Giant Smallie!

[jtram]

20 minutes ago, Mitch f said:

 

Im Sure it is a great bait, but a craw is just a tool. A tool in obvioUsly Skilled hands. My only annoyance is that SOME are portraying it as the magic bait that catches big and only big fish, and a lot of them. Kind of like the ned has been painted at times ( more numbers than size but same point ). You guys have confidence in it and know how to fish and imo that is the recipe. All that said, you are all catching AMAZING fish, congrats!

[Hog Wally]

11 minutes ago, jtram said:

Im Sure it is a great bait, but a craw is just a tool. A tool in obvioUsly Skilled hands. My only annoyance is that SOME are portraying it as the magic bait that catches big and only big fish, and a lot of them. Kind of like the ned has been painted at times ( more numbers than size but same point ). You guys have confidence in it and know how to fish and imo that is the recipe. All that said, you are all catching AMAZING fish, congrats!

 I haven't enjoyed a soft plastic bait this much in 30 years.  It makes me really really happy.  And I smile a lot     

[Al Agnew]

Of course it isn't magic.  But it is the most realistic crawdad imitation I've ever seen, and if you know how a craw moves, you can duplicate those movements almost exactly with this bait.  That's the key, along with knowing WHERE to fish it, you gotta know HOW to fish it.  I think the main input I had on it when Mitch was asking for advice was the size.  I've known since I was a teenager fishing with live crawdads that there was an optimum size range that caught bigger fish.  The biggest crawdads didn't catch much unless they were just after molting (soft shells) and the smaller ones under 2 inches never caught big fish, but that 2-2 3/4 inch size was deadly.  And soft shells were also deadly no matter what the size, and when you hunted up crawdads for bait as I did, you also noticed that the soft shelled ones moved differently, with the pincers waving a little more as they scooted backwards.  The pincers on Mitch's imitation move exactly like a soft shelled crawdad's pincers move, when it's "swimming".

So Mitch made them in two sizes, one being the minimum size in the optimum range, and the other the maximum size in that optimum range.  With the right jig head system, they sit on the bottom just like the real thing, and with the proper manipulation they move just like the real thing.  NO commercially produced soft plastic craw imitation comes close, in the exact details, in the profile, in the attitude, or in the movement.

As I said in another thread, I wasn't all that enthused when Mitch first talked to me about the idea.  Craw imitations are a dime a dozen, and the ones that were most realistic didn't move right even with thoughtful manipulation, weren't colored all that realistically, and just didn't produce fish like more generic soft plastics.  He gave me some to try and they languished in my box for months, mainly because I only fish soft plastics on the bottom when I have to.  But once I started trying them, I realized that Mitch had come up with a "better mousetrap".

[Mitch f]

Thanks Al, what some don't realize is that a lot of time and effort (as well as a lot of money) was spent on the design and revisions of the craw and jig head. There were  3 revisions tweaking it and 3D printed molds created before I felt confident enough to have the mold cut out of Aluminum. It wasn't as easy as cutting a Senko in half.