When it comes to commercial versions, I go with the Accent Wheeler, too - but I'm a little biased  Does give you the option of using a skirt or toad or some other plastic as the skirt is included but not attached in the package.

On 12/17/2021 at 7:07 AM, GRiver said:

I buy the Walmart ones, you know the dollar apiece ones in the box on the bottom shelf. Sometimes you might have to tweak them here or there, but no big deal. 
I like to put about 1/3-1/2 a curly tailed worm as a trailer on it sometimes. I save my old plastics and reuse those too if I can for trailers. 
I saw a guy on Utube reworking buzz baits and spinner baits from Walmart. It was pretty interesting. 

I’m with you on this!  I have been buying these for quite awhile, and always have a small box of these buzz and spinner baits on hand.  I’ll use them as they are, but I’ll play around with them all kind of ways…tweaking blade angles on the buzzers, change blade sizes and configurations or trim upper arms on the spinners, and replace skirts and often repaint the heads on both.   And as long as they keep catching fish, I’ll keep using them.  There are certainly a number of baits that I would never go cheap on, but buzz and spinnerbaits aren’t two of them.

 

I just started throwing buzzbaits this year. I have not caught a bunch on them, but normally it they are biting a frog for me they will bite the buzz bait. I had a hard time initially getting them to work. However after some advice here and some videos I got pretty comfortable and confident with them.  I have settled on two that seem to work best for me and run pretty true. The cavitron in the 3/8 and 1/2 I like. If you want a loud obnoxious buzzbait the jackall firecracker is it. Did I say obnoxious……

So I've got two buzzbaits. One without a skirt, one with. The without a skirt has caught bass in a river with a paddle tail swimbait but nothing in ponds, the skirted buzzbait is the booyah with the added clackler and catches em in ponds. Experiment my friend! 

*I came across a Bassmaster interview I have been searching for regarding buzz bait skirts versus no skirts and here is what the Elite Pro's say : In colder water (for your region) say under 60 ~ 65 degrees F. most fish buzz baits with a skirt and a trailer hook . This stands to reason as bass don't want as much action and tend to be short strikers more . In warmer water (again , for your region) say over 60 ~ 65 degrees F. it's time to remove the skirt off of the buzz bait and go to a soft plastic trailer of your choice (i..e. a craw , grub , fluke , swim bait , etc.)  rigged without a trailer hook . *When in doubt , try leaving the skirt on and use a straight tail fluke trailer with little to no action with a trailer hook ...Hope this helps .