Hope you guys can help. I never really tossed swim baits since I fish stained water ponds mostly. I have one or two ponds that get clear late in the year. Has anyone used Academy's hard swim baits(bluegill in my forage mostly)? They look really nice for a beginner in swimbaiting. 

I have several of them. They work well.

I have caught bass up to 5 pounds on them, with no failures.

 

Check out the Fishlab Bio gill as another good option for an inexpensive bluegill bait. Yes it's more expensive than the H2O but much better IMO.

47 minutes ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Check out the Fishlab Bio gill as another good option for an inexpensive bluegill bait. Yes it's more expensive than the H2O but much better IMO.

Might have to give that one a try. I am fairly new to the hard swimbait game. H2O are the only swimbaits I currently own. They do catch fish.

This spring I caught a 5.4 lber on the largest H2O blugill swimbait and was hooked.

 

1 hour ago, Russ E said:

Might have to give that one a try. I am fairly new to the hard swimbait game. H2O are the only swimbaits I currently own. They do catch fish.

This spring I caught a 5.4 lber on the largest H2O blugill swimbait and was hooked.

 

The waking Bio gill is a great bait and super easy to fish.

I've have several of their hard swim baits, the 3.5" jointed shad is my favorite. For about $5 per bait, they're a good value, but I will say I've had to slightly adjust a couple to run perfectly vertical. Not a big deal considering the price of the bait. If it were Megabass or Lucky Craft, which are like $15+ baits, I'd expect them to be absolutely perfect out of the box.