Strike king trip log app for iPhone

 so i had seen this thing advertised on the outdoor channel show "strike king pro journal" good show by the way. looked like a great log to have easy to use, good way to keep track of catches with time and date stamps all the pertinent weather and even the gps coordinates. 99 cents why not right. well i got to try it out last weekend and was kinda disappointed. it does do a lot of what its supposed to do but its just so damn time consuming. you have 6 steps to do every time you catch a fish and thats after you weight measure and release the fish! it takes like 10 min to log in the info of the catch!! who dosent wanna get right back in the water asap! step one  is the new trip add, name of the location and gps is added after you type in the name. it times stamps it and then moves onto step 2 which gives you the weather . you can edit it if your weather isn't what its saying it is, mine was not right had to change it every shot, but then thats usually the way weather works right hahaha. set the moon phase and then onto step 3 water temp,color,visibility. and depth. it gives the tides too if your in the ocean or subject to tidal changes our lake is not, all of these have to be set by you, they aren't like the weather set from NWS. step 4 is the rod and reel and line line info. again very basic choices you can't go into any detail on them you get to pick very general selections from a list.5 you can add a photo of the location or fish or whatever you want, but it has to be taken before the whole process starts , you can't snap away once this app is engaged.6 is the fish you add you catches  weight, length and a choice of strike king lures only what you used to catch them, i was using a terminator spinnerbait and there was only strike king pro models to choose from but if you don't care to be exact it won't matter. every time you catch a fish you have to add the location to the trip log and go thrue the steps and can't even get the right info in a lot of the slots. some parts of the app are great but i don't see myself using this much, it too time consuming and inaccurate. its just as easy and much after to goto the note pad on the phone type in the weight length and anything pertinent and be back in the water in a minute or two . get home and get much more detailed. i mean i may be getting old but i still can remember trip info even weeks out, besides whats this blog for hahahaha. id save on the 99 cents and room on the phone and maybe there is a better log out there, if there isn't I'm sure there will be. every day I'm amazed at how much more stuff is added to these damn things.

Alabama rig " A-rig"

 so much uproar over this thing. its actually been around for some time, largely in salt water circles. oddly enough i have seen one before used by guys catching opelu for bait. so all this fuss and people saying its changed bass fishing forever and OMG is it for the good or bad of the sport! to be banned or embraced!! so paul elias comes out and throws one and smokes the competition for a tournament and its suddenly a craze, one has to wonder in this media driven world, just exactly how much of this is hype and how much is actually worth following, i mean come on shortly after his victory ever bait/lure company flooded the market with these simple rigs and damn a lot were and still are well over 20- 30$ a rig!! without the jig heads and soft bodies!!  a total frenzy driven market over one guys win at one tournament. lets track a few other fads shall we. hmmmm the most recent one before the A-rig i can recall is the  strike king rc 1.5 craze after the classic.KVD wins it using the 1.5, never mind he threw a spinnerbait the first day and a half, several other pros fish it as well to keep up with KVD and then the pros tout it to the cameras and there is a run on this "must have" lure. never mind there are bombers and wardens and bandits and normans act act out there that are pretty much the same just went endorsed. hell the square billed shallow runners have been around forever! hmmm before that it was the sexy shad color, man KVD seems to be starting a lot of these fads isn't he hahah perhaps that why he isn't endorsing the A-rig. seems if he  isn't at the starting point of the fad he won't endorse its use. before color there was the hydrowave!! ohhh come on thats fair? a lot of sponsored pros have said its a must to get the fish turned on and again there was a run on these things. before that it was side imaging again touted as a game changer, KVD heavily sponsored by both. I'm not dumping on KVD he is a phenom, but follow the money trail KVD was instrumental in getting the wave accepted at B.A.S.S. tournaments and the A-rig banned. hell i fully agree with him!! i don't think it belongs in the tournament format! but i think neither does the hydrowave! anyways paul elias wins guntersville and smashes the competition. how many have seen this footage? i have  and  the panic among the competitors was plain as he brought in bags of bass. oddly though on day three when everyone was armed with this very lure i only saw one guy get a double. everyone else paul included was getting single fish. not the 5 or 6 fish that people are so worried is gonna happen. a lot of misinformation and panic spread as this lure took on a life of its own. heres my personal thought on it. i don't get the need to get multiple fish on a bait. I'm stoked with one, i don't need 2 or 5 too feel better about a catch. will it or has it changed bass fishing forever, well i doubted swim baits,hydrowave, sexyshad, side imaging/down imaging/360 imaging haven't. i predict by end of year it will go the way of microguides and 100$ realistic japanese lures. a novelty that works but just can't sustain the hype over time. should it be allowed in tournaments? NO! should it be allowed for personal use? WHY NOT! the reality is people aren't loading it on every cast its hard to throw all day and takes dedication, at some point the fish will figure it out and it won't work as well, that always  ALWAYS happens. here in hawaii as in many states its illegal due to the restriction on the amount of hooks, however there isn't any enforcement and it sits in a grey area because its kinda one lure not on separate lines. I myself will probably invest in one just to try it out. we have peacock bass here and i really think that they will be the test of these rigs. bass just don't work in the wolf packs these tucs do. just check out the underwater footage of an A-rig in action, pretty damn impressive! it really does look like a pod of bait fish when fished properly. however the tucs being the way they are i can see a lot of multiple hook ups once they start busting shad , which will be any day now. i just foresee  mangled rigs, i mean these fish straighten spinnerbaits and hooks all the time they snap lines and poles all the time, and your gonna have 2,3 ,5??!! on the line man thats just gonna lead to heartache. if the line and poles survive the rigs themselves will be twisted into unusable messes I'm sure. still there are aloof of cheaper 9-10$ ones coming out so i will proboly test a few myself. again i don't understand the hype but why not try it. besides i have to give it a shot before the fed wears out and you can't get one!! hahaha

