Small Bait Changes With Drastic Hook Up Results

All right what's going on so i am getting up bright and early in the morning before daylight actually gonna drive a little ways and go fishing haven't been fishing in probably a week over a week probably have not been fishing since what day is it hunter 27th probably haven't been fishing since the 20 19th and you're itching i'm itching itching to go fishing but we've been out here the shop actually tinkering around quite a bit lately got me some uh little rubber skirted jigs tied up on the old ace head got me a black and blue one or two tied up got some stuff ready a little bit of rubber and you know there's a couple things i always look for probably two or three main concepts that i always look for just about every single bait that i really throw you know whether it be vibrating jigs crankbaits everything is kind of goes hand in hand it's like a couple key principles that i always try to key in on number one is your hook you sharp hooks obviously number one i use gamakatsu that's what i have the most confidence in but the biggest thing is how the hook actually relates to the bait so you know i'm out here tinkering crankbaits all the time always messing around with a bunch of crankbaits constantly i've got boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of crankbaits i probably have more crankbaits than i have caught bass on crankbaits what do you think hunter you think so i've caught a lot of bass on crankbaits though a lot of them still got more crankbaits i have heaps of crankbaits but here's the deal probably some that will never see the water some that will never see the water there's no doubt but the deal is i've got a lot of confidence in a couple of different types of crankbaits and i just throw them throw them throw them throw them then something new will come out and i'll have to order them you know we all do it everybody does it i'll order me five or six of a new bait that comes out and if i get five or six of them well there's like four good colors i like and i gotta get three of every color so now all of a sudden i've got 12 and then you know but hey they make a medium dive or two so i gotta get two of every color now like so now all of a sudden i've got 20 and then all of a sudden i gotta have me an entire gamakatsu box absolutely full of crankbaits is not what this is these are actually frogs that ultra receipt's not looking too bad now no it still looks pretty bad yeah it still looks pretty rough but anyways these principles kind of carry over from one to the other you know like i change crankbait treble hooks religiously the good thing about so you know some brands come with good hooks some don't but the good thing about you know i'm looking to be sponsored by gamakatsu but this right here is the treble hook that i like the absolute most you can see my little handwriting right there it's not very good but this is the g finesse treble and that's kind of how i store them right there i'm out you can see over here i am completely out of the size that i throw the most which is a five a number five is the one that i like the most in this treble hook and it's what i use for a lot of dt6s you know a small squarebills little johns all that type of stuff i use the number five size treble hook on front and back and some of my homemade balsa baits i have that's why i throw the most so i'm completely out of them and there's a reason for that i had like this row this row and this row absolutely full at the beginning of this year and now i'm out because i changed treble hooks religiously i feel like i have a lot of confidence whenever i'm cranking that i'm gonna land most of the fish that bite yeah sometimes they're gonna jump off sometimes you're gonna lose them and you know that's just how it goes whenever you're fishing with any type of a bait but especially a treble hook bait but i still have a ton of confidence that i'm gonna land them because the hooks that i use so changing treble hooks is always extremely extremely important but i'm gonna show y'all a tip right now to pay attention to in case you're gonna change treble hooks you know on your own and all your baits all that type of stuff you can see right here on the bottom of this crankbait if you can see that treble hook is laying perfectly streamlined between the split ring and then the eye of the hook is right here and then the treble hook lays effortlessly on the bottom of the hook if i had that crankbait hook turned exactly 180 degrees the treble hook would still have the loop on the same size but the third treble hook that's sticking out would be pressing into the body of the actual bait and what that would make is that treble hook is never going to lay perfectly against the body it's always going to be in a little bit of a bind so i don't have that split ring in a bind i was gonna have that treble hook a little bit of a bind and then you're also going to have two hooks sticking off to the side and they're not going to stick out quite as far if you know a fish does bite it's not gonna have quite as much clearance below the actual bill of the treble hook so if you have two of them sticking out sideways they're not going to have quite as much away from the body and then always on my treble hooks i always try to put the back treble hook see if i can get this on there i