I am really, really excited for this spinnerbait. Might help me get over Pradco buying War Eagle. C'mon ICast!
I am really, really excited for this spinnerbait. Might help me get over Pradco buying War Eagle. C'mon ICast!
Looks really good. Have an MSRP for it yet? I’m guessing $8-$10?
2011 Skeeter ZX225
225 Yamaha HPDI Series 2
Minn Kota Ultrex 112 52"
Console: HDS 16 Carbon
Bow: HDS 12 Carbon, Solix 12 G2, Mega 360, Garmin 106 SV, LVS 34
Do I have to say "mmmhm" every time I cast it?
No idea, Drew. I haven't got any info other than this yet. It has some premium features for sure, but they mention "affordable" in the vid.
Absolutely! ��Originally Posted by Wackyjig
that head looks like its tracking on a path in the video! looks real good! im guessing by affordable they mean cheaper than a jackhammer! lol i wouldnt be surprised at 8-10 also...especially since they mention the wire outlasting others.
So nothing until iCast? I hate iCast cuz they start previewing and dont sell until after! lol
It does have an interesting head design. The way my partner and I fish, the more vertical the bait stays, the better. Seems like it might help with that.
I'm kinda guessing $8-10 as well. It has some premium features like the Jackhammer. Just having a wire-tied skirt is worth a LOT to me. Flares better, doesn't slip and lasts.
Definitely a lot of PRO input went into these. I am looking forward to trying them. If I can get my hands on one before ICAST, I'll report back.
My guess is 10+,if the Jackhammer is selling well at 15(ish) and this has some of the same features why sell it for 8-10? I’m a spinner bait guy so I will try them if the price is not too steep.
Red Sox in 6!
So us suckers will think we are getting a steal paying 9 or 10.99 for a spinnerbait, since its not 15 or 19.99! lol Kinda like when gas gets back to the 2 dollar range after hovering at 3+ for a few weeks/months.....we fill like $2.50 is a good deal! hahaha damned oil reserves....and 10+ dollar spinner and chatterbaits! cruel world
LOL...that's the same thing I was thinking. I remember when spinnerbaits and lure sin general were a lot cheaper. I would balk at lures priced $6 plus...now good luck getting anything decent for that price.
Latest and greatest. Everyone will fall for it. Like the overrated Jackhammer and Teckel
I regret breaking the ice when I finally caved and bought a vision 110! Now im a sucker....recently started upgrading from my 20-40 dollar rods to dobyns too! the industry has their damn hooks in me....and they also happen to be KVD Triple Grips, so im stuck! lol
Ive noticed prices on baits in general have gone up a few percentage points. I remember I would never hesitate to buy a Strike King 1.5 or red eye shad at academy...but the prices seem to have gotten up and im a little more leery, and not as willing as I was before. Yamamoto Senkos have gone up in the last year or 2 for sure....like .50-.80 if i remember correctly cuz i was fresh out of GP and hit walmart....and I wasnt happy with the grand total. Sucks cuz they were already a pricey bait.
Even tho it does seem like plenty of people catch off it....i would also like to include the whopper plopper hysteria from a couple/few years ago. I have had NO luck on it....I think ive caught 2 and 1 was a foul hooked bluegill! Prolly a small sample size...but I gave it a try and just chalked it up to hype.
Ill let you know what I think of the jackhammer cuz Im finally getting to fish one tomorrow...and see if we can remove that from the overrated list! lol
One of my good friends and mentors gave me some hard lessons in tournament and bass fishing in general years ago. One of his mantras was "right time, right place, right bait" Nail those three, and you're going to catch fish. Baits are tools, and if they don't do what I want them to do, they don't make the cut. One of which is to catch fish of course. But I've also got some baits that just look and feel right, and I know if I use them in the right place at the right time, they'll work for me someday. The Whopper Plopper was like that for me, and so was the Jackhammer. Both paid off eventually, especially the Jackhammer. It won me some good $$$ this year. Now they're both confidence baits.