April 21st trip report

 got a rare day on the lake by myself today. i kinda missed having my son with me, sometimes it's the simple things in life that add the most to any experience. anyway made an extra effort to get out at first light. its hard to do now that the sun is up by 6 am and the gates to the freshwater park open at 6 am. i managed to time it right though and got out on the water the first boat exactly at 6:10 am. beautiful morning, nice clear skies and the promise of a great day of fishing. water temp was 74 degrees at launch and warmed upto 76 by noon with 77 in some areas of the lake. partly cloudy most of the day with just a light sprinkle here and there in the morning. wind was calm till about 9 am when it ramped up and became 15-25mph  for the rest of the day. water clarity was great and was about 2-3 ft from the ramp up into most of south fork and averaged 2 ft all along the main basin with spots in the 3ft range common.north fork was a bit murkier with 2 ft the norm but some less than that. moon phase was a new moon. barometer was 30.11 and rising.the water depth at the dam gauge read 78.6 ft . and the astro table for the day was 77. i started my day working the ironwoods right off the tip of the ramp and followed them up around the corner up into south fork. i was throwing a terminator spinnerbait 1/2 oz in clown color with a turtle shell gold blade. alternating with a crankbait and soft plastic creature bait. no luck today in the ironwoods in this area. i worked up into south fork and picked up a lot of trash as i went. no fish i worked the bluff side of that first straight away and the grass beds using a strike king wake shad and the same spinnerbait and got nothing. working my way along i finally got my first fish a nice 17 in 2.2 lb lmb on the rocky corner just in between grass beds, he really slammed it as it ran just under the surface. nice start to the day as it was only 7:30 am or so but it was to be a fluke. from there on out i fished my usual south fork spots but got skunked and threw all manner of baits including the secret frog lure for clear water. but nothing after that first fish. went all the way up to the old military bridge but got nothing. by 9 am i turned around and headed back. fished the opposite side of the bank across from the ramp just to satisfy my curiosity, after all i had caught 4 there a few weeks back, but nothing this morning.lots of trailers in the lot this morning, looked like it was gonna be a busy day on the water. made the run down to robbies tree and fished that whole bank all the way down past the retirement home i used the spinnerbait and a soft plastic creature bait but got nothing, not even a bite. saddled up and ran down to boy scout island, stopped at the main lake point across from the masons lodge i noticed quite a few suspended shad pods and bass or tucs underneath them on my graph. i fished crank baits dragged a jig drop shotted and slow rolled a spinnerbait but nothing. things were beginning to look desperate. continued down to boy scout island and more shad pods appeared on the graph with more suspended fish around them. i fished the middle of the lake with a soft plastic jerk bait but nothing i tried drop shotting boy scout island point but nothing. dragged the jig but nothing. ran down to kemo'o island and fished the saddle and my secret secondary points but got nothing. i was alternating all 7 poles i had on the boat and no lure was producing for me. made the run up into north fork and worked morgans point and randals point but got nothing. finally started down the bluff bank and got one that tail danced his way to freedom on a jig. in the clear water i should have switch to pork but i had neglected to bring any. i was using a pumpkin 3/8 oz jig with a pumpkin zoom chunk trailer with the tips of the trailer dipped in a chartreuse scent that colored the tips. fished the whole length of the bluff bank with this jig and managed to get 2 more bass both inn the 14-15in range maybe 1.6 -1.8 lb range. ran along up into south fork kinda hitting steep bluff banks with ironwoods although i had no real pattern i was kinda in a this is where i think they are mode so i was basically pounding water and lucking into whatever i caught. as i came back down the other side of kinkaids i ran into jeff and marc who informed me they were doing great with 17 fish between them working grass with his patent agent utah bait, basically a small soft plastic jerk bait. for whatever reason i didn't head the grass part of the  story. i continued to pound steep banks and points to no avail. eventually working my way back to the ramp after hitting many areas. 5 fish for the day and a nice 2.2 lber for my anchor, not a bad day just not the stellar days i have had recently. as i looked back on the day later i thought to myself jeff was wowing em in the grass and i caught my first and best fish in the grass, why didn't i start trying to develop a grass pattern???!!! i was so caught up in where they had been i failed to look where they had moved to!! its a trap even KVD fell into just recently on bull shoals. i got caught up in the baits i had used to knock them dead in recent weeks and the locations they had been in and when that didn't work panic started and clouded my ability to find something that was working and make a rational switch in technique and lures! i read KVDs online article on the B.A.S.S. website and it was spot on with how i had run my day also. he ended up in 45th place for the tournament i ended up with 5 fish instead of the 20 or so jeff and marc acrewed by end of day. i guess to sum it up in a cliche like KVD did, I'm gonna say i failed to let the fish tell me what they wanted and where they were. instead i went in using old info and no game plan and was lucky to get the fish i did. i will have to use less of a preconceived notion next time and use it more as a starting point instead of trying to force a pattern that no longer exists.

