Page 27 – Southern Swim Bait

The 5' Big Hammer — "Ladies and Gentleman, the mighty LEDGE ZEPPELIN" The 5" Big Hammer Swimbait, 1 ounce head, 5" tail in color #63 called Bay Smelt which looks a lot like sexy shad

The Big Hammer is a staple swimbait on the Pacific Inshore saltwater fishing scene. The Big Hammer is a combination of a soft swimbait tail plus a lead jig head. The Big Hammer is identified by it’s ‘square tail’ that produces its own unique vortex. The lead jig heads are available in 1/2, 3/4, 1 ounce and 1.5 ounce sizes with hook sizes that match the bait perfectly.

big hammer square tail — The H-bomb square tail swimbait, producing vortexes and big bites in deep water before you knew the word swimbait

big hammer head — The genius of the Big Hammer as it relates to ledge fishing is bottom contact, rate of fall, and stroke-ability

The 5” Big Hammer, with the exposed lead head design, makes it an excellent deep water and offshore swimbait. The best example of the 5” Big Hammer in action we can share is from Kentucky Lake. Kentucky Lake is famous for it’s offshore ledge fishing bite. You might be fishing the main river channel ledge, or creek channel ledges or where creek channels and the main river channel intersect. When you look at the traditional baits, like football head jigs and big spoons, you realize there is a special trick to getting the schools of bass that position offshore on the ledges to bite, and that bite is called a ‘stroke bite’.

big hammer bay smelt swimbait — Fish don't have hands, so they will 'catch' your Big Hammer when you rip it off the bottom and let it sink back down, Tennessee River stroke bite

I highly recommend checking out a video that Omega Tackle Company put out, that is over 2 hours long and a serious look into jig fishing and what is going on from a traditional fishing standpoint to catch fish on the Tennessee River (and the Ozark Lakes) . Like many themes from Southern Trout Eaters, I think there are techniques and discussions that require more than a 5 minute YouTube clip to cover, and this Omega video is legit and worth checking out. Stroking a bait wasn’t something intuitive to me. I had never ripped any bait off the bottom to create the bite at a depth like that. It makes a lot of sense now, but wasn’t something that I just knew to do. Stroking is key on the Tennessee River ledges to excite the school of fish and get them eating.

Stroking a Swimbait:

When you stroke a bait, you literally rip your bait 4-5 or more feet off the bottom, bringing your rod tip from 9 o clock to 12 o clock. You drop your rod tip from 12 oclock back down to 9 oclock and pump and rip the bait off the bottom, creating a bite as the bait falls back to the bottom. Rate of Fall is key to the bite. You need a bait that falls really quickly and gets the fish fired up to eat. Once you get one fish going, usually the entire school gets active and you can sit on one spot and catch a bunch of fish. In the world of swimbaits, very little has ever been done to fish real swimbaits on the ledges. Bobby Lane famously won an event on Kentucky Lake with the Power Mullet (now known as the Berkely Power Swimbait) , a saltwater swimbait that doesn’t have an exposed lead head, nor does it have the rate of fall of the Big Hammer.

The exposed lead head, and weight offerings of the jig head make the Big Hammer a superior drop bait. And you want to talk about bottom contact? You can feel rocks, shells, and soft bottom better with a 3/4 to 1.5 ounce Big Hammer swimbait than any football head jig, or wanna be swimbait with soft plastic molded around an internal body.

kentucky lake swimbait ledge fishing — Outside ledge fishing, Kentucky Lake, 5" Big Hammer, stroking a swimbait

I caught 17 pounds of fish on Day 2 of the Kentucky Lake FLW Tour Major in June 2011. I caught the fish on the 5” Big Hammer, and was putting the ‘stroking a swimbait’ bite together during practice and it finally came together on Day 2 of the tournament. Unfortunately, my Day 1 was a sub par performance, I only brought 4 keepers to the scales, which cost me $10,000. I was close to getting onto something lethal with that 5” Big Hammer. The bite was so new and intriguing, that I stayed after the tournament to explore the bite further, roll film and take pictures.

