I agree that the Spro BBZ shad is a good way send a school of feeding fish back where they came from. On the other hand I have seen J Francho's swimbait box and have surmised that the man may have a few screws loose to toss that stuff up here.

I DO plan to try the new baby BBZ shad this year for blind bed fishing on some of the lakes that I fish.

The swimbaits that I throw are a white lady sebile 125, and a Keitech swing impact FAT. Both baits work great for size and numbers. I just destroyed the smallmouth on them this fall. The good thing is that I can drop around $100 and be set on swimbaits for the year. I can also throw them on the same 7' MH rods that I use for almost everything else.

Good to see that I'm not the only one that hasn't had any luck at all with the BBZ Shads. I think they look great in the water but they don't even get bit by northerns, even in the lake where I lost 4 Sebiles to snakes in the last two years. I thought at first that I was maybe doing something wrong, so I tried every retrieve I could think of, and I have yet to catch a single fish.

Why is it that the BBZ Shad suck so badly? I mean, they look great, don't they? :

I don't have many hard swimbaits to speak of, but the one that I do like is the Sebile 125 in slow sink. That one is a keeper.  I generally prefer the soft paddletail swimmers like the Money Minnow.

I don't get the erratic action out of a BBZ Shad that I can get out of a sebile 125. I usually fish my Sebiles like a jerkbait and I was still getting fish on them when the water was down to around 50 degrees this fall.

IMO the sebile 125's swim alot better than the sebile 95's, but I do like fishing the 95s on a spinning rod overtop spawning beds.

Soft swimbaits have been awesome for me. I have not thrown the hollow bellies much because I have not yet any reason to deviate from the keitech's (except being overpriced, lol). I throw mine on a GYCB swimbait head.

Also to avoid losing expensive baits, I throw all of my swimbaits on 50lb braid without a leader. If the fish care, they didn't tell me, and when a fish bites on the long end of a 100' cast you just reel into him and hes hooked. I do use a rod with a soft tip though.

8-)