Full moon V.S New moon

 a lot of people feel the moon phases affect the fishing. the lunar tables are often one of the most popular parts of the fishing magazines,not just freshwater but avid salt water anglers follow them as well. they effect tides most noticeably and often people and animals! do i follow the astro tables? YES!do i base my entire fishing philosophy on them?NO! heres how it works, the table gives a rating from 1-100 based on the time of year proximity of the sun and moon and the phase of the moon. this number will be higher when you get more pull on the earth, a.e. full moon/new moon or moon,sun,earth in alignment. all of this is supposed to trigger the fish into feeding periods that can be charted. anyone that has kept track of what the lunar tables were doing when you went fishing will know that they really don't predict the trip of a lifetime. the tides make a big difference in tidal waters for sure. fish move and position with the water so of course it makes more of a difference there! but in a body of water that dosent connect to the ocean? well lets just say over the years i have caught big fish and quantities of fish on bad days and struggled on the best days following the chart. i still watch the charts though , kinda like most people do their horoscopes. sometimes they hit and sometimes your like huuuu? here is what i do believe about the moon and sun. full moon rising can be great, but mostly at night and early morning. i think the magnetic pull does influence the fish but not as greatly as the light it gives off at night. i think the light and magnetic pull trigger spawns and feeding patterns but other factors have a much greater influence on fish catching. the new moon is much better for day fishing. the pull is there but the the lack of light at night means the fish didn't feed as good, so you have a better chance of finding hungry fish during the day. if i had to pick a day trip id go for sure with a new moon, save the full moon for a night trip. if i had to chose between a day rated at 27 and a day rated at 89 id have to say........... HELL JUST GO!! hahaha use nature to put together a plan but don't let it dictate when you go or don't go, any time you can get out is a good time to be on the water!

