Tournament News Powered By Lake Drive Marine
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St. Croix Report
St. Croix SEVIIN GS Series Spinning Reel
In addition to baitcasters, St. Croix’s new SEVIIN reel company has introduced the all-new GS Series spinning reel.
It offers a lightweight, rock-solid, and reliably dependable performance for an attractive and competitive retail price of $140.
“Almost two full years in design, this is a lightweight and extremely durable reel,” says SEVIIN Product Manager, Robert Woods. “Available in five versatile sizes from 750 to 3000, GS Series reels will appeal to a wide range of avid anglers, as well as more-casual anglers who appreciate elevated quality and performance. Our team engineered GS with a carbon body, side plates, and rotor to maximize rigidity and minimize weight, and rounded out the external design with strong and lightweight aluminum handles and spools.”
Woods describes the aesthetics of GS reels: “They’re unique and our own,” he says. “We designed GS to appeal to a wide variety of anglers, and looks are an important part of that. We wanted GS to stand out with a unique look that equals its performance without going to extremes. Overall, the form of GS reels is largely driven by function, but once anglers pick them up, they’ll notice a variety of subtle design details – from logo placement, accent colors and anodizing, to more functional design elements like spool angles, handle bracing, the machined aluminum handle cap, and the geometry of the foot and stem.”
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Gamakatsu Report
Gamakatsu Hybrid Tungsten Swing Head
Swing Head jigs give anglers another way to target bass on an offshore structure.
Gamakatsu's new feature-packed Tungsten Hybrid Swing Head proves that not all swing heads are created equal. With thoughtful design and quality manufacturing, Gamakatsu's hybrid head design combines the snag resistance of a football head and the action of the cobra-style head.
The Tungsten Hybrid Swing Head creates a natural-looking, slithering action that draws significant attention from nearby bass. The head design unites the benefits of both a cobra head for passing through grass and a football head for snag resistance on a hard bottom. Ideal for slow-swimming retrieves, the head increases the action of any plastic bait along the bottom. The Tungsten Hybrid Swing Head features a stealthy smoke-colored finish that blends in with plastics and your lure's surroundings to generate more strikes. The weight size is stamped into the side of each weight, making it easy to identify when it's time to make a change.
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Rapala Report
Rapala Jigging Shadow Rap
How do you follow a legend? Be you an actor re-booting a iconic character, or a new bait launching in a classic lure line, the answer is the same – innovate, don't imitate. Make the part your own. Starring now in such a role is Rapala's new Jigging Shadow Rap.
Stepping onstage after the famed original Jigging Rap became a household name, Rapala's new Jigging Shadow Rap weighs less than its legendary predecessor and glides more slowly on the fall. And the impressive newcomer’s subtle, nuanced performance as a distressed baitfish earns rave reviews from wary and pressured gamefish, inspiring them to bite.
“This is one of the craziest walleye bites I have ever been on in my life!” Minnesota angler Brett McComas exclaims in a video featured in the popular Target Walleye eNewsletter. “They are just going bonkers over it,” he said. “It's just been a feeding frenzy.”
Designed to vertically target multiple freshwater gamefish species – whether they’re suspending high in the water column, or holding tight to bottom – Rapala’s new Jigging Shadow Rap boasts a broader silhouette than its original Jigging Rap. Enhanced with belly-flashing action and modern, realistic baitfish finishes, the Jigging Shadow Rap falls seductively slowly, triggering even the most-finicky of gamefish to bite.
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By Louie Stout
Bait Pop
If you have trouble seeing your lure on forward facing sonar, Bait Pop provides a good fix.
Bait-Pop is a paste that you apply to your lure or jig head that makes the lure more visible on the forward facing screen. You also can apply it to your drop-shot sinker or even the line ahead of the lure to intensify visibility.
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Ever Green Report
Ever Green ZR-4 Crankbait
Ever Green has introduced the ZR-4 crankbait, engineered by Japan’s most advanced lure makers.
Outwardly, you’ll first notice the bait’s profile emulates the shape of baitfish and edible juvenile fish worldwide. To that, Ever Green sculpted the body with detailed eyeballs, scale patterns, and gills.
The ZR-4 features a hybrid square and concave bill. The squaring elicits a tight action that also deflects off structure like timber and rocks. The curvature displaces more water than a traditional bill, causing more disruption in the water and a faster dive to its prescribed 4-to-5-foot range.
The ZR-4’s unique bumped head and tapered tail were also orchestrated for an exclusive and precise action.
ZR-4’s color patterns are equally sophisticated. On the Green Pumpkin Gill, for example, airbrushed colors layer into one another, precisely as they’d appear on the real thing. Ever Green’s ten-color palette includes classic bass-catching hues as well as novel combinations. Patterns include Olive Crawdad, Glow Shad Dazzler, Flash Wakasagi, Magic Gill, Green Pumpkin Gill, Citrus Chart, Cold Shad and Olive Copper Shad.
Ever Green also includes fixed weights inside the ZR-4’s body to lower the center of gravity. The result is a longer-and-straighter-casting crankbait that tracks in perfect position on the retrieve. Finally, the ZR-4 includes an offset hook on the front treble to prevent snags.