paul.

hope you have many more good ones to come.

nolan was fired today. his tenure with the niners has been nothing short of pathetic. getting rid of him has to be a step in the right direction. of course it comes a day late and a dollar short from an equally pathetic niners management after the season is already in the toilet. hopefully this is the beginning of better days for a once-great franchise. :-/

very cool story. enjoyed it very much.

congrats on the first. trust me, keep fishing and learning that bait and there will be more (and bigger). way to go man.

with the double whammy of a front moving in and the full moon, the fishin' was absolutely off the chain today. no big fish, but the 2 pounders went on a total rampage. i had both a shallow and a deep pattern. either one would have made for a fantastic day, but to have both was awesome. there were some guys across the lake from me wearin' 'em out too on minnows. the bite was so good i just couldn't leave the fish i was on to look for better ones. it would stop for about 10 minutes occasionally, but then they would regroup and go bananas again. the shallow fish came on a swimbait and the deep ones on a football head jig. i'm just curious if anyone else, especially in the southeast, had a similar day with a bunch of fish or a big one? hope so.

great catches.

ladies and gentlemen, there has been a confirmed monster sighting in georgia. way to go y'all. hudson, that's definitely one to be proud of my man.

great! happy for ya man.

tuesday, my friend dennis "the salmon slayer" came to visit me. dennis lives in alaska and he was down to visit his mom in tennessee. we had this fishin' trip planned for a long time. i would have loved to have taken him to my favorite bass lake, but wouldn't ya know it, we had thunderstorms and high winds all day. getting out in my little boat was out of the question. this made me sick 'cause i really wanted to put my buddy on some fish. fortunately, there was a back up plan - some fish my friend had never met before..................

have you tried using one of the weighted swimbait hooks? i thought about this, but i haven't tried it yet. it'd sure make 'em cast farther too. of course you'd have to reel a little faster to keep 'em on top. :-/

way to go man. big congrats on that hawg.

dude! is that a saltwater bass of some kind? very cool fish.

i am not sure about an exact release date, but i believe it will be fairly soon. no info on price or exact weight either. i will leave it to matt to provide those details. i will say this, yesterday i intentionally used this bait on a rod that was actually a bit light for it just to see what would happen - a 6'6" med. action rated for lures up to 3/8 oz. and there were absolutely no problems casting or working the bait whatsoever. i knew if the bait performed well on this set up, it would absolutely shine on a 6'6" or 7" mh. so have no fear. the rods and reels you already own will be just fine. i could have even used this bait on spinning tackle with no problem. i'm not sure what the bait weighs exactly, but it really doesn't "feel" that much different than casting a big crankbait, a dd22 for example. lbh, to answer your question about negatives, there is only one big one -that the bait is not available just yet! ;D there is one thing i did notice that folks may want to take into account (and this is definitely not a negative, just a matter of personal preference). the bait came to me with 2 hooks. if you notice in the picture, there is a ring for a hook and split ring cleverly hidden under the back rear fin. with 2 hooks, occasionally the hooks hung into each other or the rear hook hung into the tail section. but mind you, this only happened a very few times when i was experimenting with the bait. you will see that i just added a bigger size hook to the front of the bait and removed the rear one. but i will warn you, there is a trade off here. by removing the rear hook, you will sacrifice some hook-ups, especially with short strikes. so to achieve optimum results, the bait is best left as is. again, my adjustment was only a matter of personal preference. whether you own a hundred swimbaits, or are looking for your first one, this lure is a great choice. trust me, you will be well pleased.

no worries mrs. matstone. you do not need specialized gear at all. it will work just fine with your every day rod and reel. you may want to use heavier line though because of the size fish you are likely to catch.

