Recently I have been doing a lot more swim bait fishing this year. My preferred swimbaits are the 5in keitech swing impact shad and the Storm wild eye perch colored ones in 4in size. Now I usually fish a lot of T rigs and jigs frogs C rigs Senkos all slow type fishing. This year I wanna increase my reaction style bite to cover more water and maybe save some time on the water when locating fish. I normally don't fish crankbaits that much, but was wondering do you think swimbaits are just as effective as say a crank bait for covering water or even better in some cases?

I think a crank is a better search bait in water with no vegetation to worry abiut. A big swimbait like 7 inches plus glide bait. Has gotten me more followers from big fish by far. 

51 minutes ago, clh121787 said:

I think a crank is a better search bait in water with no vegetation to worry abiut. A big swimbait like 7 inches plus glide bait. Has gotten me more followers from big fish by far. 

Another question I have I want to get into fishing the bigger ones. I wanna get a cheap setup to get into it roughly cost 100-150 bucks for the whole rig what would you recommend 

2 hours ago, MikeOGNR said:

Another question I have I want to get into fishing the bigger ones. I wanna get a cheap setup to get into it roughly cost 100-150 bucks for the whole rig what would you recommend 

About the cheapest you can get into the big bait game would probably be an okuma guide select and a shimano cardiff 300 used.  I have a guide select 7'11  1-6 oz rating. It's either rated h or xh. That I could sell you for a decent price if I can ship it fairly in expensive.

Definitely ~

And I'll say that Every Bait can be a good search bait.

Just depends on how big your search area is and how fast you want "search".

A-Jay

The big swimbaits will show you fish that won't touch anything else, and fish that you never knew lived in your lake. It really just seems like some fish are programmed to eat big meals. Then I've seen the opposite where lakes that consistently produce larger than average bass, but they will not even follow a big swimbait.

 

I've never seen that on a lake 

4 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

The big swimbaits will show you fish that won't touch anything else, and fish that you never knew lived in your lake. It really just seems like some fish are programmed to eat big meals. Then I've seen the opposite where lakes that consistently produce larger than average bass, but they will not even follow a big swimbait.

 

I've only seen that on rivers .... On any lake or pond they're too curious not too ... Interesting though

if you want a good swimbait search bait, buy a triple trout, or a Mike Bucca Bull shad, I can cover the same amount of water as anyone fishing a crank bait, while picking out the bigger fish. they also make them in a bunch of sizes, so if you aren't confident that you want to go with a super large bait you can buy a 5 inch bull shad and a 6 inch Triple trout. i Just bought the Bull shad in golden shiner and i love it, they are expensive though at 50$ but i can attest to them working. I also threw mine first cast onto a cement bridge, hit it square on the nose (I panicked) reeled it back in to check if it was broken... Not even a scratch, swims just as good as it did when i took it out of the package. Attached is a picture of the golden shiner paint job. They aren't made to be pretty baits just effective. 

If you're searching for large fish, then swimbaits are a great tool. A big glide bait will show you fish that you dream about. If you are just looking to cover a bunch of water and don't care what size fish you catch then stick to a crankbait, spinnerbait, keitech, etc for a search bait.