Primus

I like the Hydra tail as well, good finesse swimbait.

Stick a nail weight in the tail, rig it on it's side. When you lift it will fall back to the bass that's following your bait, fish on!

As usual for me deep diver cranks & RC/KVD cranks shallow R.I. Sweet Beaver Lately Xcite baits 10" Maximus straight tail worm on 1/2 oz Magnum Title shot fished as a shakey head, the bigger fish seem to like it, keeps the dinks away.

Nice fish JFrancho, I have one that I just sent away to get custom painted with a Golden Shiner color. Looking forward to throwing over shallow flats this fall.

The majority of well made swimbaits are not cheap, regarding the Rago I've stuck a few this year on the 7" Light Hitch color which is one of the better baits out there.

There shipping policies is pretty bass backwards, the more you buy the more you pay for shipping unlike Bass Tackle Depot & Tackle Warehouse were the shipping is free after 50$. Besides that those 2 vendors in my opinion have a better selection of the tackle that I'm interested in over BPS/ Cabelas.

At the opposite side of the spectrum I've caught bass on them when the water temp was in the low 40's, best coldwater crank there is in my opinion.

It caught a few nice fish for me in tough conditions, no giants but some solid 3-4 lbers.

I'm probably too late but D & R Sports in Kalamazoo carries the Duckett rods. You might want to call first to see if they have the model you are looking for. Good luck in your tounament.

I bought some of these a couple of years back, used them for the first time last week on a 1/2 large hook titleshot jig after reading about power shakin' in a recent bassmaster. Very impressed.

I think Smoke Purple is the most underated color in fishing, works great in clear water. I like Junebug for heavy cover , low light conditions and stained water.

I'm bummed that they are discontiniung this bait, have to stock up while I can. The new Strike King is a good alternative though I still prefer the Lucky Craft.

My best colors have been Green Pumpkin/ Cream laminate for overcast days with Watermelon Senko's & Ozark Smoke Yum Dingers for clear skies. That said whatever colors work for you on bigger stick baits will certainly do well on the smaller size.

I've been fishing the spro bait for a couple of years and have not had any quality control problems. Someone forgot to tell the nice fish that I catch on it that is a "junk bait". That said you've reccomended a lot of good baits though I obviously disagree with your take on the Spro bait.

I just read the article yesterday and I've done that with some of my soft plastics, don't plan on getting rid of my hardbaits but I have to make a tough decision every spring regarding which baits I'll fish that season.

" Just got paid today, I got me a pocket full of change". Your post reminded me of one of my favorite ZZ Topp songs. Now back to Bass fishing, looks like a nice list of baits I'm sure it will catch you a lot of fish.

This is usually my bailout bait when fishing clear water during those windless high pressure bluebird days. I like to thread it on a 1/16 oz Gopher Tackle Mushroomhead ( they have several hook options, I use a small #6 Gamakatsu hook). This falls with a nice death spiral and with the small hook it's fairly weedless. I throw it with 6lb Floro and launch it with a 7'4" Dobyns ML spinning rod.

I've bought one of the 2.5" Spro and haven't got aroung to using it yet. I personally like the 6" much better than the 4" Spro, I've gotten more bites and the fish typically are bigger. If you want to stick with smaller baits try the 95 size (3-3/4" ) River to Sea V joint Wake Minnow. The only thing to keep in mind is it's more a shallow jointed crankbait than a wake bait as its name implies. That said I've caught a lot of fish on the Chartreuse Shad and it's a bait than you can fish fast without rolling over etc. Very reasonably priced as well.

