What are the best 4" to 6" swimbaits out there right now? I see a lot of good looking choices, I just don't want to spend the money on a bad bait.. Thanks, God Bless.

   Cody J.

What type of bait do you want hard or soft?

I think the RI skinny dipper is hard to beat.

Hard Swimbaits: IMHO, It's hard to beat the Spro BBZ-1 Shad which now comes in 4" and 6"

http://www.***.com/descpageSPROSWIM-SBZSFS.html

Soft Swimbaits: Strike King Shadilicious - 1/2 price now

http://www.***.com/descpageSWIMSTRIKE-SKSAL.html

Good luck!

soft-berkley hollow belly swimbaits. awesome

hard-true tungsten tru life 4"

Im gonna go to Bass pro tomorrow and get a couple of hard swimbaits and a couple of soft ones, just gonna keep them with me for that one kicker fish we always seem to need.  :'( 8-) Thanks for the info guys, Good luck..

When I first saw the Spro 6" BBZ I thought that this hardbait would be too big for some of the smallmouth in my local lake.  However, I saw Bill Siemantel fishing the 6" BBZ on Lake Champlain on a fishing show that recently aired and he was very successful catching smallmouth, many of which were not much bigger than the lure itself.  Further supports the idea that the bigger the bait, the better.

I have had a problem with the 8" zoom lizards getting a solid hookset in because of how thick it is, but now i get a ewg 5/0 gama. and i put the point of the hook into a back leg instead of the actual body, and I can tell a difference in the bass that I catch off of it. They are usually pretty quality fish. ;D Big Baits= Big Momma's

I think that the Berkley hollow belly is good, but only 3 for the price? My buddy was using a Yum money minnow and it was solid for him, more bait for the same price to.

Throw a 8" Huddelston..

in the soft bait category you can't beat huddleston.  their trout lures catch fish.

for hard baits I would go with the strike king sexy swimmer and sebile magic swimmer.  Those two have produced good for me.

A couple of years ago, when the soft swim baits first became widely available (in MO), I bought several different brands.  No let me rephrase that, every tackle store I went into, if they had a brand I didn't have I'd buy several.   If they only had brands I already had but had different colors, I'd buy that.

I'd describe my results as mixed.  The Strike King 6" Shadalicious (chartreuse shad) attracted the largest fish I'd ever seen in one particular lake, but it didn't hit.  It just followed the bait for 10 - 15 feet or so and then just lazily swam away.  That same day I caught several 18 & 19 inch fish on that bait.

My plan was just to throw it as far as I could (17 lb fluourcarbon) and swim it back.  If I could see it real good, I figured it was too shallow.  If I couldn't see it at all, then that was too deep.

This was in pretty clear, shallow to medium depth water (3 -8 ft).  I was never able to duplicate this, so after several trips, while I would have a swim bait rod rigged in my boat, I didn't throw them all that often.

Last year, similar results - a few fish but nothing outstanding.

Reading In-Fisherman magazine, the primary editor Doug Stange, writes that his most productive swimbait style bait, by far, over the past few years,  was the 5" Berkley Powerbait Saltwater Swim Shad, fished on 1/2 or 3/4 ounce jig heads.  I bought some of those, that's still a work in progress, except I haven't had the kind of results that Doug Stange writes that he's had.

Fast forward to earlier today, I spent up all my Cabelas points and got 4 packs of the Sebile soft magic swimmers.  We'll see how those work.  They are a little over 5" long and they weigh 3/4 ounce according to the catalog.

My initial plan is to throw them using a 7' MH spinning rod, 14 lb fireline and a 15 or 20 lb fluorocarbon leader.  I recently got a decent deal on a US reel Supercaster 240

($50 from Rogers Lures in Liberty, MO) so that's the reel I'll start with

I think the deal with swim baits is that you need fairly clear water (3 or more ft of visibility) and that doesn't always happen on the smaller conservation lakes I normally fish.

Trust me, you dont need clear water.

You just need bigger baits.

mattlures hard gill

tylures sunfish

tylures 6'' kicker trout

swimbait inc. little ebby gill

3:16 baby wake

6" bbz-1

6"huddleston weedless trout

6"huddleston trout

and the list can go on ...

if you are talking about soft bait tube swimbaits (basstrixx, berkeley hollow bodies,etc..) i haven't a clue about those , they are not what i call "swimbaits", anyhow , hope this helped 

I like to use the Lake Fork Magic Shad Swimbaits. Around my hometown of Cincinnati the shad in the lakes resemble these so much, and the action of the magic shad is impressive. You can use them a number of different ways like, but I have had the most success using them like a jerkbait. Lake Fork also produces the proper hooks to go with them and in my opinion are a must own if you buy these baits. My hook up ratio increased alot once I found out that Lake Fork sold hooks to go with the magic shad. They don't look as sexy as some of the other swimbaits out there, but they have worked better for me than the other mainstream swimbaits I have used.

X 2..

Trust me, you dont need clear water.

You just need bigger baits.

i like the yum money minnow it comes in several different sizes also the spro BBz1 is a really nice hardbait at a reasonable price

Last year a friend and I tried the following hollow bellies:Berkely, Luck E Strike, Lake Fork, and Strike King Shadalicious. Only the Shadalicious caught fish and it was a very productive lure.

This year I am also going to try the Castaic Jerky J and Northland Rock R Minnow as they look more fish-like to me and have better color selection than the Shadalicious.

http://www.***.com/descpageSWIMBDOG-LPBLEM.html

great topwater bait, you will need a different setup most likely to throw this but well worth it if you get into true swimbaits.