I'm fishing in a night tournament at my lake in a few weeks.  I was planning on concentrating on topwater stuff but am wondering if some type of subsurface swimbait might be a good idea.  If baitfish are nailing bugs and stuff on the surface and they're what the bass are keying on, maybe a 5" yellow perch, or bluegill swimbait that runs at or just below the surface could catch a bunch of fish.  If anyone has tried this and could give me some ideas or talk me out of it I would appreciate it.

Get yourself a pack of either Shadalicious swimbaits or some YUM money minnows and burn those babies fast enough to either run across the top or just under the surface like a wakebait. Swimbaits can be deadly at night (heck swimbaits are deadly any time of the day).

At night/late evening I concentrate swimbaits in the top 1/3 of the water column. In the afternoon I'll keep them in the bottom 1/3 of the water column and in the morning, I'll run them at the top and work my way down until I find where the fish are.

EDIT: I see you mentioned hard swimbaits, I never really use them, only because the soft plastics have been so successful for me. I'd assume you can use these just as I mentioned above though.

Nate,  I have some soft stuff already and will give burning them a try.  I also just picked up a Deps Highsider Jr. that I'll work slower.  Wish me luck!

Another tip:

Don't use a hard quick hookset when setting the hook. Give it a nice steady sweep to the side.

Good luck! Swimbait fishing is right up there in excitement with flippin'

Mattlures hardgill, either a floater, or slowsink..? 

Nate

Thanks for the info on the hook set.  I too have been trying some swimbaits, but seems like I miss a lot of bites and too many are getting off before I get them in the boat.

What size and type hook are you using?