Swimbaits are the current rage among trophy largemouth bass hunters, especially in California, where bass in excess of 20 pounds have been caught on them. But the swimbait phenomenon originated among landlocked striper fishermen. In the 1980s, a handful of West Coast reservoir striper anglers were trolling big wooden plugs they handcrafted to mimic the stocker-sized rainbow trout that were routinely put in their small lakes. Stripers pretty much regard an 8- to 12-inch rainbow the same way you or I might regard a medium-rare, bacon-wrapped fillet.
Early swimbaits like the A. C. Plug and Z-Plug were mostly jointed and had a highly erratic action when trolled or retrieved. The majority lacked a diving lip, so they stayed shallow when cast or flatline-trolled. Many striper hunters fished them on downriggers or wire line.
Then a funny thing happened. The Golden State striper crowd began catching giant largemouth bass on their homemade swimbaits. This created an explosion of seismic proportions among California’s big-bass anglers. Once word got out that those behemoth bass wanted a swimbait for supper, demand for the big lures became phenomenal. A cottage industry of swimbait artisans was born. A bassin’ buddy of mine from Los Angeles recalls, “All at once there were so many guys out here making big wooden trout plugs in their basements, it’s a wonder there were any table legs left in the state.”
From the moment I got my hands on some of those early California swimbaits, I new they’d work on stripers. But they were so expensive I didn’t dare use them, especially in the snaggy Cumberland River near my Nashville home, where 40-pounders are common and broken lines routine. It wasn’t until luremakers like Storm began producing them out of soft plastic that these lures became a viable option for me and for thousands of other striper nuts nationwide.
Livebait Alternative
Landlocked striper anglers have been notoriously slow to accept new lures and fishing methods, and the swimbait phenomenon has been no exception. Topwater lures like Red Fins and livebait remain the mainstays of the freshwater crowd, and swimbaits have yet to catch on. One of the few inland striper experts I know who relies on them is veteran Celina, Tennessee, guide Fred McClintock, a hardcore striper hunter familiar to In-Fisherman readers and TV viewers. Fred has caught some real whoppers on swimbaits, and here, for the first time, he relates his experiences with these lures.
“I’d been fooling around with both hard and soft swimbaits ever since they first came on the scene and had caught some decent stripers on them; but like Wirth says, they were real expensive, and I worried about big fish busting ’em off,” McClintock told In-Fisherman. “The advent of the less costly molded soft-plastic swimbaits allowed me to fish these lures more often and more aggressively. The results have been awesome. To date my customers and I have caught stripers up to 43 pounds on them, and I’ve had much bigger fish follow or roll on ’em.”
McClintock feels swimbaits may be one of the few viable lure alternatives to livebait for trophy-class stripers. “This was driven home to me during a 2005 In-Fisherman TV trip, taping on the Cumberland with In-Fisherman Editor In Chief Doug Stange,” Fred recalls. “We started out using live skipjack herring, but as most striper fishermen know, skippies can be difficult to catch and maintain in a baitwell.