big hammer helmet — Helmet! This is no joke and not staged. You will pick up shells off the bottom with the Hammer heads, they fit the shells perfectly. Excellent shell bed detectors, which is usually helpful to find schools of fish

This technique is something I am proud of. It is a case study in Southern swimbait fishing. It was taking the conventional fishing wisdom (ie, stroking a football jig or spoon) and applying it to the right swimbait. The Big Hammer is the right swimbait. It comes down to rate of fall and bottom contact and that is where the Big Hammer shines and was the right application of a swimbait that is mostly thrown in the Pacific Ocean for calico bass.

big hammer saltwater fishing — The Big Hammer was born in the saltwater, calico bass fishing inshore style. Taking the Big Hammer to the ledges of the Tennessee River is the essence of southernswimbait.com, mixing appications, cultures and styles to catch more and bigger fish and blaze our own trails. With my bros Brett and Brice, Lower Trestles, CA, setting the kelp on fire.

Gear:

Baits: 5” Big Hammer Tails (color #63, Bay Smelt, is HARD TO BEAT)
Jig Heads: Big Hammer Heads. When in doubt, use the 3/4 ounce heads. When in wind or deep water, go to the 1 ounce or even 1.5 ounce jig heads. Bottom contact and rate of fall is key to stroking a swimbait.

Rod: G-Loomis 964 BBR

Reels: Shimano Calcutta 300 TE or Shimano Curado 300. You need to be able to spool up a good amount of 17 or 20 pound mono, where you can make long casts, and get the bait down in 15-25 feet quickly and have plenty of line on your spool to re-tie often and the occassional break off. The Big Hammer will get stuck in wood, you can bet on it.

Line: P-Line CXX Green Copolymer. 17 or 20 Pound test recommended.

Strengths: The strength of the 5” Big Hammer is that you can fish in water 15-30+ feet deep and maintain absolute bottom contact. The exposed lead head design lets you know when you are on rock, shells, or soft bottom. You can stroke the bait and it doesn’t foul up, it fishes very nicely as a stroking bait. There is no wrong way to fish it, but stroking requires a special bait with a lot of weight in the head to make the bait shoot back down to the bottom, triggering the strike. The fish literally catch it on the sink and on your next stroke, all the sudden you have pressure and a fish. You might feel a tick. This is THE BAIT for ledge fishing. I’ll go ahead and make a prediction, that this bait will win a tournament on Lake Pickwick, Wheeler, Guntersville, Chickamagua, or Kentucky Lake when put in the hands of someone like Mark Rose or Randy Haynes or someone with intimate knowledge of where the fish live on the ledges.

Ideal Conditions: Ideal conditions for the 5” Big Hammer are knowing where schools of fish are on ledges on the Tennessee River. The 5” Big Hammer will get the school excited and usually the ‘alpha’ female of the school eats the bait right off. You’ll quickly get to the better fish of the school with the 5” Big Hammer. Swimbait fishing is no different than conventional fishing in that you have to know where the fish are before you can worry about what to make them bite. You can fish the 5” Big Hammer in 8 feet of water or in 38 feet of water. You just change the lead head weight to match the depth and wind conditions. It can be a great practice bait because you can cast it a mile, hop it and stroke it around and probe the depths efficiently. If you live on the Tennessee River and like ledge fishing, do not overlook this bait. This bait is a superior bait to anything Berkley is making or the other wanna be bandwagon swimbait companies out there.

kentucky lake ledge fishing with a swimbait — You can get 20+ pounds a day on Kentucky Lake with the Big Hammer, stroked around the right schools of fish

The grass minnow and weedless shad — The Grass Minnow (foreground) and Weedless Shad (background) speak to Ken Huddleston's commitment to realism and innovations in engineering baits with vortex tails that match the swim signatures bait fish leave behind as they swim

