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Part 4
If a new lure doesn’t produce exactly as it comes out of the package, don’t give up on it. There may be ways of using it you’ve not thought about.
I started this column series on that subject by telling what my friend Paul Wright, of Indiana, did with Mack’s Lure’s new HummBait. In my last column in this series I told how I had asked my friend Mike Pedersen, of Longview, Washington, if he could exchange the treble hook the lure came with to a single hook. I knew I’d get much more use out of the lure with an upright riding single hook.
Mike did come up with a HummBait that now has a fixed single hook. And the hook does right upright behind the body of the lure. As I mentioned in my previous column, not only does that cut way down on potential hang-ups, it also provides opportunity to use a plastic or pork rind trailer along with the lure.
But Mike didn’t stop there. A couple of the HummBaits he altered will be of special interest to bass anglers who especially like to fish spinnerbaits or buzzbaits. What Mike did for starters was to first remove the hook from one of the smaller HummBaits. Then he removed the spinners from a spinnerbait and replaced them with the HummBait body.
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| I know largemouth will bust a HummBait used as a spinnerbait because I've had it happen.. |
He did the same thing with a buzzbait. He simply removed the big blade from one of these lures that’s designed to be fished on the surface and replaced it with a HummBait body.
If you’ve thrown a HummBait yourself, you know the lure has a good bit of sound and vibration as the body rotates on the retrieve. Using the HummBait body on a spinnerbait or buzzbait arm the way Mike has done also gives you something else. It provides an opportunity to show the fish you’re after something they’ve not seen before.
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| The HummBait can also be used on the arm of a buzzbait. |
I expect some of those same thoughts went through Paul Wright’s mind before he took the treble hook off of his HummBait and hung a worm harness behind it. If you read my first two columns in this series (if you didn’t you’ll find them in my column archives here) you know that approach paid off for Paul for Lake Erie walleyes.
The spinnerbait bite wasn’t red hot when I was at Mexico’s famed lake El Salto last summer. The bass in that wonderful lake follow patterns there just as they do elsewhere. When Bob Schmidt and I were there in late June we did our best by hanging a Smile Blade in front of our plastic worms and then fishing them right along the bottom.
But while the Smile Blade equipped plastic baits were by far the best, I did take time to show those El Salto fish the spinnerbait my pal Mike had rigged with a HummBait on the arm instead of the usual spinners. I didn’t catch a boat load of fish with it. I did nail one of 5 or 6-pounds. That fish sailed into the revised lure like it was trying to knock the paint off of it.
We also asked our Mexican guide to fish with one of the Hummbaits Mike had rigged with a single hook. While we fished our plastic baits up front, the guide fished the HummBait like a buzzer from the back of the boat. He also caught fish.
What I’ve seen done with a HummBait reminds me of how years ago I wound up altering my Arbogast Jitterbug lures. The ‘bug is one of my favorite surface lures for bass. I’m not going into details of what I did, but be assured I’m convinced I made better bait out of it with just one slight change.
As I’ve mentioned before in this series about Mack’s Lure’s HummBait, now and then successful anglers wind up using new lures a tad differently than the guy who designed them had in mind. And why not? I’m convinced fish are often keenly interested in lures or attractors they’ve not seen ten thousand times before.
If you get fish on a new lure just the way it comes out of the box---great. But don’t give up if it doesn’t. Sometimes just a small change or a different method of presentation makes a big difference in the amount of success you’ll have with it
Paul Wright did that with the HummBait for walleyes. Thanks to my pal Mike, I’ve been able to do the same for bass. I’m hoping that this gives you a few ideas you might want to try yourself.
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