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Subject: "Tru-Tungsten Tru-Life Swimbait: Initial Thoughts" Previous topic | Next topic
ICSpotsMon Mar-17-08 05:42 PM
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#2455, "Tru-Tungsten Tru-Life Swimbait: Initial Thoughts"


          

I was able to get out and throw the bluegill and a gold tilapia Tru-Tungsten swimbaits and I wanted to share my thoughts on these baits.

OVERVIEW:
At this time Tackle Warehouse (TW) is offering the Tru-Tungsten bluegill/tilapia swimbait in three finishes: bluegill, gold tilapia and silver tilapia. Other than the finish, the only difference between the bluegill and tilpia versions that I noticed was different detail features on the heads. For example, the bluegill has a distinct opercular flap on the side of the head as expected for a sunfish. The rest of the four piece body is the same.

The bait is approximately 2-inches tall, less than 1-inch thick at its thickest point and 6.75-inches long. If you include the line tie, the bait reaches its advertised 7-inch lenght. TW identifies the bait at 2.6 ounces unweighted. The bait is made of some sort of plastic/resin.

The head/body pieces are attached with pins and "double legged" eyes instead of standard screw eyes. As Rob recently showed, undersized screw eyes can open on a bait. Both legs of each "double legged" eye are secured back into the body piece and eliminate this failure mode.

The bait comes with four 1/4-inch diameter tungsten balls which can be inserted into the bait to change the sink rate. There is a removable 1/16-inch diameter rod that secures the head to the second body piece. You remove the rod from the forward lower portion of the second body piece using needle nose pliers. When you remove the pin and head, you can access the > 1/4-inch diameter hole running longitudinally through the entire 2nd body piece. I believe the Tru-Tungsten website shows an image of the bait with the pin and head removed. You can then add any of the four tungsten balls to alter the sink rate of the bait. The bait floats with zero balls. Install one or two balls to create a slow sinking bait or install three or four balls to create a faster sinking bait.

The bait comes equipped with a split ring on the line tie and two VMC X-Strong hooks.

The packaging refers to a "replacement kit" containing two pins and four tungsten balls.

PROS:
The first thing I noticed about both the bluegill and gold tilapia finishes is that they are nice subtle colored finishes and are consistent with the photos on TW. My bluegill bait had a couple of chips in the finish. Other than that the finish looks good.

Three baits in one! What a great idea. You can work the entire water column just by changing the number of tungsten balls in the bait. I can't report exact rate of fall information for the various ball arrangements but I like that you have flexibility to tweak the sink rate by installing items that weight less than the tungsten balls.

With no balls installed, the bait sits low in the water with just portions of the dorsal fins and the top tip of the tail above water. The ball wakes easily with an elevated rod tip. When I kept the rod tip low or slightly submerged, the bait would swim three to four inches below the surface. The bait has an easy swimming action (that you would expect with a four piece bait) with a slight body roll. The head tracks fairly straight with just a slight roll.

The bait will easily turn 90-degrees left or right when twitched or suddenly stopped during a retrieve. However, my baits went quickly back to their original orientation. I was unable to get the bait to turn any further but this may have been a result of my heavy (25#) and stiff monofilament as water and air temperatures were in the mid to high 40s when I tried the baits.

I like the idea of a replacement kit because somewhere sometime I know I'm going to drop the pin and or balls and it would be nice to have replacements readily available as opposed to having to crawl around trying to find them right away.

I also like the use of double legged "eyed" instead of the standard screw eye hardware.

I think these baits will get bit and I really like the versatility that they offer. I can't comment on the hook up ratio or durability at this time.

CONS:
I'm hoping to chalk this up to early production issues but only one of my two baits (the bluegill) worked well. As soon as I threw the unweighted gold tilapia bait, I noticed that it took longer to come back to the surface and that it sat in a nose down orientation with only the top tip of the tail above the water. I had previously noticed that the tilapia tail was slight thicker than the bluegill tail. A combination of thicker tail and possibly a heavier head may have caused the nose down attitude. In addition, the back edge of the tail wasn't finished and since I don't know exactly what it is made of, I was concerned about moisture ingression. To top it off, the "double legged" eyes on the tail portion weren’t installed straight. This all resulted in a bait which rolls counterclockwise off vertical when retrieved. I took the tilapia out a second time to play with it some more and found that the unweighted bait started to sink. I've talked to TW and I will be returning the tilapia.

The hooks are VMC and I think others more knowledgeable than I would suggest replacing them. I can flex them with my forefinger and thumb so I'm leaning towards replacing them as long as the new hooks don't cause the bait to sink

The body shape. This maybe a nit but it will be interesting to see how the bluegill finished bait sells because the body shape does not say bluegill to me. I like the bluegill finish but it just doesn't fit the elongated shape of the bait. After playing with the bait, I think it will get bit and I guess I really don't care what the bass think of the shape as long as they hit it.

Assuming that the production issues get worked out, I would eventually like to see Tru-Tungsten offer these baits in a shad/silver-white baitfish finish and a golden shiner finish.

  

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