always try to do it about exactly the same and then have one treble hook sticking up that's what i always do i seem like you know a lot of times you'll have fish you're fighting one crankbait and you'll see them come up and you're like oh they barely got it they got one hook but if they get that one hook in the roof of their neck and right through the roof of their nose right through their snout whatever you want to call it that seems to be a super high landing percentage fish for me so i always put that treble hook on back facing up and i also feel like it gets hung just a little bit less when it's like that but that's not the biggest determinant for that but that's the way that i always set up treble hooks and every crankbait kind of has the hardware turned a little bit differently and you kind of got to scale it for whatever you've got like some returned the exact opposite way so i'm putting a perfect line down the bay of the hook vertically swim horizontally across the bait and you just kind of got to play it by ear and see which way the treble hook fits the most effortlessly because that's going to make it have the best action in the water so do they come stock like that typically almost all of them come stock like that like i get tons of crankbaits in from you know sponsors or whatever off you know shop carls whenever i shop there all that type of stuff i get crankbaits in all the time and 90 percent of time both treble hooks turn perfectly like they're exactly how they're supposed to be but every once in a while you'll see one and whenever after you've done it for a while and you know what to look for you'll see one that kind of sticks out to you and you'll say hey that's not right and it'll be straight out of the box straight from the factory straight from you know the supplier and it'll be turned just a little bit you know that's how it came from the factory so you know when somebody maybe a machine puts them on maybe a person puts them on my hand i really don't know how they do it in in the factory but more times than not they're rigged up right every once in a while you'll see one that's rigged up a little bit wrong so i always turn it i always get it going the way that i like to have it going and it's not near as important on extremely hard thumping baits baits that create a ton of vibration on their own seems to not be as important but when you have some of these more subtle cold water crankbaits you know like any of these flat sides or anything like that those are the ones where it's the most important to have everything super streamlined because you don't want anything off whenever it's coming through the water so it hurts your depth it hurts the action of the bait hurts a lot of things and a lot of times it'll hurt how how well you hook the fish so that's my crankbait tip that i've been going through for a lot you know i've caught a couple recently some that even i've put on you know they've got aftermarket triplets on so i know that i put them on myself and won't be turned perfectly so i know i make the mistake i see them from the factory sometimes that's just one thing to look out for another thing to pay attention to is whenever you're throwing frogs and it's not really the time of year to throw frogs but man they are fun to talk about and they're fun to think about and it's fun to go watch old youtube videos that i posted that have some frog fishing going on so frogs come out of the pack perfectly weedless that's what they do like you can run your fingers all down the side what i'll do is i'll just grab a trusty pair of pliers and i'll grab the hook right here in front of the leg just like that and i'll just bend that hook away from the body that's what i do on both sides actually bend that hook out from the body just give a little bit of clearance on both sides now if you're fishing in very heavy vegetation this is going to be you want to minimize how much you bend it but i still do bend it just a little bit so in open water i bend them probably eighth of an inch away from the body in heavy cover i just bend it just enough to where it catches my fingers wherever i go rub it down the side of the frog so you can say frogs are designed to be weedless i bend them out that's just something that i do that's kind of biggest tips that i can give anybody is pay attention to exactly the fundamentals of how the hook is going to hook a bass and what that bait does in a bass's mouth because you know i've got a wall of soft plastics behind me way too many way more than you ever need way more colors than you'll ever need but guess what color is not that important you got to get a baseline of the certain type of forage that you're imitating you have to get a baseline of that so you want black and blues you may want a couple reds in a certain colors you want some green pumpkins you want some pearls that's about as far as it goes and the reds they only buy them for about two months out of the year seems like so they will buy them all the time actually they'll buy red all year round but there's a couple times a couple months out of the year where they seem to really favorite but other than that it's all about clarity how well can the fish see the bait so i don't have a top secret color that catches on better for me than anything else because i don't believe in it i just throw what i feel like