Swimbaits undulate in the water like an Olympic swimmer, making them irresistible to reluctant redfish.
We were working a large cove off Delacroix’s Bay Shallow, when the redfish gave its location away with a swirling turn much too large to be a mullet.
“There’s one,” I said, but Greg Hackney was already on it.
With the speed and accuracy honed during years on the professional bass-fishing tour, Hackney blasted his lure to the back of the pocket where it landed softly just behind the center of the dying ripples.
A couple of reel cranks reel later, the water surrounding the bait erupted as a 29-inch red went absolutely nuts. Hackney cackled as he set the hook and the fish streaked away, ripping drag.
“There’s something prehistoric about watching a topwater strike, especially with a redfish,” he said with a grin plastered on his face.
The redfish put up a valiant struggle, but soon was netted.
That one catch was a major victory on a day when bites were very difficult to come by. An rare early summer cold front had blasted through the previous evening, and the change in temperatures and barometric pressure seemed to have turned the fish off.
Add to that a ferocious northeasterly wind, and the conditions were simply tough.
Those conditions were illustrated earlier in the day when an 8- to 10-pound red swam casually 5 feet from the boat. Hackney saw it, and worked his beetle spin in front of the fish.
It never reacted. So I carefully put my lure ahead of the red, and worked it past its nose to provoke a reaction bite.
Nothing. The redfish didn’t flinch, but instead acted as if we weren’t there at all.
That’s when Hackney, a Gonzales resident and Bassmaster Elite Series pro, dug out a couple of lures not normally seen in the marsh.
The hard-plastic swimbaits were jointed, which Hackney explained is critical to their appeal to fish.
“They look so natural in the water,” he said. “They look like a baitfish swimming along.”
When he cast out the Strike King Sexy Swimmer, it really didn’t look like much. I mean, it was pretty and all, but it just sort of hung there in the water.
And then Hackney began reeling and the lure came alive.
As the lure moved through the water, the three sections slithered independently of each other looking for all the world like a snake. It was just uncanny.
There were actually several swimbaits lying on his deck ready for action, with Hackney alternating between the Sexy Swimmer and a shad-colored Tru-Tungsten Tru-Life swimbait.
“The Sexy Swimmer looks like an eel or something coming through the water, and the Tru-Life baits look just like a shad,” he said.
The Sexy Swimmer measures in at 5 inches, perfectly matching the size of a finger mullet. Tru-Life lures come in several different sizes and profiles, ranging from the 4-inch shad to 7- and 8-inch saltwater mullet to versions resembling bluegill, tilapia and rainbow trout.
Those many options provide great flexibility.
“You can give redfish different looks,” Hackney said. “I’ll have all three sizes (of Tru-Life), all the way from the minnow to the bull mullet, ready.
“If you’re around fish that are feeding, you can change quickly.”
While they might not be needed every day, the lures open new doors for anglers that could be particularly beneficial when the bite gets tough. And the fact is that these baits really shouldn’t be a huge change for hard-core coastal anglers.
“We’ve been fishing swimbaits for years in the marshes,” Hackney said. “Plastic cocahoes are really just swimbaits, but these swimbaits give the fish a different look.
“It’s not as flashy as fishing a spinnerbait, but it’s one of those baits to show redfish something different, something realistic, on those days when the bite is slower.”
They’re especially deadly when redfish are feeding on schools of mullet.
“When you see those redfish swimming around all those mullet and they’re not biting, when you throw this (swimbait) out there, they’re going to think it’s a mullet with something wrong with it,” Hackney said.
And the technique couldn’t be easier: Just cast a swimbait as far as possible, and reel it in.
“What I like about it is you can’t reel it too fast,” he said. “It keeps the same action and won’t roll.”
The lures will occasionally pop out of the water when burned across the surface, but that actually makes them look more like a baitfish thrashing about than a malfunctioning bait.
Such simplicity makes them a perfect option for those anglers who have yet to develop skills at finessing action out of baits, particularly when trying for topwater bites.
“The good thing about it is a novice who might not be able to walk the dog can easily fish this bait,” Hackney explained. “I can give it my 9-year-old and tell him to throw it out and reel it in.
“It gives him the option to get a topwater bite with a simple-to-use bait.”
If fish are following the lure without attacking, it’s easy to change the action to provoke a reaction bite.
“You can jerk the bait and it’ll dart to the side and act really erratically,” Hackney said. “You can kill the bait, jerk it and do a lot of different things. It’s a fairly versatile bait.”
Conditions dictate how Hackney works the lures.
On a slick day, I have a tendency to fish it on the surface,” he said. “On windier days, I usually fish it deeper.”
Getting deeper with the Sexy Swimmer means waiting a few seconds to allow it to sink, while Tru-Life lures actually have chambers to which anglers can add weight (see sidebar).
The temptation might be to use a high-speed reel, but Hackney said he actually prefers Quantum’s medium-speed options.
“I think 6:1 is about what you want,” he said. “If your reel is too fast, you’ll have a tendency to reel too fast. You want it to just swim along, but that reel will allow you to speed up if you need to.”
Hackney always fishes the lure on heavy mono or braided line.
“I don’t need a light line because this isn’t a finesse bait,” he explained.
And with the price of the lures, it’s best not to take a chance of losing one by using light line.
Some of the lures come with wire hooks more suitable for freshwater applications, so Hackney will often replace them.
“I’d go with at least 2X hooks so they don’t straighten out on a big fish,” he said.
There is one caveat to using the baits, however.
“I do believe this isn’t a bait to catch little redfish,” Hackney said. “It’s for catching big reds.”
Is that really a bad thing?
