spencer Shuffield did at the 2012 FLW Tour Table Rock Lake event and the umbrella rig he was throwing in Missouri. It had 3 teaser blades as part of the setup. Missouri is a 3 bait only state so to maximize his effectiveness and fish within the rules, here comes this edition. Flashers and teasers, get your mind out of the gutter, we are talking about catching those suspended fishes that chase balls of baits here. My aloha pal Trevor Lincoln, from down around the junction of El Capitan and San Vicente Lakes (San Diego, CA), makes this bait called the Trip Jig. I cannot share all the details of everything I know about the Trip Jig that my friends share with me because it’s not mine to share. However, I can share what I’ve done to the Trip Jig thus far, since I fished around a lot of shallow grass this year in the SouthEast (Okeechobee, Seminole, Guntersville, Santee Cooper), and gone thru a bunch of Grass Minnows in the process:
The Trip Jig with 3 Grass Minnows on Lake Guntersville. The Trip Jig has absolutely no class: short skirt, flashy, teasy sorta bait that can be fished weedless style.
Moving Forward:
The Flashy Accent is a very unique accessory and new piece of terminal tackle in my tackle box. I basically try putting it on a bunch of various baits and see how it swims and looks and fishes. And of course, I’m fishing the ones I like and collecting footage to share in the future. The Flashy Accent is just something that literally compliments or adds some flash to just about any bait in your box. I tried to show some basics on ways I have found worthy of exploration to start. How about taking off hooks on hardbaits and using blades as teasers instead? You ever notice some Japanese hardbaits come with blades as tails and they basically put blades in places we don’t expect them at times? The umbrella rig and what we’ve learned about bass willing to chase an entire bait ball better than a single stand alone, especially while suspended. All related stuff to where and why the Flashy Accent has my attention and is being integrated into my fishing. Swimbait/bigbait implications? Don’t know yet. Have some ideas and applications but haven’t validated it enough to say. Work in progress. Feel free to join the conversation and post your thoughts/experiences below. MP
My buddy, Chad Johnson, sight fishing carp on a fly rod. Notice the egg pattern looks a whole lot like a piece of corn. Arkansas is an excellent place to fish, year round.
Fly fisherman make it a point to educate themselves on how to tie bugs and streamers that ‘match the hatch’ but as the younger crew of fly fisherman come of age, they are showing it’s not all about barbless size 20 single hooks. Big fish eat big baits and you better be prepared if you want to land them. Streamer fishing, White River, Arkansas
Chad Johnson, brown trout, ‘hopper dropper’. Come get you some.
Dinosaurs are fun to catch, especially with fly rods, you don’t even need hooks.
I’m fishing for a 30+ pound brown trout that eats stocked rainbow trout. Keep it Soft Stupid (KISS)
Kids Fishing Derby, big fish winner. Kid was stoked, and Dad was too. The “Friends of the Hatchery”, Corp of Engineers, and a host of other puts on a kids fishing derby every year at the Norfork River/Dry Run Creek confluence adjacent to the Norfork National Fish Hatchery. Free event for the kids and just fun to help out and volunteer.
“Light Trout” is so 2005. Get with it, Pink Bass is the shizzle.
Canoes, wet wading, and swimbait fishing. Me gusta.
The Grass Minnow has proven itself to me in the grass. Shallow grass lakes of the South East. As I spend more time in the Arkansas Ozarks, I am broadening my application of the Grass Minnow. The warm and cold water creeks and rivers that feed the Ozarks are full of smallmouth and largemouth, and trout. So, it’s not the heavy grass fishing, but it is more a finesse approach, but still a real swimbait approach. I’m fishing the Grass Minnow much like I currently fish the 3″ Big Hammer. Yes, a spinning rod. Wet wading, aloha colored swimming trunks, oversized sunglasses, big hat and Buff covering my face, walking or floating a few miles of river here and there. Getting some exercise and just trying to do it all. The Shimano Cumara 7’2″ Rod + 15 pound Power Pro Braid + 3 feet of Yamamoto Sugoi 10# floro are working really well for me which is crazy to have a bait that fishes well on 50 # braid and GLoomis 964 BBR (Okeechobee style) and now I’m fishing it on a spinning rod. The Huddleston Vortex continues! The Grass Minnow is just an extremely real looking and swimming bait, and I’m realizing cannot be pigeon holed into being just a grass bait by any stretch.
How many zillions of minnows are there in our lakes and rivers? Little narrow looking fishes with forked tails. Fish tend to bite the Grass Minnow. With the right equipment and hookset, you’ll land your bites.
The Grass Minnow is a pretty sophisticated little candy morsel of a swimbait. The bait is flat sided, has a unique swallow tailed vortex tail, yet the belly and shoulders are full and bulbous, so the bait has the classic Huddleston water displacement and push that we’ve gotten hooked on with his 8″ Trout. Sometimes people discuss what is the definition of a swimbait, and where you draw lines, etc. Sophistication trumps size in this case. The Huddleston Deluxe Grass Minnow is a swimbait you need to learn. I now have a heavy grass assault (ie, Okeechobee), sparse grass assault (ie, Champlain) and river fish (Ozark) application for this bait. You have to be good to really understand, fully leverage, and fish this bait properly. It’s fairly easy to swim, yet if you want to slow down, pause, dead stick and finesse fish with it, it does that too very well. In shallow rivers, I’m finding it an alternative to the little tube where you can sorta hop/drag/swim it, and skip it under trees and into shade pockets which tends to be where fishes live in shallow low water Arkansas.