Pre summer bass

the water is heating up into the 73-76 degree range. the lights lasting longer and the air temperatures can be downright broiling already. welcome to hawaiis pre summer !! as with any part of the fishing season this part will often coincide with the post spawn part. and actually in our little lake this is now the tucanare spawning season!!the bass move out onto main lake points and bluff like banks quite often deeper weed edges also hold good quanities of bass too. this is a good time of year to fish, the bass are usually grouped up a bit more than before and are still shallower than they will be during the summer. get on the right point with the right lures and you can really lose your mind! here in hawaii the tucanare( peacock bass) have moved shallow and made nests in water about 1-4ft deep depending on clarity. large females and smaller males will ferociously guard the nest! personally i don't like fishing for bedding fish but a lot of people haven't a problem with that and if your one of those people now would be the time to cruz the shoreline in search of your trophy. often any type of lure tossed just outside of the nest and hopped,dragged or jerked through will elicit a rod snapping strike. the bad part is your often in a flipping/pitching distance to the nest so you really don't get to enjoy the kind of fight that makes catching a trophy tuc so worthwhile. the bass however are more than willing to take just about any offering and type of lure once you find them and long casts make for much more enjoyable fights with the bass. the key to finding a good place to fish for the bass during this part of the year is usually find water that has deep water access and shallow water access, hence points and find a depth at which the bait may be holding. often a very defined thermocline will appear as the now warmer surface water separates from the cooler deeper water ( winter water is reversed but still has the thermocline) usually around 6-10ft will be a good depth. match it with your lure and look for bait on the graph. when you find it work that spot good and hold on! while the majority of fisherman will be harassing spawners and hopefully not destroying nests. follow my advice and you can catch a sizable amount of fish in short order. maybe not a trophy but some of the fights with a 1-2lb bass will beat jerking a 5 lb tuc right out of the water anyday!

Postspawn bass

well its a bit late but there are still a few fish in the post spawn stages I'm sure. most of the past spawn happened in mid to late march. i suspect that the actual spawn was in late january to late febuary this year. the high muddy water from the storms kept most of the spawn a secret except for a few tidbits of info garnered from catches. the post spawn is a short transition period after the spawn. the bass, starting with the females will move off the nest after they have released all of their eggs. this usually takes 1-3 days depending on conditions. the males will stay behind to guard the nest and protect the fry. the eggs should hatch after a week and the male will continue to guard the nest for awhile longer, perhaps a week or so. the females move off to the same areas occupied in the pre spawn. secondary points and cover or structure located close by to the spawning areas. often to catch a few all you have to do is back off the bank and search a bit deeper, perhaps just around the mouths of coves. they don't go far so you don't have to search and search to find them. its simple as locating where they are spawning or were spawning, then look for the nearest fish holding spots in deeper water providing forage. the females will often gorge for a bit to regain strength from the spawn. they won't be schooled up yet, often very scattered actually. but you still have a chance to get a "HAWG" under the right circumstances and conditions. within a week or so the females will move off into more of a summer haunt and the now starving males will be taking up residence in the same locations. i have found that the males tend to group up a bit more than the females. catch one female and after a few casts id move on but if i get a male i really work the area. often i can get 3-4 males in a short time within a short distance. during this period the fish will be very finicky, often a very slow methodical approach and slow bottom bumping lures will be a must. however for whatever reason, I'm assuming they are starving after the spawn and weeks of not feeding. they can come to life briefly and a faster reaction bait can really be the ticket. as far as knowing what to throw and when. welllllllll thats where you have to be prepared and try different things till you luck into something. personally id start with a texas rigged worm or perhaps a drop shot, maybe even a shakeyhead. and id keep a crankbait or spinnerbait at the ready on another setup. if the slow is producing then fine but if its not, run and gun a bit of the bank and try various depths. there will be a lot of trial and error to find the fish at this time of the year, but the rewards can be well worth the work!