The Grass Minnow was the first of Ken’s small weedless swimbaits that followed the release of his 6” Weedless Trout. The Grass Minnow is a special bait because it has incredible realism and includes a special vortex tail that was engineered to match the signature that a minnow or small baitfish leaves behind in it’s trail. The tail kick is extremely subtle, but when you step back and think about how much thump a real minnow gives off when it swims, it occurs to you what Ken is doing with the Grass Minnow. The bottom line is the Grass Minnow gets eaten by big fish and little fish.

lake champlain grass minnow water — This is what good water for the Grass Minnow looks like. Shallow grass fishing and the clearer the water, the better

grass minnow lake champlain — Getting a little carried away, looking for the good 'hard' grass. Find good clean hard grass, and throw that Grass Minnow. Lake Champlain, near the French Canadian border

I’ve caught fish on the Grass Minnow on just about every grass lake I’ve thrown it: Pickwick, Guntersville, Okeechobee, Champlain, Seminole, and Dardanelle. Braid is key to my Grass Minnow approach. Just like with the 6” Weedless Trout or any other Weedless Huddleston bait, I use braided line to aid in my hookup ratio and ability to fish the bait around grass. Do you fish a frog on anything but braid? Exactly. You need zero stretch, the buoyancy of braid and the hook set ability of braided line to maximize your effectiveness with the Grass Minnow.

Grass Minnow Fishing Lake Okeechobee — Lake Okeechobee has been ground zero for a lot of my weedless swimbait fishing. The Grass Minnow gets quality bites and serves as an alternative to the Skinny Dippers everyone else is throwing

My hookset is a sweep set. I don’t jack the fish. I keep my rod at 11 to 12 o clock, and just keep a steady grind on the bait. Not too fast, not too slow. When I get bit, I drop my rod tip to 9 o clock and let the fish eat the bait. When my line tightens up or the rod begins to bow up at 9 o clock, that is when I sweep hard to the side (like a spinnerbait hookset) and reel like mad to get caught up and apply pressure to the fish. I love the G-Loomis 964 BBR for the Grass Minnow. I can make long whip casts and really get the bait out there. But the 964 BBR also is a relatively slow parabolic action rod and is perfect for braided line and grass fishing, and helps me get a hook into almost everything that bites my Grass Minnow. I have a 90% or better hookup ratio on the Grass Minnow. Most of my bites get in the boat, hands down.

Lake Seminole Grass Minnow — Lake Seminole has the right ingredients, shallow grass fishing, clean water in places and highly pressured fish

Here is a whole YouTube video I did on Lake Okeechobee, fishing the Grass Minnow:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIubnP4fyoQ]

Here is another video that discusses my approach to Lake Champlain, but also includes a section on the Grass Minnow from the shallow grass largemouth fishery of Champlain:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K507beZ_4VU]

Bait: The Grass Minnow (colors? show me one that doesn’t work!)
Rod: G-Loomis 964 BBR
Reel: Shimano Curado 200 G (w/ 6.5:1 Gear Ratio)
Line: 50 Pound Power Pro or P-Line Braid

Strengths: The Grass Minnow is rare in that it is incredibly real and provides fish who are chasing small bait around grass something they haven’t seen. Fish aren’t used to such subtle swimming baits that look and feel so real. The Grass Minnow gets a lot of bites and is a resilient bait, meaning you can catch many fish on the bait and glue it back together a few times before you need to retire it.
Ideal Conditions: Lakes with super shallow grass fishing, like Okeechobee, Seminole, and Guntersville are ideal for the Grass Minnow. Anywhere fish are busting on small bait. I throw the Grass Minnow in a lot of situations where other guys are throwing swim jigs and paddle tailed tubes.