the fish can see the best in the environment that they're in an environment being watercolor visibility in the actual cover that they're in and then you know the time of year kind of dictates it a little bit usually in the summer bluegill are more light colored all that type of stuff seem to lean on green pumpkin a little bit more in the winter time seems like the fish can't see quite as well so i go a little bit darker a little more black and blues a little more chartreuse a little more reds all that type of stuff a little more bright whites all that type of stuff whenever they are winter time wherever sun's not hitting the earth at the exact same angle there's not as much light penetration in water so i'd use a little bit colors that are easier for them to see so when he says color doesn't matter he means like the variations of green pumpkin and the variations of black and blue he doesn't mean that like you need one black and blue color you need one green pumpkin he doesn't mean that like that color doesn't matter just all the different variations with like the different flakes yep and specs and like the green belly like that that's not a big believer in you need green pumpkin blue or green pumpkin purple or green pumpkin whatever you want to call it whatever the colors are green pumpkin magic i just think that you need something in that ballpark you need a black and blue in that ballpark and then you need a white that's about it that's all you need i keep three colors in the boat literally of every bait that i keep so see what else we're going through find a little something else to talk about nothing that i do religiously is i trim skirts you know this is a jackhammer chatterbait no secret to it this one has caught a bass or two i have knocked the eyeball straight off of this thing and you know that's going to happen whenever you're skipping docks and whenever you hit a post every now and then or hit a boat lift or something sorry to all you dock owners on the local lakes but i have been beating y'all stuff up for the past two months but anyways this is kind of just how i want to imitate a profile so you can see i'm trying to kind of match some three and a half three to three and a half inch thread fin you see i trimmed the skirt down right below the hook about a quarter inch below the hook and i actually took the trailer that i'm throwing which is a little swimbait trailer and i cut about a quarter maybe maybe a half probably a half inch off the tip of the head of this thing and made it you know just a three inch swimbait on the back of this chatterbait so i mean that's kind of one of the things i do a lot i do it with jigs you know if i i know if i want to throw a junior size chunk or if i'm gonna throw a full size chunk i'll completely change how long i leave the skirt how short i trim it below the hook all that type of stuff it also depends on if i'm fishing for a lot of spotted bass i'm gonna trim stuff i'm gonna kind of shrink it down some one of the main reasons why that chatterbait had a smaller trailer had a smaller skirt i was fishing on the lake that had a lot of really nice size spotted bass in it so i want to make sure that i had something that those fish could get really well and also could still draw a big large amount of fin so i trimmed skirts down a lot i matched it to the trailer a ton i spent a lot of time you know making sure the baits are absolutely dialed in so i'll show y'all something else that is actually a little bit of a newer bait this is a new one from which you know you can tell i'm about to pull out actually that's a gamakatsu i'm gonna pull out actually a more of a one of a competitor's hook and show y'all kind of one of the things that i look for okay so here is a competitor's hook you can see that hook point is pointed let's get it focused in that hook point is pointed almost directly at that line tie let me show y'all the new one from gamakatsu this is what makes me favor some things over the other and you know if the if the competitor's product was better i would just use it i may not say it out loud but i would use it so you can see how much higher how much elevated that hook point is above that line tie all that does is and obviously this is a you know swim bait hook with a blade hanging off the back of i think it's called a spring lock spinner is what it's called i believe but you can see how much more clearance how much more gap you have on that hook you know so whenever you're trying to dial in the hooks you want to use the baits you want to use that's the main thing main thing i pay attention to is how much clearance i have how much gap i have the way that hook is going to penetrate that fishbowl so that's one of the biggest keys i can tell y'all look for is look difference in those two hooks and it's one brand is not always superior every once in a while there'll be a different brand that is really good at one thing they have one technique that they really specialize in they got they got the best setup for it gonna be another brand where you know they got the best setup for something so kind of shop around look around and try to find the best hook for every single application but that right there is why that new you know underspin style screw lock weedless underspin that i've been throwing is the new one that i actually didn't have any a year