as promised here is some more info on a fantastic bait you can expect to see fairly soon. you can go to the outings section to see a report on the bait's short debut at one of my fishing holes today. thoughtfully designed anyone who has fished live bluegills will tell you that there definitely seems to be a "preferred" size for bass - about 6 inches to be exact. any smaller and a good sized bass may regard them as not worth fooling with. any larger, and it seems the bass sometimes avoid them as they can be perceived a difficult meal (due to the spines and body shape). matt obviously knows this. the optimum size is evidenced in his soft bluegill baits and now in his new hard bait. speaking of size, this is one of the big turn-offs to many anglers considering a first swim bait purchase - the large size of many of these offerings. no angler is going to buy a bait that intimidates him or her, particularly considering the price point of some swimbaits. not to mention the fact that with many of the oversized offerings in the past, anglers have been faced with a difficult choice. either they must fish swimbaits awkwardly and uncomfortably using their existing rods and reels, or they must break down and purchase expensive new ones. no worries with matt's new bait. it is easy to cast and performs superbly with the traditional sized (and priced) rods and reels you already own. of course this bait will work well on swimbait gear too if you already own it. so thankfully, with this bait, matt has achieved a size that is acceptable to anglers and to the most important customer, the bass. well built with one glance, it is easy to see that everything about the mattlures new hard bluegill is total quality. as with his other baits, the paint job is top notch, exceeding everything else out there in realism and rivaling the real thing. it's as if the bait was actually painted by a taxidermist. the overlaying clear coat is even and well done, adds to the realism, and protects the work of art underneath. the eyes add to the incredible realism. the joints are fluid and tightly spaced to crate the illusion of a one piece bait. the split rings and hooks are top quality and will surely stand up to the assault of the bass that will smash these offerings. with the few other swimbaits i have owned, one outing and some paint or finish is missing. not so here. this is a bait that could last a long, long time and still look fantastic with little or no maintenance. incredible action and versatility the bait i used today was a floater. i am not sure if matt plans to unleash a sinking version or not. simply put, this bait swims like the real thing at all speeds. with a steady retrieve, it can wake across the surface in deadly fashion with just the dorsal fin and the top of the tail protruding. needless to say it's floating qualities enable a spot-on injured bluegill presentation when twitched. with just a small amount of practice though, you can also get the bait to dive a few inches underwater where it will perform the same deadly gyrations. and yes, it will "180" like a champ. applications this bait will work anywhere you have previously fished topwater baits, rattle baits, jerkbaits, or shallow diving cranks. fish that have been previously pressured with these offerings will see something totally new. one application that may be overlooked by some anglers, and one that i hesitate to even mention is bed fishing. this bait may in some sight fishing situations equal or even outperform matt's soft bluegill baits. yes, you heard me right. imagine putting this bait behind an egg or bank sinker. placed on a bed, the bait will naturally want to float back to the top with the sinker resting on the bed. but if the angler reels almost all the slack out of the line. the bait will suspend in a nose down attitude a couple of inches from the sinker. with subtle rod movement, the bait can be repeatedly pulled down to the sinker on the bottom, making it appear that a bluegill is raiding the nest. and you could literally do this for hours without moving the rig off the bed and having to re-cast. the conclusion obviously i think this is a remarkable bait. but why should my opinion matter? after all, i am very much an average basser and a total swimbait novice. well, that's the reason. guys considering a swimbait purchase, particularly those new to the genre, are not concerned with whether a bait can produce for fish chris or mike long. they want to know if it can work for them. and based on my experience with this gem of a bait, the answer is a resounding "yes!" i hope y'all enjoyed my admittedly amateurish review of what i think is an incredible bait. having dispensed the info above, i have officially exhausted my knowledge of the mattlures hard bluegill swimbait. well, at least until next outing with it. be looking for it soon and good luck out there.

brian that is a very fair question, and one that is quite commonly asked. i was skeptically asking myself the same thing a few months ago. of course everyone has to decide for themselves what is reasonable. even though i am a complete swimbait novice, i have come to view the price of swimbaits as in investment in better quality, or even lunker class fish. think of how much money we spend on "regular" lures in a week or month that may not produce lunker class fish. yet for considerably less money, you can buy one bait that could dramatically increase your odds of catching a BIG bass. when i first tried swimbaits a few months back, i caught a 7 pounder and one over 8 in fairly short order. having seen them cruising around, i had known that both these fish were in that particular lake for a while, but my efforts to get them with other "traditional" lures had been a complete failure. i would say that the swimbaits i used paid for themselves the minute i lipped those fish. that's 2 fish over 7 pounds that i may never have gotten were it not for the swimbaits. as far as losing these baits goes, there are plenty of great swimbaits that float - including the one above - making them very difficult to lose. as far as details about matt's bait go. i'll let him provide those. i will say a little more about the bait to try to give folks an idea of how cool i think it is. i will probably post it in the tackle section since that's where stuff about lures goes.

