I got my first Mattlures swimbait the other day - the bluegill hardbait series - and now that I'm done admiring the craftsmanship (that took a few days), I'm looking for help in how to fish it (the darn thing didn't come with an instruction manual).

It's a floating model, crappie pattern, btw.

For Central region fishing -

- with the bass somewhat deep but slowly moving up as they chase the baitfish, what presentations should I work? If I dead stick it, or work it on the ledges, will they come up from the depths to hit it?

- steady retrieve? erratic retrieve?

- or is it more of a spring / shallow water bait?

- other?

Any help would be appreciated, thx.

Also, should I change out the trebles?  They seem small for trophy sized fish.

Try everything you mentioned. I've caught fish with that thing burning and ripping it around shallow cover and I have also caught fish with it dead sticking it in 12 ft of water. It is like any other bait in that you need the fish to tell you what they want.

No need to change those hooks, those owners will handle some pretty big fish.

Since you have the floater....

-If you have the cojones and the equipment, throw it on a C-rig.

-Find a weed bed and burn it over the top

-Deadstick the bait over structure and around cover.

Very versatile bait.  Good choice.

Try it all. Experiment with different retrieves to see what makes the bait look like a real crappie. Sometimes a crappie just swims along and sometimes it acts nervous and darts around more when being chased. The more realistic it looks the better for me. You can do a ton of different things with that bait to get strikes.  Experiment.

I dont think I can ad much to what these guys have already said. My favorite technique is to dead stick it. sometimes 15 minutes or more. It is hard to do and stay focussed but after a few monster blow ups when I wasnt ready, its a little easier now to keep the faith.

Of course catching a bunch on it doesnt hurt either.

Do you dead stick it over deeper water at all? Or just near deeper water but over shallower water?

There is no right way nor wrong way, like with all baits you have to figure it out by trying in different ways until you find the "right" one. Haven 't fished that bait in particular because I haven 't purchased it but I 've got similar baits. Sometimes deadsticking and an ocassional twitch works, other times is reel in steadily at a slow pace, other times it 's jerking the bait continously and so on.

As about the deep water, there are a couple of lakes I fish that were created by damming a canyon, the lakes are very deep and the shorelines are from pretty steep ( more than 45° slope ) to almost or vertical walls, those lakes are commomly quite clear and you can see the fish either rising from the depths or come for the baits for a very long distance.