Here are few that have worked for me... 6" Spro BBZ- I like it so much that I recently purchased an 8", great value for the money. I like both the slow sink & floater. 3:16 Baby Wake & Wake Jr. - expensive but effective baits are a blast to fish, not going to fit everyone's budget. I like to get the tail kicking to splash on the surface, you can also twitch it, walk it , slow crank and sometimes get bit combining these in the same retrieve MS Slammer- 7" & 9" - app 1/2 the price as the 3:16 and much easier to get. I like to twitch and slow wake it. Not the prettiest bait out there but it gets bit. Matt lures Hard Bluegill- awesome bait, my favorie is the slow sink but I've also caught a few with the floater as well. My underrstanding is Matt is working on updating his hard bait line so for the time being these are not easy to get. Matt Lures Hard Perch Slow Sink- I loved this bait, unfortuneately mine is now sitting on the bottom of Big Star Lake in Baldwin, MI. Very natural swimming motion. Hopefully Matt starts making these again, need one bad! 5" Tru Tungsten- there are some very good deals out there as these have been discontinued. This bait gets bit, the negative is the finish wears off easily. If you can get them cheap it's worth it in my opinion. High Power, Bull Shad & 3:16 shad- I'm expierimenting with these baits but haven't used them enough to form an opinion. Well regarded by many, I'm sure they would perform well in lakes with shad. Not technically a swimbait but the wood Lunker Punker is well thought of, I'm new to this bait as well. I tend to like these type of baits as surface or slightly subsurface fishing, I prefer the soft baits for slow rolling & bottom bouncing in deep water.

The Pit Boss has been a solid producer for me so far, reminds me of a Beaver bait with the flapping action of a Paca Craw.

For most of my soft polastics other I like some of the following colors... Green Pumpkin, Watermelon Red, Watermelon Candy, Watermelon gold, Smoke Purple, Junebug & Black with Blue Flake. Cotton Candy is a wild card color for me. With Fluke style baits I like Baby Bass & White Ice.

As others have mentioned I'm also very impressed with the Caffiene Shad when your looking for a faster fall or more lively action, that said I still like the Super Fluke when I want more of a glide from the bait. Some of my favorite colors would include White Ice, Baby Bass & Watermelon.

I use 3 different BPS Crankin' Sticks on my boat. I personally like it that the BPS 7'6" MH has a slightly faster action than many other rods in the category. I use this model with 12 lb Floro for throwing my deep diving cranks, often times there are submeged weeds that I rip the bait off of that triggers strikes. The faster action does a better job of ripping the bait off weeds and also helps achieve longer casting distance than slower fiberglass models. The good thing is there is still enough flex on this rod to keep the fished pinned and I get over 90% of them to the boat. The second combo I use is the 7' M rod. I've used the older black color rod for several seasons and this year purchased the newer model in an effort to upgrade. I also use this with 12 lb Floro and use this for lipless cranks, shallow runners like the 1 minus & RC line and also smaller medium runners like a Storm Wiggle Wart. I used the newer model for a couple weeks and I was diapointed (though happy with the newer version 7'6" MH) because the rod doesn't cast as far nor rip the bait off of weeds as well as the older model so I went back to that one. As you can tell ripping the crank off of weeds is a large part of my cranking technique and it probably accounts for app 1/2 of my crankbait strikes over the season and I fish cranks more than any other lure. The 3rd one is 7' MH spooled with 17 lb mono that I use for large 3.5 size squarebills, wake cranks or when I want to keep lipless cranks and other baits higher in the water column. The last combo I use is a 6'9" Med custom made spinning rod that I have spooled with 6lb Yozuri Hybrid that I use for jerkbaits, floating Rapalas and lightweight cranks like Shad Raps and other small cranks that I throw on occasion. I've been using BPS cranking rods for a few seasons and overall been very pleased with them.

I'm still new to the Strike King and have caught a few fish on it. That side I have used the RC 0.5, 1.5, 2.5 & 3.5 for years fishing for Northern strain bass in SW Michigan. The 0.5 in the Ghost color is my go to crank in clear shallow water light wind conditions on pressured lakes, it's come through for me so many times when the bass refuse the bigger profiles. The 1.5 is my bread & butter that I use 80 % of the time, even though it's a squarebill and people associate this style for banging of wood it's also highly effective ripping off of shallow grass and this is my all time favorite shallow crank. The 2.5 & 3.5 get the call when I'm looking for bigger fish or when fishing murky water. It's also a great option when fishing that transition from darkness to first light as the vibration calls them in.

I use both LH & RH reels. I'm righthanded and prefer the RH reels for my cranking & spinnerbait rods, like the LH for topwater, worm & jig rods.