ago but now i've been throwing a ton because i've had way better hookups i have not been losing near me fish i used to lose a ton of fish on those types of baits and now i just don't seem to so let's see so i was talking about treble hooks how i'm completely out of treble hooks and a good reason for that is i've been throwing jerk baits a ton recently i've been throwing a bunch of different kinds bunch of brands all that stuff but jerk baits take three treble hooks and whenever you throw them g finesse it gets a little expensive there's a bunch of them on there three treble hooks hanging off that sucker but it's definitely worth it whenever you land most of the fish that bites so lots of different see if i can find one right here let's find one with the g finesses on it yep here's one this is the this is an exact jerk bait that i've been throwing this off season actually actually weighed in a couple really nice ones on this thing not long ago so there it is with the g finesses on it boom sticky sharp one of them was a really nice spotted bass close to a three pounder actually had it hooked behind the head and you know that's usually torture when you've got a spotted bass that fights like crazy hard to land them but land them on this thing super impressed with them hooks what else we got hunter what other kind of stuff we got to talk about what you want to see i think you did a pretty good did a pretty good job we've been out here just organizing you know trying to take care of stuff you can see how my g box is down there just got them absolutely loaded with stuff the basic thing i wanted everybody to know is just because you buy from a store doesn't mean you can't change it oh so what she want to do with this video is like five or six modifications for baits and that's one thing so i'll show you one thing that i do sometimes on most jigs you don't really have to do it on the ace because see the gap between that hook point and that line tie really really good gap but i'll actually still take a pair of pliers put it right there on the base of that hook and just bend the hook up just a touch just to give it even more clearance so i didn't hurt the integrity of the hook didn't do much at all just gave that hook a little bit hold it straight just gave that hook a little bit more bite so whenever the fish gets it i know i'm gonna get that fish in you know because a lot of times people just manufacture these things and it's to be pretty yeah when it needs to be functional so you need to visualize how the bass is gonna bite let's face it like 50 percent of what these companies are trying to do is market to fishermen is to get them to buy yeah get people to buy it they don't really care what happens after you buy it there's only a handful of companies that take pride in actually what how their products perform all that type of stuff so like they just want you to buy the product and then not think about it anymore hopefully you catch some on it so you can buy another one but for the most part that's the thing that i just try to tell people is like don't get caught up in the small stuff that doesn't really matter but the line you use is very important that's your link to the fish the hooks you use are very important the way your baits are actually set up and the way they hook the fish very very important and then you know so don't be scared to tinker yeah don't be scared to tinker like i get right it's just because you buy them they were twenty dollars you can change the way well i know $20 is expensive bait now yeah i can think of a lot of times where you have that thing jackhammer tied on and you don't even want to skip it under a dock because you're like decent chance it ain't coming back out from under there but you got to do it it's better to change the $20 bait and have their hook up right yeah tinker with it yep that's right and i mean i was thinking about chatterbaits whenever i mentioned that do you remember that chatterbait bite you got under that uh that floating dock that one time and it like blew up on it where i don't even know where we were at but you like skipped it so it was like a floating dock and it was under the the walkway to the floating dock oh yeah that was a lake fork and a shad spawn yep it was you saw on gopro footage no i was in the boat i don't know where that was we were fishing a tournament oh me and you were yeah i don't know i feel like it was like maybe didn't you follow but it was like an insane was it a big one yeah it was like three and a half four yeah that's pretty good one for there i can't believe you don't remember that fish i don't remember i don't know i've seen too many swim jig bites in my life this is what happened i had been throwing it throwing it throwing it and then you picked it up skipped it out of there remember you you were trying to get the backlash out or something and you just like threw it up and then the fish came up i don't remember i remember because i had been throwing it back there for like three or four hours and then i handed it to you to fix it and then you well i apologize for catching one of the bait you've been throwing no it was a cool bite so another thing guys is it's off season been tinkering obviously i've been tying some skirts i've been putting some different colors together what kind of colors do you want to see in the