Notes: Keep the wind at your back whenever possible. The Grass Minnow isn’t super heavy (5/8 ounce) and can be difficult to get casting distance or cross wind. Keep super glue onboard because if you get into the fish, you are going to be repairing baits because you’ll catch a bunch of fish, big and small and they tend to inhale the thing, plus braided line and lots of muck and grass can wreck your baits.

cold grass minnow fishing — Okeechobee isn't usually 20+ pound sacks and hot and glassy conditions in the Winter. The Grass Minnow will get bites on those cold days where just getting 5 fish is the goal.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLcNmeXMk5U]

I thought this was a smoking hot YouTube clip of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings from the documentary film called: Down from the Mountain. Down from the Mountain is documentary about the music and people behind the music in the film: O Brother Where Art Thou

When you travel this country, you realize we indeed are individual States. For as many people who think they are so American to the core and so on board with patriotic righteousness, it never ceases to amaze me how much insecurity and ignorance abounds among Americans who have neither traveled to or spent any time other than the comfort of ‘home’. Or when they travel, they stay at resorts and get the “Hollywood” and capitalist view of a place and think they got a feel for California by spending the weekend at Venice Beach staying at some 4 star hotel and going to every tourist destination possible, for example. Nope, you are a kook. You have to be able to filter out the garbage and noise, just like in swimbait fishing. It’s really lame to talk trash about a places and cultures you’ve never lived among or experienced, and it shows your ass. It is along the lines of reviewing tackle or talking about fishing techniques that you have no experience in or have even caught a fish doing. We celebrate the many cultures, lifestyles and people that make each State, and try to Unite the States via sharing each State’s people, places, culture and fishing.

We don’t pretend bass fishing is an extreme sport or that we can land a switch stance fakey reverse shove- it 720 tail grab in the vert competition in X-Games on a skateboard. Pretending bass fishing is extreme is silly. It’s really hard to talk about bass fishing and culture. We attempted to capture and celebrate the music of the Appalachian and Ozark mountains in Southern Trout Eaters, and the funny part is how many of my sophisticated and super cultured colleagues in the industry (who don’t fish much, have any bigbait skills, or basically are the reason why bass fishing culture is so phony) choose to pick on the bluegrass music of the film as their number one talking point, critique, or feedback. Really? What about the fishing? How many films come out each year? How many bigbait films have ever been produced? How many from outside of California? There were no other topics that came to your mind from watching the film? Do you even fish? Do you own a fishing rod that is 8 feet long?

If you need fireworks and loud music to get yourself fired up and pumped to go fishing, please know you won’t find that here, ever. Fabricated extremeness and a phony spin on fishing is exactly what we are trying to avoid. Take a listen to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings performance above. Probably one of the most profoundly sincere and honest performances I’ve ever seen, and I thought I’d share, in the case you are actually secure enough with yourself and your abilities to stray outside of pop culture’s and bass fishing culture’s norms.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnmMfXt86Pw]

Here is tutorial that might be elementary to some, but might be useful to others. We use a ton of 20-25-30 pound P-Line CXX Moss Green Copolymer line for our bigbait fishing. We change line often, and usually only use a ‘top shot’ of line, meaning we are only changing the top 75 or so yards of line (vs. the entire spool). You just don’t know when you are going to get ‘the bite’ and believe changing line relatively often necessary because of the physics involved in lobbing baits that weigh 5 ounces. The line take a beating just by casting it, stopping it with your thumb on the spool, etc.

ten inch triple trout — The 10" Triple Trout, in purple trout, from our film, Southern Trout Eaters..."If the Vortex don't get ya, the Lightning Bolt will"

There is one swimbait that started the “S” swimmer revolution and whose simplicity is its genius. The Triple Trout is an absolute staple in our swimbait fishing, our practice approach to tournament swimbait fishing, and a bait that compliments our efforts to explore big and small bait fishing. The 10″ Triple Trout is a BIGBAIT and probably one of the more tiring lures you’ll ever commit to and learn to fish. This bait can be a workout to fish, which is all the better because most don’t have the nerve, the physical conditioning or the guts to commit to a bait like the 10″ Triple Trout.