and finally, meet the 2 pounder that has caused me to re-think many years of fishing.

and here's the bait beside the tru-tungsten and giron bluegill baits. if you were a bass, which one would you want? ;D

o.k., picture time! here's the bait beside it's closest competitor.

"a good swimbait will outfish even live bait." yeah right. : when i read these fateful words several weeks ago, i had to chuckle just a little inside even though they came from a friend and a world class basser. he sounded serious enough, but i had to believe he was joking. either that or perhaps he just meant figuratively. i have just turned 40, and i have fished since i was old enough to walk. i have heard all the claims about live bait being outfished by this lure or that. problem is, i've just never seen a bass pass up the real thing and then turn right around and eat an artificial bait of the same size and "type". that sort of thing just doesn't happen in the real world. until today. having just received the most incredible looking bluegill swimbait i have ever seen in the mail last night, i took a few minutes today to put my friend's seemingly ridiculous and outrageous claim to the test. if there was ever going to be a "good swimbait outfish live bait", this would be the one. i had to admit that on realism, this bait had my beloved tru-tungsten gill and giron beat by a mile. there was just no comparison. believe it or not, the bait was on par with mattlures ultimate bluegill. of course that's really saying something, especially for a hard swimbait. this bait looked so real, i expected it to start flopping around in my hand and trying to get away. ;D but looks are one thing. performance is quite another - especially when the standard of comparison is the real thing. even though it was not intentional at the time, i look back on my field test and realize that rather than being a "fair" test, the odds were actually stacked against the swimbait. the testing ground was a super clear pond where fishing had been difficult lately. to make matters worse, it was a bluebird day with only a small breeze and not a cloud in the sky. that spells t-o-u-g-h for any type of swimbait. first i cast out a bluegill, as close in size to my new swimbait as possible. 5 minutes of nothing ensued. then, as i was about to reel in, i saw a nice keeper size bass of about 15" and 2 pounds behind the gill, following it. so i just stopped it to see what would happen. well the bass followed the gill around and circled it and even made some semi-aggressive "moves" to indicate it was halfway interested, but no dice. this fish just wasn't going to commit. so i reeled in the gill and the bass swam off just out of sight. enter the new swimbait. i cast it out in the same exact area where the gill had just been. instantly a bass, almost certainly the one that had just turned up his nose at the live gill, started following the bait and closing in. i gave the bait 2 sharp twitches and the bass absolutely came unglued and smacked the swimbait right in front of me. i was almost too stunned from disbelief to react and set the hook, but somehow i managed, and battled the keeper size bass in for a few pictures before releasing it. i had just witnessed my friend's words unfold in dramatic fashion right before my eyes. there was and is no denying that i have now seen something i thought to be previously impossible. one amazing revelation was enough for today, so i left to write this report while the details were still fresh on my mind. and i can promise you that every word i have said here is the absolute truth. i can also promise you that i was not paid a single penny, or even asked to say a word about the bait. "yeah, but how special is a 2 pound bass?" you may ask. my answer is simple. special enough to keep the dreaded skunk at bay. special enough to be the difference between going home empty handed vs. cashing a check on tournament day. and special enough to change my fishing from now on. what an incredible lure! oh, the bait? Mattlures new hard bluegill swimbait. enjoy the pictures and stay tuned for more details. hope y'all are catchin' some too.

congratulations matstones! hope your next 20 are even better and filled with even more fishin' trips.

i hate that for ya man. but always consider it a compliment when your fishing is so good it ticks people off. ;D keep catchin' 'em and don't worry about that idiot.

pliers, then i kill it. either that or i kill it first, then use pliers.

you totally deserve it dave. way to go buddy. big congrats.

i thought you said you weren't gonna post anymore. see, we can bait responses out of you too.