I've got a box full of name-brand spinnerbaits on the shelf that didn't make the cut for one reason or another. Blades don't spin, they roll over, bad hooks, no flare, wire too stiff, wire too flexible, etc. etc. Little things that make a big difference. I'm excited for the SlingBladeZ, and I'm a pretty hard sell. Hope to have a few to try around ICAST. They are going to be priced pretty competitively.
My thought with pricing is exactly what folks above said - "affordable" relative to other top tier spinnerbaits on the market, and of course relative to Z-Man's own Jackhammer.
Having just watched the video again, it really seems like design of this bait lends itself to being very weedless. I guess it's maybe driven by the sharp angle of the bend in the wire ahead of the head. This even seems to stretch to the point of the blades themselves being well shielded such that I think this would come through the grass better than most every spinnerbait I've used. The angle from the head towards the line tie seems to be a lot more "up" relative to other spinnerbaits where the line tie is positioned much more horizontally when the bait is retrieved. I think this must be at least part of why there are those wings on the head, to help push the bait down in the water column and prevent it wanting to blow out of the water. I'm sure they also prevent it from rolling. If you look closely, they're angled upward from the front of the head toward the hook which would help keep it down as it's retrieved. I suppose the channel on the bottom of the head is probably angled similarly for precisely the same reason.
The problem with this wire guarding the blades might be if you have fish taking the bait head first, but I'd like to think the flex in the wire would help with that.
2011 Skeeter ZX225
225 Yamaha HPDI Series 2
Minn Kota Ultrex 112 52"
Console: HDS 16 Carbon
Bow: HDS 12 Carbon, Solix 12 G2, Mega 360, Garmin 106 SV, LVS 34
Interesting thoughts Drew. I think several aspects you mentioned will lend themselves to stability. Which I believe is important in how it will come through cover. Both weeds like you fish and wood like I fish most often. A spinnerbait that rolls too easy coming over a limb tends to get hung up, in my experience. I could see a spinnerbait that isn't running true catching more weeds than one thats upright and stable.
I'm really interested to see how flexible and durable the wire is. It looks they put thought into both aspects.
It'll also be interesting to see how the shape of the head (channeled) as well as the bend of the wire works. Of course, there are some buzzbait heads designed to plane out easier. But most spinnerbait heads just seem to be utilitarian and streamlined (aka War Eagle), or designed to be baitfish-imitating (Revenge, Strike King, Booyah).
Anyway, fun to speculate. Be even more fun to fish them.
Not trying to hassle you, and im prolly just salty the jackhammer didnt catch me a 10 pounder yesterday....but are you saying that if you had NOT been using the Jackhammer (and maybe had been using a OCB or custom), you wouldnt have won that cash? Im sorry....but aside from confidence...I dont see how using a jackhammer will upgrade a mediocre day to a great day of fishing. or how it can make 3-5 pounders bite, while the dinks stay away from it.
Again...just going off my experience with it. I was really trying to get a good test drive too.....changing depths, retrieve speed and things like that. To me its a chatterbait that starts slightly quicker and stays a bit lower in the water column (but still rises and blows out). Thats all i saw outta it. I started a thread where I cry about how cheap i am and not catching big fish on a jackhammer...sorry for leaking that into here! lol
No problem. It's a fair enough question. And I think this particular subforum is civil enough to have good discussions like this. To question each other, make suggestions and help each other learn something. That's why I tend to post here about actual fishing stuff (not in the Lounge)
So, here's how the Jackhammer became a confidence bait for me, and it wasn't just because of one tournament. It was really over the course of two months, two tournaments and several practice days. To me, tournaments are the ultimate proving grounds because fishing can be tough. It always seems we are faced with some adverse conditions on tournament day, usually weather but could be water levels or fishing pressure. So even if we had a good practice, getting a bite on tournament day becomes tenfold more difficult.
