The New Huddleston Deluxe Weedless Grass Minnow Swimbait.

Huddleston just released a new bait! The New Huddleston Deluxe Weedless Grass Minnow Swimbait. Available for ordering NOW Exclusively at the Huddleston Store Only.. I have a batch of them and will be writing my own review soon, but for now you can read it from a Pro.

Posted with permission from Huddleston Deluxe:

The Huddleston Grass Minnow

By
Matt Peters

Lake Guntersville is a very weedy and highly pressured fishery.  Yes, there are  a lot of good fish in Guntersville, and it’s a prime swimbait fishery.   When Ken told me about his grass minnow, my eyes lit up.   The fish had been busting on small bait in the grass a lot.  It was hard to get the fish to eat though.  They had seen every topwater, fluke, spinnerbait and buzzbait you can name about a million times.  Guntersville receives a lot of fishing pressure.  There are tons of tournaments each week, and it’s a destination for most anglers in the South East to come and go big fish hunting.

The Grass Minnow is a perfect tournament style swimbait.   The bait is small enough to get bit by keeper bass, yet able to coax the four and five pounders too.   The Grass Minnow  is approx 3” long and weighs about 3/8 ounce.   I fish it on 15# P-Line Halo florocarbon, a 7’2” Shimano Cumara fast action rod and a Curado 200 SF.   You can cast the bait like a bullet.    You don’t necessarily need tons of casting distance though when fishing around the weeds.  You need to hit the pockets  and casting “lanes” that present themselves in the grass.

The Grass Minnow has a single hook that is hidden in the body of the bait, making the bait incredibly weedless.  The line tie is at a horizontal plane, helping the bait be more weedless and less susceptible to catching loose grass between your line and the line tie.    I tie a Palomar knot to the bait and go to work.    The bait has the Huddleston patented swim: very tight tail kick and incredible lifelike swimming action and just overall realism.  The bait is an anatomically correct baitfish and is incredibly realistic.

When I got the Grass Minnows and fished them for the first time, the weather and conditions were just right.  Calm conditions and fish busting everywhere.  I was able to throw ontop of busting fish and in the areas they had been busting and was able to catch fish otherwise too smart to be caught.    As well, I was able to just cover the water, fishing the pockets in the grass and the submerged clumps and get  the fish to come out and eat the bait.  When the fish eat the bait, your rod loads up and its more of a spinnerbait style hookup than other swimbait type bites.   You want a soft tip on your rod to allow the fish to eat the bait and load up properly.  You could fish the Grass Minnow on 8-10 pound line if you wanted to or had to.  The water clarity at Guntersville was 2-3 feet in the clearest areas around the grass.

The Grass Minnow has now caught fish for me downriver at Lake Pickwick and I’m confident I’ll be catching fish in Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas….heck wherever there is grass and bass.  It didn’t take me but an hour to find success with the right conditions on the Grass Minnow.  When the fish are keyed in on small baitfish around grass, this is the bait to throw.  You need relatively clear water though.  The Grass Minnow has subtle action and doesn’t throw out tons of vibration like you’d need in muddy water.  Stained water is okay, but the clearer the better.

Double Rigging:  Because of the horizontal line tie, you can tie on two baits at once and create your own school of bait in the grass.  Tie a Palomar knot to the first bait and thread the tag end of the line thru the line tie like you would when rigging up a drop shot.  Then, tie on the second bait and you’re ready to rock with the double rig.  The double rig fishes a bit slower and you need to jerk/pop the baits, not just swim them. The lead bait will quiver and shake while the back bait will swim along.  It is just a killer look that few fish have seen.   When bass are eating in the grass, they are often chasing little pods of baitfish…not just one baitfish at a time.  This double rig is going to help you better fool those fish keyed in on little schools of baitfish.

I’ve lost a few fish on the bait, but for the most part, the hookup ratio is outstanding.  You need a proper rod with a soft tip to let the fish load up and eat the bait.  The fish tend to inhale the bait and you pin them right thru the nose.   The Grass Minnow is made with a quality single hook and is sharp and strong, nothing to worry about with regards to the hook.   The bait will get ripped and torn a little with each fish, but will still fish strong.   I have a bait that I’ve caught 10+ solid keeper to 3 pounders on and its still swimming along strong.

We all would like to be throwing the bigbaits all the time in the tournaments but that’s just not reality.   This is a perfect bait to throw in a tournament to fill up your limit and give you the time to focus on upgrading.   And for the guys who are just looking to catch fish, this bait will put fish in the boat and fishes very nicely.  You don’t have to do any special rigging or fine tuning.  Just tie it on and got to work.  If you’re catching them on the Grass Minnow, sooner or later your going to have to try to upgrade though.  Like, put the Grass Minnow down, and then reach for your 6” Weedless Huddleston and go to work!

Contact Matt Peters:
Email
Southernswimbait.com