Favorite swimbait brand

I see rock hopper and danglin use grubs, but they often seem to add a whole squid. that's cheating,  .

I'd like to try trolling the grub bodies with just a hook behind a dropper weight. one day when the conditions
aren't so great for drifting I'm going to try that.

Have you ever tried the cheap 'shad' bodies? I had one I got in a lot of used stuff off ebay.
molded, not hand poured. but very durable and cheap. you have to slice the heads off them before rigging.

put a 6"-er on a 6oz head and fished it this year, both as a weight while trooching and as a swimbait over
the reef. it got sliced and diced and pulled and I never
got a single taker to the surface. no idea what was happening, but it would not stay hooked up.
hook gap was fine... sharpened the hook like five times this year. watched it in the water, the body doesn't move much but
the tail vibrates fast. that jig sat perfectly level too. wondered if I was going crazy.

a fish trap is much more sinuous, but this thing was getting hits.

hooked up about 4 times on something that pulled drag on that thing on saturday.

then the duolock opens up and the cursed lure is free.  .
put a 7" fishtrap on a 6oz spire head on the same dulock and pulled up a good red first drop, no drama.

I think that one lure was cursed, but I have one more of those things. I'm kind of afraid to use it now.

J

The very first light tackle trip I ever went on we used a 3 way set ups with a 3" grub at the business end.  This was like in '91 on the old Huck Finn.  Simple technique and we slayed. 

art, I thought you just use live bait? a 3" grub is small, that is for blues and blacks?

how about with an 8" or 11" grub?  .  To gain confidence I might try a 6" grub first.

that's the nice thing about a grub, there's no up and down really so you can just put a hook in it and pull it.

I use the live stuff when I want to specifically target lings or I'm too lazy to properly work a jig.  90% of the time I will throw 1-6 oz iron.  Generally, I will only use rubber on light tackle which for me means lighter/smaller baits.  That 3" grub set up was dropped on 10 lb line with a light bass stick and it caught many lings.  That was a radical concept in the early 90's man.  Standard gear was at least a 20lb stick matched with a penn 500 and alot of people were still using 4/0-6/0 gear left over from the 80's.  Because I was like 12 people would always try and educate me......or think I was stupid for bringing a knife to a gunfight.  I still get that sometimes.