1st tourney in March at a big Missouri lake. Prespawn staging pattern. Fishing in short sleeves by lunch. We had a very solid squarebill and chatterbait pattern going from the week before to the day before. I had forgotten most of my Jackhammers at home except for one green pumpkin. The fish were on chartreuse/white or white though. My partner had a couple Jackhammers I had given him, but I threw just a standard chart/white Chatterbait. It caught fish on practice day too, including a nice 5.5-6lber. That night, a cold front rolled in, bringing drizzle and dropping temps about 40 degrees. We fished in insulated Guide Wear all tournament day. It got tough, and that's an understatement. Squarebill bite shut down completely. My partner threw his Jackhammer all day, and I threw my original. He caught our only two fish. Obviously we didn't get a check, but we didn't zero either.
Second tourney: April- We had another good prespawn pattern going. Jerkbaits were catching green and brown fish in clear water areas, and chatterbait and spinnerbait were working in stained areas. Something changed tournament day, but I have no idea what because it wasn't the weather. We hit a window early and caught 3 good fish on our first bank on spinnerbait. The next pass produced a short, and then nothing. We hauled water in other similar areas, and headed for clear water. Jerkbait produced only a couple shorts, and wasn't happening like it was only two days before. So we started running back through some areas throwing spinnerbait and Jackhammer. Lo and behold, that Jackhammer filled out our limit from the back of the boat and we won a couple G.
So, there's a couple instances just this year where its produced when the chips are down. Is it scientific? Absolutely not. But I don't know how you could actually prove those fish wouldn't have hit a different bladed jig. All I can tell is that it's produced when we needed it, and that has given me a lot of confidence to throw them.
It's not a magic bait, by any means, but I think it is special. One is just the mechanics of how its made with premium components to help ensure it doesn't fail when a big fish is on. The other is just that intangible part that's hard to prove, except by whats in your livewell. Maybe its the sound, maybe the action. It's kind of like prerapala vs. new wiggle warts. Guys that fish the Ozarks a lot tell me (and I've seen it myself) you can catch fish all day long on the new wiggle warts when they're biting a wiggle wart GOOD. It's when the fish aren't biting anything good that the pre-rapala shines because it will still produce.
Sorry, that response ended up longer than I planned! Didn't mean to write a book.
Yea....my posts tend to get very longwinded too so I feel ya! lol
Makes sense....and nothing that I could disagree with or say is unreasonable. I think the "not scientific" part you mentioned is what the marketing is really about...prolly cant prove it either way, but if you had a gun to your head youre throwing the Jackhammer 10 out of 10 times given the choice! Hell....id prolly still make that choice an im not impressed with it at all! LOL
Ive never hammered them on a chatterbait...so its prolly an uphill battle with me to begin with. But i think all the hype just got me with the jackhammer since people were making it seem like a boom box under water that would call all the fish in like it was $1 you call it at the fish bar!
The bait does look great...and is definitely better constructed all the way around and that cant be denied. Expecting the same with this spinnerbait...ill pay the $10-15 itll prolly be just to try it...but I got hopes for this one since its hand tied...and really looked like it was running on a path in the video! help it stay in that water column spot you want....just hope the make a 1 oz or bigger version too!
You basically hit it on the head. Given the choice, especially on tournament day, I'll throw the Jackhammer. Mainly due to the fish it has put in the boat this year. But also because I like the features. The hook, the keeper, the hand-tied skirt, Decoy snap, etc. Just knowing it has top-of-the-line components gives me extra confidence.
I did see an underwater video of the Jackhammer, and it does make a clattering noise. Don't know if the regular Chatterbait does or not.
Sorry to hear you haven't had the same type of success with it. I go through periods where say a spinnerbait or crankbait just works better. I wouldn't give up on it. Early spring seems to be the "magic" time for a chatterbait, though it can work well in the summer and fall too. Lot of people have success on green pumpkin, but I can't say I've caught a fish on that color. It's crazy what works for some doesn't for others.
I'll post back when I can release further details on the SlingBladeZ.
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