The Triple Trout is hand crafted, painted, and tuned in Long Beach, California. Scott Whitmer is the man behind the 22^nd Century Bait Company (named in relation to a song from “the Briefs”) . Scott is old school in the Southern California trophy scene, and Scott continues to have fun with his fishing (well, he doesn’t fish anymore, according to him) and bait designs.

Here is a picture of Scott, from out interview session that was featured in Southern Trout Eaters:

scott whitmer 22nd Century Bait co — Mr. Scott Whitmer the man behind the Triple Trout and Nezumaa Rat, at home in his shop, Long Beach, CA

Scott’s style is very Southern Californian. Long Beach in fact. In South Orange County, we have a punk rock scene, but Long Beach always seemed a bit more rockabilly and 50’s greaser style, which is cool with us and we share a lot of mutual DNA. Scott is a craftsman. He has a strong and loyal following. He prefers to keep a low profile and make baits and quietly expand his business. His baits catch fish, period, and there it was no accident that Scott and his baits (the Triple Trout and Nezumaa Rat) were featured in our film, Southern Trout Eaters. The film leaves no doubt of the 10″ baits effectiveness for big fish and numbers, and covers topics like changing tails and shows us fishing and catching some serious studs on it.

The Triple Trout was conceived around being a jointed swimmer that required no bill and provided switchback and erratic jerkbait like actions and stalls that would fire up the Southern California trout eaters to chase and eat. There is something special about the 10” Triple Trout. It’s a known big fish bait, getting it done in places like Diamond Valley, Casitas, the Castaics, Don Pedro, San Vicente, Clear Lake to name a few. Our message is around simplification. The Triple Trout is on a short list of baits that have proven themselves to catch teen and double digit sized fish consistently—AND it’s a HARDBAIT. There are a LOT of JUNK hardbaits out there, so pay attention to the ones that are actually catching fish. That says it all right there. You have to separate baits that actually have caught really big ones into a separate buckets and then analyze soft vs. hard baits. The Huddleston, The Triple Trout, 3:16 Baits by Mickey Ellis, the Lunker Punker, MS Slammer, and Rago Baits pretty much cover 95% of fish catches on bigbaits when you drill into it.

ten inch triple trout colors — From Top to Bottom: The 10" Triple Trouts from the film, Southern Trout Eaters: Silver Trout, Blue Trout, and Mackerel Trout

Our Film, Southern Trout Eaters, explores fishing the Triple Trout for the Blue Ridge and Ozark Mountain trout eaters. There is no doubt that bass in the MidWest and South are crazy and fired up about the Triple Trout. We have been throwing the Triple Trout since 2005 in the South, and it’s a bait we’ve put the most time throwing, next to the Huddleston Deluxe family of baits. We’ve caught the trout eaters on the Triple Trout, but the really exciting stuff is catching the blueback herring eaters, the big gizzard shad eaters, the brim/perch eaters, etc with the Triple Trouts as well. There are 6-7-8-10″ versions of the Triple Trout, and you can expect us to have a write-up for each.

spotted bass on the 10 inch triple trout — One of the largest spotted bass I've ever caught, and it was captured on film and included in Southern Trout Eaters. Get your head and gear right, because the 10" Triple Trout will expose weaknesses in your mental and physical approach to bigbait fishing in a hurry.

Gear for fishing the 10″ Triple Trout:

Rod: GLoomis 966 BBR

Reel: Shimano Calcutta 400 TE

Line: P-Line CXX Xtra Strong Moss Green, 30 Pound

Hooks: Owner ST-36 (3/0 up front and 2/0 in the rear)

Split Rings: #6 Owner Hyper Wire Split Rings

Strengths: The 10” is an excellent BIG FISH bait. Double digits, teens, and the 7-8-9 pound fish will eat this bait. You can cover a ton of water with the Triple Trout and look for followers and movement to understand what reaction the fish have a bigbait. Excellent durability and fishability. Can be fished at night, good thumping swim.

