I honestly do not remember my first swim bait fish, but I can remember my first swimbait from a long, long time ago. I do consider it a swimbait, and I happens to be the great Mister Twister Sassy Shad!!! I always used to catch so many fish with this bait! There was just something about it that would hook a fish at the end of my line. I used to think in my head that it was cheating and took "no skill" since I would just reel it in with no other technique than just "swimming" the bait back to shore. Id catch fish with it and switch lures that used more skill, er...technique rather, to try to catch largemouth. When the swimbait craze came to light I had no doubt why, nor did I have any doubt of their effectiveness. I have poured my own 4 inch swim baits and have caught plenty of fish with them. My most proud swimbait was a color I poured similar to Big Hammer's cosmic debris color. That was a great color!!! My newest color is a white pearl with blue hi-lite replicating the blue back herring I found at a local lake.

I can totally remember the first time I threw a big swimbait at a lake that had much success with them. It was at lake McClure. I had my okuma heavy rod with my shimano curado 401 reel, 25 pound triple fish floro, and a 8 inch slow sinking bass harasser tied on. I walked to a point and literally got high on adrenaline. My heart pumped so hard as soon as I took the bait off the rods hook keeper and reeled it up a foot from the tip of the rod about to cast it out. What a feeling!!! I cannot wait for my first large swimbait bass, I could just imagine how hard my heart would pound then. Luckily I will be pouring some dropshot works and some jigs and will head to McClure to test them out with a cute girl I got into fishing this year. I will be tossing some swimbaits out crossing my finger and praying that the Lord hook me up with a bass, I honestly do not care what the size is. As long as its on my Okuma (only caught one fish on it with lures, castaic 6 inch shad...good striper. My pic is on this site if you want to look at it. I also use that setup for bait fishing for striper and catfish)

Anyone use the soft castaic 8 inch trout and have good success with it? They are cheap and actually do not have that bad of an action to them. I find the 4 inch baits to suck and have poor action. I bought a trout 4 inch bait and it swims crooked. I also bought a 4 inch largemouth bass colored castaic swimbait (as you who fish the O'neil forebay know there are TONS AND TONS of little bass in there, and big ol' hungry stripers who eat them) and havent tried it out, hope its alright. I have always had good straight action with the large ones ( on my second one right now, though the first one ripped in have due to a roommate messing it up in the garage).

I cannot wait for my first large swimbait fish,