Baby-E Swimbaits Winning Big Money On The Pro Tournament Trail

Lately every fishing magazine you pick up is telling of the big fish that are being caught on big swimbaits and "Eagle Swimbaits" are one of the main ones they're writing about.

The West is being won with the new wave of large swimbaits, and are now moving to the East Coast with the same results! These baits are great for cranking and bed fishing, and this is a "BIG" bass bait.

They are unique, designed specifically for the fisherman that pursues those big lunkers. Eagle Swimbaits are a popular and proven highly effective soft bait, usable in nearly every type of fresh or saltwater fishing. Eagle Swimbaits, with their variety of color and size, and lifelike feel and movement, mimic nearly every baitfish imaginable, including fresh water large and small minnows. The Eagle Swimbait comes in two sizes, The 9 inch and the Eagle Jr. 7 inch.

All of the baits used by today's top pro's on the B.A.S.S. tour and the FLW tour are available at Delaware Tackle, one of the fastest growing tackle stores in the northeast.

Ish Monroe has been using the Baby-E swimbait for sometime now, and bringing in big sacks of bass with them. He is on the Pro Staff of California Custom Worms, and you can hear Ish Monroe, Jay Yelas, and other top anglers today, talk about these baits and others at www.anglersradio.com and at the parent site, Delaware Tackle at www.delawaretackle.com

California pro Art Berry made a big move on day two in the FLW, and climbed from 39th to 9th on the strength of his cow-spotting skills and frog bite.

In practice, he said he looked for hard-bottom areas. "My main strategy in practice was looking for cows," he said. "Wherever there was cows in the water, the bottom was hard."

(Editor's note: BassFan published a story Friday with Brent Ehrler about the cow pattern. Ehrler is Berry's roommate. Berry said he divulged the pattern to Ehrler).

Berry found that a local plant, called arrowhead grass, grew in the hard-bottom areas and the bass used the stalks to spawn.

"I was catching them on a Zoom Horny Toad, but I did something else that I think was really effective," he said. "A lot of the fish were missing the Toads – maybe because they were on beds or guarding fry. Whenever a fish blew up and missed the Toad, I cast back to it with a Reaction Innovations Swamp Donkey. With that method I caught over 80 percent of the fish I missed. "All of my bites came within a foot of an arrowhead plant."

He carried that exact strategy into the tournament and spent all of days 1 and 2 on Kissimmee. But on day 3 – after the cold front – his spots got blown out.

"On day 3 my spots were chocolate mud. I came back to Toho and caught a few, then fished Toho all day on day 4."

He changed his gameplan on day 4. Instead of targeting arrowheads, he fished a small canal –"barely wider than (his) boat" – that he found on day 3. He caught one small keeper in the canal, then moved out to a large flat in front of it. "I told myself I'd just make hundreds of casts with the spinnerbait. The water was real cold, it was real windy, the conditions were poor, but I caught one about 3 1/2 pounds.

"I was really excited about that and kept going and going. It was about 20 or 30 minutes before weigh-in and I had eight rods on my deck. I was throwing all kinds of stuff. But I had one rod in my rod locker with a swimbait tied on. "Something told me, 'Art, try it.' And I'm not kidding, on my second cast I caught my biggest fish of the day on a Baby "E" swimbait. It was a 4-pounder and I caught it on the Baby "E." "That made me think I should've picked it up hours earlier. I thought, man, I could've been throwing this thing for hours."

"I took a trailer-hook keeper, which is a little ball you get with trailer hooks, and slid that over the hookpoint and all the way up the hook until is was next to the bait. That kept the Toad on much better.

"I had a great practice. I practiced hard every day. I was embarrassed by how I did at Okeechobee. I had bad luck, tied the wrong knots – I was really disappointed. So I just really, really practiced hard and found that arrowhead pattern."

If you want a high quality, handpoured swimbait, that has proven itself many times over in all waters from California to Delaware, then the Baby "E" is what you are looking for.

Delaware Tackle is "Serious Tackle For Serious Anglers"

www.delawaretackle.com