Baby Fat Shad 3'

[THROWLUCK]

Anyone pour and fish this bait from bass tackle.com... how's the action and what hook size/brand do you prefer.

Thanks.

[mainbutter]

I pour the 5'' (the biggest version they offer).

LMB over 2.5lb will chomp it, as will pike of any size. I lose a ton of the tails to pike, which makes the lure unusable, but I just remelt the body again to recycle the remaining plastic and pour a new one. I went through five of these out fishing yesterday, but the inserts are cheap and reusable, and it doesn't take much extra plastic when you recycle old beat up/chewed up baits.

The action is great. With the aluminum insert and a 1/0 treble giving some negative buoyancy, this swimbait swims right at the top of the water, so you can get a wake-bait thing going along with the paddle tail action. The tail really just has a perfect wag to it, and if you need a comparison to another lure, its cadence is very similar to a suzie sucker.

If you want a swimbait that swims deeper, this probably isn't the lure you're looking for. Even when I let it sink to the bottom, on the retrieve it quickly rises right back to the surface. Then again, maybe if you could come up with a lead insert or salt your plastic for added density, it might swim deeper, I haven't tried yet.

[Ed Brabant]

I have the 4 and 5. I converted them to injector style. I had a plate made that screws on the top of the mold with 2 openings. One is just behind the insert. That is where i inject the plastic with a Bears medium injector. The 2nd hole is on the top of the tail. It is smaller. It acts as a vent hole. As I inject the plastic in the cavity I lets teh plastic come out of the vent for a count of 5 then I put a cold butter knife over the hole to seal it off. Any trapped air comes out of the vent hole rather well. If I want a multi color I first pour the 2-3 colors as you would normally then I screw the top plate on and inject the final color. When the cavity is full I hold pressure on the injector for 45 seconds. This helps remove any heat sinks from the plastic shrinking. The plastic gets sucked out of the injector to make up for any shrinkage. I also did it as a colored tail. I first did the bait in the color tail I wanted. Then cut the tail off and put it back in the mold. Then shot the 2nd color. I quickly found out that the tail covered teh vent hole. So i added a vent hole next to the injection hole. I still have a few bugs to work out of tht part but it looks promising. I also use lead weights I modified the pins to position a 3/16 for the smaller mold and 1/4 for the larger mold. I used roll pins in the slot where the pins are to position the weight. After I demold the bait I glue the weight in place. With Grip Loc glue. The baits are completly filled with a nice square top. The tails don't have any holes "heat sinks" at all. I am thinking on the smaller one as well. What size hook are you guys using on the smaller one? I was stripper fishing Monday night in the flats on the Merrimac river with the 5' bait and landed 2 around 23". That is with my freshwater flippin stick. My son caught on last week 42 on his spinning rod "bass rod" and the 4" swim bait.