Yamamoto's Small Swimming Senkos
December 19, 2008
Last time we were saying that, if you can get past the fact it comes in a bag with a big saltwater label on it, then Gary Yamamoto's new 3-1/2" swimbait makes a dandy lure for largemouth, smallmouth, freshwater stripers and walleye. You can read about that here:
GYB's 3-1/2" swimbait has produced countless black and brown bass plus stripers and walleye for me almost every fishing trip since these small swimbaits first became available at year-end 2005.
Freshwater gamefish love Yamamoto's saltwater swimbaits. Indeed they dote on them.
I've settled on only one way to use it, and it is almost monotonously effective. I fish it on eight or ten pound test spinning gear with a 1/4, 3/8 or 1/2 oz stand-up jighead with or without a spinner under the chin. I simply find some productive shoreline cover - gravel bed, chunk rock, weed bed, brushy, small protrusive point or anywhere else that a bass would possibly come up at regular intervals during the day to check for and hopefully make a meal of any vulnerable critters it finds.
If I can find a 'back door' to sneak the boat up onto this shallower feeding stretch, then that's best. I will quietly sneak in through the back door and thereby put the boat directly on top of the feeding grounds. From there, I fan cast the swimbait out to the deeper water beyond where the shallow edges drop off. That's the spot where gamefish comfortably hold during the majority of the time when they're not up cruising the area looking for a lucky morsel to eat (should that read, unlucky?).
Finding the 'back door' means to shut the big motor down at a distance far off to the side of the spot in relatively unproductive water. I get a rod in my hand, get the boat and gear all ready to land a fine fish, and then use the electric motor to try to ease the boat up onto the highest or shallowest spot from one hundred yards away from where fish may be holding. That's what I mean by getting in through the back door. If I cannot detect a back door access up onto the feeding grounds, then I hold the boat in deeper water off to the side of the edges where deeper bass are staging off the area. I never, ever want to encroach on this major fish-staging location, which is off the banks and deeper out than most anglers fish. This is the overall biggest mistake I see bass boaters make. Almost to a man, they will pull up on a spot and stop the boat directly right over the deeper, off-the-edge holding areas where the fish linger most of the time. They scatter most of the fish out of the fishable area before they even click the engine off. Then they cast up where they should have maneuvered the boat in through the back door. That's bass-ackwards.
Like a well-trained cow horse or sheep dog, a bass boat can be used to help herd bait, move bait, ease idle bass into active feeding opportunities without alarming them. It can get them interested in grabbing a snack - or even used to coax them into an all-out surface-frothing feeding frenzy. A bass boat, used properly, can do all that. However, misuse of a bass boat, like an untrained dog or horse and rider charging wildly only serves to panic and scatter bass away from you. Most bass boaters need to totally rethink how they are using their boats. Until you do, you are chasing away far more fish than you'll ever catch.
Forever, we've been unwittingly instructed to find bass in shallow water with nearby deep water access. That's not right. Never has been nor will be. We need to retrain ourselves to do the exact opposite - to find bass in deep water with nearby shallow water access - and ease your boat quietly in through the back door into the nearby shallow water. Then fish from the inside out without disturbing the bass staging in deep water, okay?
The tail on the Yamamoto swimbait paddles simply falling through the water on a jig head. Exactly like a Senko as it is sinking slowly, you don't need to do anything except wait for bites as the swimbait paddles its tail all by itself down to the bottom. As with a Senko, the initial drop and the first time the swimbait touches bottom is a highly productive part of the presentation. There are many days you will get more bass on the initial drop and touch-down then on the entire rest of the retrieve. With the swimbait, it is good to cast out and let it sink about halfway down the water column on a slack line. Then engage the bail and let the slack line come semi-tight so the swimbait pendulum arcs toward you and the bottom for the remainder of its descent. You do not need to reel in. The swimbait tail paddles enticingly just from the weight of the jig head pulling it down. A high percentage of strikes come during this parabolic free-fall slide toward bottom. Once it hits bottom, just start slowly sliding it along. Any time you lose contact with the bottom, just stop doing anything. Do nothing and the swimbait will pendulum arc toward you and the bottom with the tail paddling. Many hard hits will come - 'thunk!' - while you do nothing but wait for the jig head to scrape bottom once again. As I say, it is almost monotonously effective.