Ideal Conditions: Water temps above 60 degrees or so. The warmer the water, the better for the Triple Trout. The fish need to be in a chasing, topwater, or otherwise positive mood where they’ll move to get a bait. You create the bite with the Triple Trout at times, using a start stop and jerk bait like retrieve to turn neutral or negative fish into biters. The clearer the water the better, but don’t fool yourself, this bait has enough thump and vibration and color choices that even the dirty water guys will be impressed.

Notes: If you want to get serious about trophy hunting, add the 10” Triple Trout right under 8” Huddleston Deluxe. This bait separates men from boys. When we recommend the 400 TE for bigbait fishing, this bait is a prime example. In order to fish this bait effectively and not wear your arms and wrists out, you need the right rod and reel to match the physics this bait brings—and the fish that will commit to the bait.

10 inch purple trout — When they get the front hook on your 10" Triple Trout, you know they are liking the color you are throwing. 10" Triple Trout in "Purple Trout"

Since I had a brief visit in Arkansas, I was able to go thru some old boxes of baits and find some things I wanted to share. With the recent release of our “Southern Trout Eaters” Huddleston Rig tutorial video, I thought the following was a good chronology of events and that ultimately have led up to where we are with our the Southern Trout Eater Huddleston rig. The rig is literally 10 years in the making.

The first softbait I ever fished with any consistency was the Eagle. The Eagle is a line thru bait and it weighs a good 4-5 ounces. It’s a straight up bigbait and was the first bait I ever committed to fishing for days and days. The problem with the Eagle was hook up ratios.

swimbait hook harness for the Eagle swimbait — This is the stock hook setup for the Eagle. Hook up ratios were a real problem in the early days with this rig. Even though this hook setup is worthless fo the Eagle, notice the skills and the ability to use crimps, figure eights and 80# mono to create a double stinger trap hook. Note to self, save this, you will want to re-use this harness on another bait with for another application, someday.

We (Cameron Smith, my pal from Dana Point, CA) and I were fishing San Vicente lake back around 2001-2003 quite heavily with the Eagle. Looking back on it, it is funny because I’m not kidding I would miss 5-8 bites per day on this rig. It wasn’t until Cameron and I got to tinkering that we made some adjustments. I remember Rob Belloni came fishing with me on San Vicente one day. He took one look at the Eagle and the stock hook harness and told me I need way bigger hooks, maybe play with rigging? Bass World West was going on in Southern California and so was Anglers Marine. Both places had their own ways of rigging up Osprey’s, Eagles, etc. It’s hard to say where exactly this stuff came from but we wanted hanging trebles, bigger hooks and had to leverage the line-thru design because those were the baits of the day…The Rising Son, The Rago Trout (name escapes me, Jerry’s original line-thru) and the Eagle kept me busy for years. Our hookup ratios went way up with our modifications, but God what I’d do to go back in time and have those days back. The fish were there and eating. We’d just miss a lot. Upper water column swimming bait that we’d fish super fast at times. Burning it, popping it, making it look like a trout trying to escape. Probably not always the best retrieve, but it worked for us, for a time.

Eagle Swimbait with stock hook harness — Here is the Eagle with the stock harness properly oriented as if it was rigged. 4 trebles pointing down and we still missed most of the bites. This bait swims in the upper water colum and doesn't get inhaled like a Hudd much, hanging and bigger treble setups soon followed. Fish would literally bounce off the bait.

Here is what we did in response and the evolution of our rigs and rigging. Double barrel crimps, 80# mono for the harness, cut paper clips, split rings and Gamakatsu hooks. You can tell my early swimbait rigs and trials because my baits have Gamakatsu treble hooks on them. I have long since been fishing Owner. Just a superior family of treble hooks in my opinion, hands down.

eaglette swimbait rigging — The Eaglette, the smaller version of the Eagle. Notice the harness, allowed us to put a treble hook under the chin of the bait to catch the fish that made the kill shots to the head,and had a rear trap that either dangled below or was imbedded up in the bait. The size of the Eaglette coupled with this setup made our hookup ratios go way up.

