Tournament News Powered By Lake Drive Marine
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Bullet Weights Report
Bullet Weights Offers Mr. Crappie Add-A-Hook With Snelled Hook
Bullet Weights now offers the popular Mr. Crappie Add-A-Hook with a snelled hook to allow even more pole-in-the-water time.
The Mr. Crappie Add-A-Hook makes fishing easier and more productive by eliminating the time and effort needed to tie knots. Anglers can create a double fishing rig in seconds rather than minutes. The Mr. Crappie Add-A-Hook design prevents slipping for a perfect hook set on every bite.
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Tokyo Rig Now Offered with Heavy Duty Flippin’ and Worm Hooks
Tokyo Rigs will bring even more bass into your boat with VMC’s release of two new models: one armed with a Heavy Duty Flippin’ Hook, the other with a Heavy Duty Worm Hook.
Imagine a drop-shot rig on steroids – with a big hook and indestructible metal leader. That’s a Tokyo Rig. It comprises a Heavy Duty hook, barrel-swivel, welded O-ring, and a 2-½-inch rigid-wire dropper arm to which you can attach a weight or two of your choice. The original model featured a Wide Gap hook, but the new Flippin’ Hook and Worm Hook models make the innovative fishing system more versatile.
“There’s three hooks bass guys use – now we’ve got all of them on a Tokyo Rig,” says Rapala Pro Mike Iaconelli. “There’s nowhere in the water column where you can’t fish this rig and catch big bass.”
A Tokyo Rig will trigger more bites than a traditional offering like a Texas Rig, because it allows you to impart much more action to your favorite soft-plastic beaver, craw, tube or worm.
“You can leave your bait in one spot and just kind of shake it and get a lot of free action out of the bait,” explains Rapala Pro Seth Feider, a Bassmaster Elite Series contender. “The bait’s not really held down by the weight. It stays up, suspended from the bottom.”
The new Heavy Duty Flippin’ Hook Tokyo Rig excels for flipping solid-body, soft-plastic baits, like beavers, in submerged vegetation. The Heavy Duty Worm Hook Tokyo Rig is perfect for pitching smaller soft-plastic creature baits and worms around heavy cover.
Tokyo Rig can dramatically increase your hook-up ratio as well. Its innovation is positioning your weight below your hook and bait, away from the impact zone during the fish’s initial bite and your ensuing hookset.
Easily customizable, a Tokyo Rig can carry enough weigh to flip heavy cover or punch mats. To keep your weight(s) in place, simply use narrow-nose pliers to bend back the end of the rig’s rigid, 2-½-inch dropper wire.
The straight shank on a VMC Heavy Duty Flippin’ Hook features a double-spiked baitholder with opposing barbs that lock on softbaits. Heavy Duty Flippin’ Hooks come in three sizes: 3/0, 4/0 and 5/0. VMC Heavy Duty Worm Hooks feature a 3-degree offset point, which dramatically improves your hooking percentage.
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VMC Report
New VMC Bladed Hybrid Treble Adds Flash to Your Lures
We’ve all seen a fish make Mike Iaconelli freak, but soon the tables will be turned. Ike is outfitting his favorite baits with the new VMC® Bladed Hybrid Treble, the tweak that makes fish freak.
“We’re in a day and age where making your bait stand out from the norm is so important,” says Iaconelli, a VMC and Rapala® Pro.
The Bladed Hybrid Treble does just that, making your favorite baits extra-fishy by being extra-flashy. It comprises a small silver willow blade attached by a resin-sealed split ring to the back of a 1X-strong, wide-gap, short-shank, high-carbon steel VMC Hybrid Treble. On the split-ring, the willow-leaf trailer can rotate 360 degrees, so a bait’s built-in action can make it kick out in any direction. Each time it does so, it will catch any light penetrating the water column and flash.
“That little extra flash in that bait is a triggering mechanism,” Iaconelli says. “Every type of baitfish I know of, if it’s a forager swimming in the water, guess what? It flashes.”
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Zoom Report
Zoom Rolls Out Versatile Z Craw Worm
Zoom Bait Company announces the release of the new Z Craw Worm, which combines the body of the company’s Mag Finesse Worm with the tail of the ultra-popular Z Craw, to create a package unlike anything the fish on your home waters have seen before. It provides exactly the right combination of bulk and finesse to create a profile that will lure fish under any conditions.
Veteran tour-level pro Dan Morehead played a key role in the Z Craw Worm’s development. His home waters of Kentucky Lake are the epicenter of “high-hopping a worm” and “stroking a jig,” but the fish there are educated. He took a cigarette lighter to two of his favorite offshore baits to produce something altogether new. “They see a lot of ribbon tails out there, but they acted like they’d never seen anything like this before,” he said. “It has a good hard action and a proven profile. I was only able to keep it under my hat for a little while.”
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G. Loomis Report
Aaron Martens
One of the most consistent anglers in the professional bass fishing ranks, noted angler Aaron Martens will be relying on G. Loomis’ complete line-up of IMX-PRO and NRX bass rods in 2020.
Martens left Enigma to join the Loomis Pro Staff team.
The former Bassmaster Elite Series pro who now competes on the Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour, Martens notes that similar to the performance he has with his Shimano Metanium and Stella reels, he’ll be on the water with rods consistent in performance and that can enhance his known natural fishing ability.
“I’ve been a lifetime Shimano reel fan and came to realize I needed that same on-going quality, technology, innovation and performance in my fishing rods,” Martens said. “With the G. Loomis brand being part of Shimano and being aware of how they have taken rod manufacturing to a next level, I had an easy decision once they asked me to fish with all the high-end G. Loomis rods.”
With G. Loomis’ expanding rod line-up for the bass fishing market, ‘having someone with Aaron’s credentials from both his fishing expertise and tackle knowledge shows bass anglers our commitment to continue to grow the sport,” notes Blaine Anderson, field marketing manager for all the Shimano brands, including G. Loomis.
While fishing the technique-specific IMX-PRO, GLX, NRX and Conquest bass rods, Martens will interact with G. Loomis’ product development staff on future rod introductions. “Knowing the special passion Aaron has for bass fishing and quality tackle, we absolutely will want to rely on his input,” said David Brinkerhoff, rod product engineer at G. Loomis.