Jig fishing

  well i have been doing a lot of it recently and  its been really working well these past few months. when i first started fishing i really had no clue what i was doing and gravitated to the easier faster baits. i think i did most of my fishing with a spinnerbait but a lot with various kinds of crankbaits too. the more i read and saw on fishing shows the more i wanted to learn different styles. i guess a lot of people cut their teeth on plastic worms but when i tried the slower baits i was just so lost i quickly became uninterested in them. eventually i became interested in the old " jig and pig". i forget why or what drew me to it. they say its a bigger fish technique, I'm not so sure about that but i think one of the main reasons i started doing it was that the weights of soft plastics texas rigged or carolina rigged made them very hard to keep the "feel" of the lure.  i was always wondering " what will a fish feel like?" " how do i know I'm working it right?"  the more i read the more i was confused. i knew i needed a slower technique for tough days on the water and really wanted to expand my game. after some experimenting i found that the jig and pig let me keep good contact with the bottom and was surprisingly weedless and snagless for having an exposed hook. i was able to feel what i was going over and thrue much better and i had always read that i shouldn't worry what a fish biting will feel like,  you only have a fish on your line 1% of the time so don't worry about it. you have nothing on your line 99% so concentrate on what it feels like the 99% of the time. when suddenly it dosent feel that way SET THE HOOK!!the jig let me get in tune with this "feel" much better than a texas rig did. so that was many many years ago and it seems like an eternity has passed but i would say I'm pretty confident in my jig fishing. and its come a long way too, back when i started plastic trailers were limited and if you used one it was a worm or plastic crawfish. pork was the standard then, today plastics are in every shape action and color. pork is messier and hard to find these days. it dries out on the hook, you must always keep it wet  or it shrivels into nothing. its hard to get on and off a lot of the time. the jars leak salt all the time and that causes rust so you have to constantly add salt water and keep the jars away from your tackle. plastic is so much more easy to deal with. match any color these days. change shapes and styles of baits to match the bite. never drys out and on and off is a snap. a lot of them are pre-scented with salt and all sorts of stuff like coffee and garlic.  so heres how I set up and pick my jigs. there are 3 basic types of jig heads. football( for rocky bottoms) tear dropped( an all purpose) and pointed ( for swimming through grass) there is a large selection of line tie placements and flat bottom to sit with the hook upright, different gapped and sized hooks. and a meriad of weights. with all lures these days it can be pretty confusing. i know i was lucky not to have so many choices when i started. basically pick 3 weights, i like a 3/4 for heavy heavy cover or flipping matts of debris . a 1/2 oz for windy days or when i really need a fast decent to get deeper or get a reaction bite. and finally a 1/4 oz for more finesse situations to get finicky fish or in a small stream setting for smallies. i like the wide gap hooks, size is usually relevant to the jig head so being precast its usually already chosen for you. head shape dosent really concern me too much. theres not a lot of rock to worry about and i never really throw the swimming jigs deep into the grass so most of my jigs are the old cheap tear drop shaped ones. things are so expensive now i remember when jigs were like 1.80$ for one  now they go for like 5$ and more sometimes!! skirt sizes very but get em longer and you can trim em up to match the need. bulky on some, thinner on others to keep with what the fish are looking for. colors these days are out of control crazy, I'm a firm believer in keeping it simple and my color selection shows this. the old tried and true black/blue is a must! hands down one of the best all time colors. i would say 75-80% of the time i have a dark colored jig on, it dosent have to be black and blue  black and any combo work, just dark. it provides a great silhouette in the murky and muddy water. works well in low light and even in clear water gives a great target.  i use a lighter pumpkin or natural color in clearer water when i need to tone it down or the fish aren't going for the darker bait. sometimes its a better match for the hatch as they say. finally i use a white or silver or some variation of that color for when the bass are feeding heavily on baitfish and I'm swimming it or trying to get bit on the fall more so, especially when the bass suspend in limbs. the pork or plastic question just depends on the conditions. i think the mechanical movement of plastic makes it more ideal for low light or dirty water. its very much the same movement and transmits well through the water on the fall. when I'm going for reaction bites i use plastic , when I'm going for visual bites i use pork. pork is much more subtle and in clear water or when the fish need a less intimidating look it dominates. put the two in the water side by side and see what i mean. pork undulates by itself and seems almost alive. plastic needs more movement to get it to do stuff. i am lucky to have  some bo hawg frog pork rinds from strike king. they were discontinued and blow the doors on uncle josh any day. longer with better action and  just such a better look, i really don't know what I'm gonna do once they are all gone. they are deteriorating now to, dead matter can only last so long and no amount of salt is gonna keep pork fat from falling apart eventually. there is a new product out form uncle josh called "MEAT" i haven't tried it or seen it other than online but it sounds promising and is supposed to be much cleaner and easier to deal with than the traditional pork rinds. i work my jigs in a variety of ways, i let the fish tell me what they want. often a different retrieve every cast till i find what they want. fast or slow,popping it off the bottom or dragging it. jerking it once in awhile to mimic a crayfish scooting. eventually you will find what works and then you can get going on making a pattern out of it. i use a couple of set ups for fishing jigs. my favorite and most used is a cabelas prodigy rod with a shimano curado reel. got it as a package deal a couple of years ago and was pleasantly surprised how awesome the combo actually is, very light and very sensitive. the shimano reels speak for themselves! the rod is a medium heavy 7ft rod with a fast tip. its very sensitive when your dragging the jig you can really feel whats down there. it has plenty of backbone and for the price id take it over a lot more expensive rods any day! this particular setup is spooled with yo- zuri hybrid line in the hi vis green 14 lb. love this line! its very castable and very abrasion resistant. not to pricey and maintains the feel without losing all of the stretch. its the best of mono and flouro combined! i do a lot of line watching so the hi vis green is a must on certain days you may see the hit before you feel it. the great thing about the color is its so visible outside the water but its completely disappears once its in the water just like any other flourocarbon. this setup is my most used jig setup and is in my opinion the best  all around choice. the second setup i use is  the same rig i use for topwater frogs and buzz baits. its a  high speed 6.3.1. quantum pt tournament reel spooled with 20 lb spiderwire braid and its got a 5 ft fluorocarbon leader, usually seaguar 8lb or vanish 10lb. joined with an albright knot. the rod is a shakespear intrepid medium heavy rod with a fast tip . 6ft long and has aluminum oxide guides made just for braid. again a cheap rod by a lot of peoples standards but perfect for braid and again the price is well worth it! you could get 4 of these  to one g loomis and still feel like you have got a great rod. this is my flipping setup. heavy matts, deep grass, anything i know I'm going to have to horse a fish out of. i don't use this rig as often for jigs, the water has to be really off color or a lot of debris matts for me to bust it out. its basically for throwing a very heavy jig or creature bait and punching through deep heavy cover and thats the limit of its use as a jig rod for me. the final setup is a  7 ft spiral graphite bass pro shops rod in medium heavy, again not the most expensive rod but does well for the price. paired with a bass pro shops pro qualifier reel in 6.2.1. it has 14lb suffix elite mono on it. this is my deep water setup for working points or anything i know i will be dragging or slow hopping in 12ft of water or more. this is a rod i carry a lot during the summer months when deep is often the mid day pattern. often i use my electronics to find a good spot then drag and hop a jig down there to entice larthargic mid day bass. over all jigs are very versatile and add a lot to your arsenal. but just like any bait once you get confidence in them you can really knock em dead with a jig. like most lures they have good and bad days, you could probably throw a spinnerbait or crank bait all day and just keep changing till you found what worked and a jig is the same in that aspect. its not a cure all by any means but paired with the knowledge and right conditions you can't help but have fun pitting yourself against the bass with one!