untamed tackle jigs the ace the apex got something else cooking a little bit of something else cooking gonna be pretty cool but what kind of colors do y'all want to see in these baits you know anything that y'all really like can't live without you know that's what i kind of want to know and i've been hearing a lot of good reviews on the ace for almost two years now really really good stuff if you have any complaints with it let me know you know let me know anything goes wrong whatever you can dm untamed tackle let them know but any kind of cool new colors y'all thinking about let us know because you know i'm not that creative i keep it simple if y'all have a color y'all can't live without maybe i need to try so i appreciate that but what else we got oh just rigged the boat up got mounts on it got half the grafts on it that are going to be on it because that stuff is backwater got my engine all the way broken in and what else we got power poles on it i don't negative two we got lithium batteries in it we've got everything dialed in in the new boat so won't be long to be boat walkthrough video so that'll be really really cool too you know it's always cool get a new boat i've got you know a few years in a row now i've got a new boat but it's still really cool because we've already posted videos on the boat couple sneak peeks couple little sneak peeks but there's some cool new features on the boat this year that i really like make it more user friendly you know boats are going up it costs a ridiculous amount but it's always nice to see boat brands listen to the fishermen you know because there's certain little things throughout the day or throughout the year or the months or any time of year that it just makes a big difference you know it's cool to see little changes that really really help so that's awesome okay hunter likes the hunter likes the front trim buttons on my new boat because you can get away your foot like they're big they're like that long that wide and you can press away your foot which has been i mean most of these boats have had a little toggle switch it's that long and that wide you got to hit it with your toe or bend down and pick it up or they got a little hole that you got to ring with your toe that's hard to do yeah or top of the panel or anywhere weird so this this is actually the best trim buttons i've ever seen on a boat as far as from the front if i start getting shallow water i reach over my foot and trim it up almost never trim it down from the front like it's very rare that i trim it down from the front but almost trim it up all the time because i'm dumb i like to go really shallow and really expensive brand new boats but that's where the fish are that's where i'm going kyle's also done because he has his shop and he's been rigging out in the cold yeah been rigging the boat out in the cold if only i had a garage that could back the boat into maybe next year let us know any like small tips or tricks that y'all do to your baits yeah y'all got some something cool that i need to try while i'm tinkering out here let me know what else we got over here we talked about that was all secret baits over there i got a rod rack right there from 13 fishing actual rod rack holds much rust i wanted you to show them how you make your bait keepers bait keepers or is that a secret oh like a like a flipping hook yeah is that a secret no that's not a secret we'll make one of those up might have to pause it though because all right got dug out my what is that nifty hook box this is extra hooks these go in the truck not in the boat this thing weighs like i don't know what do you think 400 500 pounds at least 37 it's hot it's it's heavy okay obviously not 400 pounds but it is very heavy so i'm gonna show y'all one of the flipping hooks i've been using a lot still a couple small things i don't like about this but there is one major thing that i really like about it and that is that i can dictate the actual length that the hook keeper is away from the line type and what that does is gives your bait a different angle on the hook so sometimes you want your bait to be at a 45 degree angle down on the hook sometimes you want your bait to be extremely straight and changing the actual height of the bait keeper on the shank of the hook changes that so leave me a comment if Gamakatsu should let me make a flipping hook that's like this show it to them get it see if i can get the hooks out so this ain't it this ain't it also got a thing to hold bunches of line with i'm pretty happy with that actually because it makes it really easy for rigging i have to rig a lot of rods for go to tournaments and that helps let's see what we got trying to find i'm trying to find here they are all right so i keep straight shank round bend worm hooks by the hundred tons of them just went dark on them so this is a hook that i really like flipping this floor carbon flipping hook i don't flip braid on this and i can close my hook box back up set it off to the side all right there it is there is the see if i can get get it in focus and not me and then i've got this little shrink wrap thing actually first time i saw this um was from taku who's sponsored by ray yugi and i saw another pro jason williamson using it also so slide this little shrink wrap up on the shank of the hook and then you actually get you a handy dandy lighter