Eaglette Harness — Notice, cut paper clips. The paper clips up front for the trap hook under the chin had to be modified to fit around the line thru created by the OEM. We are still modifying paper clips to fit our Huddleston's today. Used a split ring as where to tie your line, and created loops and and hook hangers with crimps and 80# mono.

3 treble harness rig for Eagle — Here is a 3 hook setup harness that we used on the full sized Eagle. One hook under the chin, one right below the line-thru, and one near the rear fins. This was creative, and helped us get more fish to stick that came up on the Eagle.

three treble harness for Eagle swimbait — Here is the 3 treble harness rig, better visualized how it sat on the bait. That's a lot of hardware on a bait, but it definitely helped get fish to stick.

Full sized Eagle with a 2 hook harness rigging. The rear treble was dangling and this is a definite pre-cursor to where we got our Southern Trout Eaters Huddleston Rigging. Cut paper clips and double barrel crimps and 80#. Too small a rear hook for sure, looking back on it. Still, we caught them much better on this rig, way less hardware than the 3 hook harness which tends to foul up quite often let alone get bit as well.

sample harnesses — The 3 hook, 2 hook and stock trap hook rigs we used for baits like the Eagle, Rago Soft Trout bait and Rising Son

The early line thru baits — Back in the day it was all about Eagles, Ospreys/Rago, and Rising Son baits. This was pre-Huddleston Deluxe 8" Rainbow trout. These baits fished well near or at the surface, but are limited in so many ways compared to the Huddleston

And then came the Castaic SoftBait Company. Not that they ever went anywhere, it was all the sudden coming together. Ken Huddleston used to work for Castaic or own it or something along those lines. Ken had direct involvement in Castaic Bait Company for a time and that can be seen in this next evolution. These soft Castaics are a definite precursor to the 8″ Huddleston Deluxe You had to literally remove the internal stock harness of the Castaic bait, then use a coffee stir straw to create a line thru and come out the belly at the right angle and get it all right, then create your double hook harness. The crazy thing was, I nailed this rig the first time I attempted it, and I caught a fish around the Chimney area of San Vicente within the first 15 minutes of fishing the rig, and the fish choked it. About a 6 pounder. Anyway, to me, this modified and glued up and line-thru’d Castaic rig is a clear connection to where we are with the Huddleston Deluxe today.

castaic swimbait — Removed the internal 'top hook' harness from the bait, glued it back together, created a line thru with a coffee stir straw, and leveraged a double hook harness rig. Clearly headed in the direction of the Huddleston Deluxe of today.

And here is a Castaic Sardine with a trap hook rigging. I will drop down to 60# mono and use the same 1.0B double barrel crimps to have a little bit lighter and more flexible harness that fits the smaller baits better. The Castaic Sardine is an excellent bait for those looking to explore blueback herring. If you do a little homework on herring and sardines, you’ll find the two are quite related, and both saltwater run.

castaic sardine rig — The Castaic Sardine with a mini version of our trap hook setup.

castaic sardine swimbait rig — Up close, those are #2 and #4 ST-36 Stingers....way too light weight of hooks for me now. This rig caught them Lake Lanier fish pretty good one spring for me. But they inhaled it. I'd probably use ST-56 in the same sizes now, but the bottom line is you can rig small swimbaits with a harness and double trap rig. I masked the hooks and hardware to match the belly of the bait, again all relating to things we did to get to our current Hudd rig.

There has been a lot of trial and error in our rigs and rigging and there will continue to be more. The better you get with rigging and the tools of rigging, the more you’ll be able to create your own rigs for your own applications.

Page 27 of 28

The 5″ Big Hammer Swimbait

The Huddleston Deluxe Grass Minnow

Down from the Mountain: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings

Re-Spooling your line for BigBait Fishing

The 10″ Triple Trout

A Brief History of Rigging Swimbaits

DU-BRO Fishing Trac A Rod Storage System

Revo Toro Rocket Paired with the Phenix Ultra Swimbait Classic 790H