Havoc craw fatty

so this past trip out i got to thoroughly test out the craw fatty. designed by bobby lane for pitching and flipping into heavy grass. the color i have is okeechobee craw  and the lure is 4 in long. its very wide with 2 good sized pincers and very thin. i guess to allow it to get down in the grass easier??. i made the mistake of using not changing my hook when i switched to this bait and the 5/0 gamakatsu was way too big. the result was the first bite i had on the bait never got the hook and held on to a pincer and the body and eventually let go when i pulled, leaving a nice set of scratches from his teeth down the length of the body. the bait is designed to be flipped and pitched in heavy heavy matts like florida has. here in hawaii that type of cover really dosent exist often, although after a flooding rain we do get thick debris matts that take some punching through at times. hence i was using a 1/2 oz sinker and a 3/0 vicious wide gap hook and texas rigging the bait on 14lb  yo zuri hybrid line. first impressions are that its not gonna do much. it isn't a fisherman catching lure. it looks pretty plain and of course the Havoc line has no bells and whistles so you get a few baits without the berkley scent in them and at a cheaper price.as i pitched it up into the ironwood roots and around the laydowns it didn't seem to have much action , i would hop it a few times. shake it a bit, maybe drag it a few feet. trying to get a feel for what it was gonna do best. i tried a few shallow casts to see how the bait looked underwater and despite the lack of water clarity the color stood out well in the heavy stain. it also had great flapping movement to the arms but it required a lot of speed to active this. perhaps the 1/2 sinker wasn't getting this and you'd get much better action on the fall from  3/4 oz or 1 oz sinker. it looked better suited on a retrieve than as a flipping bait. i could really see it working behind a spinnerbait or maybe a  swimming jig, perhaps a buzzbait. something moving  fast enough to get that action out of it. still the bass seemed to have a different opinion than mine. caught and lost 2 pretty fast just hopping it. caught another on the fall next to a log. so i guess the water movement it puts out or vibration it makes still works to attract. its worth noting that i didn't get a single hit when i was retrieving it quickly back to the boat and getting all that arm flapping action. again what do i know its a fish catching lure not a fisherman catching lure. all in all i wouldn't go out of my way to make sure i had a few in the boat. its a fairly generic design and most creature style baits would fit this type of fishing, some might be worth a little more money and get a built in scent to help on tough days. its not a bad deal though for 8 baits its 2.99$ and they do hold up well. 4 fish and the bait still had some life in it, even for being tugged on during that first fight.