The Grass Minnow fishes well on the drop and can be dragged/hopped, like the 3″ Big Hammer, except its ROF 5 vs ROF 30 respectively (approx). The Grass Minnow is very neutral buoyant and falls nice and slow and graceful. It has a hollow midsection, used as part of the weedless design, that also gives the bait an internal bladder. The bait falls and orients nose down and just drags nicely over hard bottom. It’s not just an excellent grass bait.
So, here’s the hookset with a spinning rod: Tighten up your drag, so line doesn’t come off when you set the hook. Point your rod tip at the fish when you get a bite and reel down until you feel tension of the fish at the reel and once you make really good contact with the reel>line>fish, put the rod into the mix and lift up hard with the rod and drive the hook home and maintain a good strong constant pressure as you move the fish and rod a few feet to really pin the fish. Reel hard and heavy get maximum pressure as you swing the rod to set. I could probably get away with a slightly heavier spinning rod than I’m using, perhaps the MH vs. the M model. I am surprised how well it is fishing for me and hooking fish. I am pretty converting a bunch of my stuff over to braid + leader setups, it just works great for me and my style of fishing. This is another instance where braid provides something that couldn’t be done with mono or floro (fish a weedless Huddleston bait on a spinning rod, and still be able to hook fish).
Grass is where you find it. Weedless baits sometimes fish really well without weeds. Just like some non-weedless baits fish really well in weeds. A softbait without a top hook sticking out, treble hook hanging or sticking out, or trap rig of any kind. Just a clean real bait, sans hook. It looks really good in the water and fishes super clean.Yes, that is a spinning rod. The Grass Minnow fishes amazingly well with the spinning rod. Braided line gives me the hookset I need, and the floro leader helps me get bit in uber clear skinny water. But boy, they eat it. Weedless swimbaits fish really nicely in all waters, but around current, where your bait can tumble/ deadstick and hop and stroll, that’s where not having a hook or any exposed hardware really pays off and gives ’em a different look, keeps your bait free from muck, and is a much more refined approach, especially in clean water. Stay tuned, this whole spinning rod swimbait thing is still being tested, but appears to be excellent.
The 5″ Big Hammer is a workhorse swimbait plain and simple. Born in the Pacific Ocean, to catch calico, sand, and spotted bay bass the 5″ Big Hammer Swimbait is a unique bait that swims high and low, and with the exposed lead head design, provides you bottom contact and rate of fall few other swimbaits can match. The 5″ Big Hammer is one of the few swimbaits I can say I’ve consistently caught fish with in >15′ of water (speaking about non-trout fed tournament style lakes) off the bottom and fish that were suspended. The ledges of Kentucky Lake, for example, has deep schools of fish and I found the 5″ Big Hammer to be an excellent bait to catch them with. This Swim Signature Series piece is dedicated to showing the swim, hop and drag of the 5″ Big Hammer swimbait.
The 5″ Big Hammer Swimbait on a 3/4 Big Hammer Head. The 5″ Big Hammer swimbait is a swimmer but also a drop bait, a stroke bait, a vertical bait, and a dragging style swimbait. A well rounded swimbait, you might say. But the tail is anything but round. Known as the ‘square tail’ you can see the twist of tail and the ripple effect on the back half of the bait in the picture. Also, you can see the beautiful purple hue of the color, “Silver Phantom”.
I fish the 5″ Big Hammer on a 3/4 ounce Big Hammer Head with the 4/0 hook. That is the setup in the above swim signature series, where we are looking at the the Big Hammer as a swimmer, but also a dragger and a hopping bait too. The exposed lead head just gives you excellent touch and feel, to know hard and rock bottom vs. sand or muck, and dang it if the bait doesn’t sink out like a rock. Incredible rate of fall, even with a 3/4 ounce head (Big Hammer makes them up to 1.5 ounces). So, you can fish these thing DEEP and maintain excellent bottom contact.
Notice the pyramid head and shape of the Hammer head how well it orients a bait that sits on the bottom. For an exposed hook/top hook swimbait, the Big Hammer is amazing at getting thru rock and hard bottom/sand. Not so great around wood. The pyramid head shape with the line tie back off from the nose, is really good for swimming and for hopping and dragging. You don’t bang your knot into rocks as bad and you tend to be able to orient the bait up and pop it up and out of harms as you fish it out deeper.
I suggest fishing the 5″ Big Hammer swimbait on at least 20# mono. I fish the bait on 65# Power Pro braid tied to a 4 foot piece 20-25# of P-Line CXX Copolymer. I have excellent feel with the braided line, and get a good hook in the fish with the braid too. I have fished this setup lots of times successfully with just 17-20 pound mono/copolymer, and no braid, and this too is another setup I’m switching over as I slowly migrate all my swimbait baits to braid + leader. A faster action, not super fast, but not super slow, long rod is what you want to fish this bait. I like the Shimano Crucial 7’11” MH for the 5″ Big Hammer.
