The Ultra-mini Spinnerbait - A stealthy fish catching machine

It’s cold outside today. Not as cold as it should be, but still, it’s cold. I wish it wasn’t. I wish I lived in Florida from December 31st through April 31st - Maybe one day. I’ll make the best of it though and talk about another key piece of my fishing arsenal this upcoming season.

The Ultra-mini Spinnerbait is actually a lure of my own design, based specifically on the substructure of a Johnson Beetle Spin, with the addition of a small yellow-green/chartreuse colorado blade and a Bass Pro Shops panfish tube. My choice of tube colours are All-American Sparkle or Mellon Candy for daytime and Pumpkin/Chartreuse Pepper for dusk/dawn and evening. I like using a white or black or pink jig head with this combo. The key here is to keep everything small. Ultra-small. I throw this bait on 12 pound test, sprung from a Daiwa Silvercast Spincast sitting on a medium action rod.

Topwater Bottom Line: Bass eat fry-forage fish, bugs and other creepy crawlies that scoot around sub-surface in tiny packs! This small safety-pin style lure mimics all of them. I toss this little guy everywhere, and it has remained my key search bait for the past few seasons. Bass slam it on splash down, on the drop and on straight retrieve at any speed. The Original Johnson Beetle Spin is great out of the box - but if you modify a few Beetle Spins like I described above - at 1.75 a pop they’ll trounce the much more expensive and hefty spinnerbait options available. As always, please practice catch and release with this lure.

Topwater Rating:

5 out of 5 bobbers

This demure bait is great in its original form. With a few tweaks it rockets to awesome.