A flat-bottomed stand-up style jig head enhances the bottom-sliding posture of the swimbait. Even still, there are many times I feel bass are scraping the swimbait off the bottom as it feebly flips and flops there, fallen over on its side. As I use it, I envision it as a dying shad falling toward and then lying on its side on the bottom flopping and gasping its gills.
The GYB swimbait is a great lure from Yamamoto for freshwater bass - even though it comes in a saltwater bag.
GYB's Small Swimming Senko
Regarding GYB's small 4-inch Swimming Senko (31S-series), that there's a bona fide bass bait since it comes packaged in an authentic freshwater bag. So it's good for bass, walleye, you name it.
The small Swimming Senko is said to be 4-inches whereas the small swimbait is touted to be 3-1/2 inches. Yet, as you can see, the difference in length between the two is negligible.
They go together like peas and carrots, and everything we've already said in the text and the link above, it all applies equally swell to both the small swimbait and the small Swimming Senko.
The diff obviously is one has a bulging belly whereas the other has a svelte minnow profile. But in terms of tail-swimming action and how to fish them, you can use them interchangeably.
You can use either the small Swimming Senko or the small swimbait on any plain jig head or spinner jig, and most days, it will be tough to tell whether the fish favor the slim minnow profile (Swimming Senko) or the deep-bodied shad profile (small swimbait). Most days, you can use either profile, and the fish will barely bat an eyelid (they don't have eyelashes) about it.
The small Swimming Senko comes in a wider array of colors, so you have more color options than with the small swimbait.
Colors shown from top down: #305, #925, #306, #929
Colors shown from top down: #900, #031, #901
Okay, there is a little difference in that, since the small swimbait has a deep keel shape, that can cause the small swimbait to plane up on one side or the other if the jig hook is not centered exactly. Also, if a fish tears the small swimbait where the hook bend exits the body, the small swimbait could also plane up on its side. In my many years of experience, fish really don't like a swimbait to be rigged off-center or to plane up on its side. That;s a big no-no. Your chances to attract a strike will be best when a swimbait's hooked and swims perfectly centered.
You don't have this centering issue as much with the small Swimming Senko since it does not have the deep keel to make it plane to one side or the other, and fish don't tear a Texas rig to one side or the other side like they tear a jig to the side.
Really, the small swimbait is impractical to Texas rig - the swimbait's head is too wide and its belly too thin to easily Texas rig the small swimbait.
Yet you can readily rig the small Swimming Senko either Texas style or on a shakey jig. Since the small Swimming Senko's nose is like a Senko or worm, it's ideal to Texas rig it.
3/0's about right for the small Swimming Senko on 8-10 lb spinning gear.
One tip that seems to work better with the small Swimming Senko is to keep it's head attached to the sinker with a screw-in corkscrew coil weight. This seems to cause the tail to swim harder than if the sinker was not attached.
Well, doesn't that make a fine match! Bait, jig head and hook all designed by Gary Yamamoto.
The difference and advantage of using a shakey jig or a Texas rig with a screw-in sinker is the small Swimming Senko doesn't have an exposed hook point so it will not get hung up in brush, weeds or wood cover. So you can fish small swimbaits or small Swimming Senkos on plain jigheads or spinner jigs to cover open water or deep structure until you come across some snaggy cover, and then pick up a stick with a Texas-rigged or shakey jig with a Swimming Senko to probe and pry and dissect such cover.
Great greens: Color #318 (top), #925 (center) and #208 (bottom) are all green pumpkin and/or watermelon with red.
In mono or stereo: Color #927 (center) is half #157 smoke with purple (top) and half #031 (pearl white with silver).