keep it pretty simple get you a lighter shrink wrap it on down turn it make sure it's the right angle get it how you want it on the hook i press it together it burns you just a little all right toughens you up toughens you up a little bit and this has been one of my favorite flipping hooks all years just like that sometimes i'll trim this little excess off a little bit too long after push it together but certain baits that have a very subtle action like i flipped the 13 fishing invader a ton this year that bait has a very subtle action and that bait does not perform well when it's at a 45 degree angle on the hook a regular style beaver bait whenever you're punching you want to be at a 45 degree angle on the hook because when that fish bites it the hook is at a different angle and actually gets you a better hook set especially whenever you're snelling it just gives you more leverage going through the bait through the roof that fish mouth all that type of stuff i'm using thin soft plastic baits that is kind of the difference like the gap between line tie and this i tie a snail nut in there a lot of times and then put the bait on there so that's something that i've been doing for less than two years for sure i would say probably a year and a half two years something like that so haven't been doing it for super long but really really a fan of this like super happy with this me i've caught a lot of really really big ones on it you know it's just kind of a thing that i like to do just because i like to tinker around with the way stuff falls and fall rate and the hooks and stuff so this is what i spend my time doing when i'm trying to figure out better ways to catch bass it's always something involving hooks and landing them i focus a lot on trying to land them not trying to get the bite because i feel like getting the bite is all about where you throw not what you throw can't catch them if you ain't throwing in front of them so that's kind of the way that i feel about it spend your time figuring out how to land them and find them because that's the two most important things not get them to bite if you're around aggressive ones they bite no surprise there is it hunter another big key if you want to be better on the water be organized you know like be able to find the stuff you're looking for you know i keep all my hooks in little bags like that i just i've done this for a long long time now i actually got this idea years and years and years ago whenever i was ordering tungsten weights and the tungsten weights that i was ordering came individually in packs in one pack like that had a tungsten weight so obviously i'd order 35 tungsten weights at a time i'd put all the halves in one all three eights in one then i have 20 extra bags so let's put my flipper hooks in there and put flipper hooks in there then it kind of cascaded from there so now we're pretty dang organized this box is actually ready to start the season got everything in there that i need for at least the first two tournaments probably the first four tournaments might have to make an adjustment after seminole because we got okachobe first then seminole but this box is completely loaded up for those two for sure and it might be loaded up even for a couple more but i'm gonna have a break in the middle a month-long break in the middle so better revisit reorganize re-figure out what we got going on so this right here that's been what we've been playing with for the past little while see if we can get that damikis underspin spoons all that fun stuff on ford face sonar i know some people don't like it but in my line of work you ain't gotta like it but you gotta use it you better use it anyways so organized and mess with the hooks scale your baits down correctly and you got something so i put my hook box back where my hook box goes he can do that but he can't let's see i'm lucky i wear the striker outfit where striker clothes and i guess they're like magic because i just walk in the house take them off throw them on the floor and like two days later they're folded up back in my closet so shout out to striker for doing that sending me the lucky clothes the uh whatever you want to call i guess they're lucky blessed whatever you want to call it but i just throw them in the floor and all of a sudden they're hanging hung back up or folded back up so shout out to striker for that i need like a patent on those types of clothes what you think hunter that's pretty cool ain't it you like how they do that yeah that's pretty good i've seen them do it they just they just appear back in the closet shout out to striker all right what else we got to talk about happy holidays happy holidays happy new years christmas just make sure your bait looks like the fish that they're eating make sure you match the hatch yeah that's right that's all i got that's all we got appreciate it guys about to load the boat up got a couple more rods put in there a couple baits got a whole stack of baits actually because the boat has nothing in it not a single hook in the entire boat so got me six of these g boxes and this is actually what my soft classics are in right now because i know where i'm going don't want to show y'all the side too much but i know where i'm going so this they'll fit in this box in this box in full so that's all the stuff i've got put in the canvas see y'all