Transcription
Hello, so strong Nation. Joe Simons, like diamonds. Hey Luke Simons, like diamonds. We're talking about three lures that you should be using, and then three lures that you should not be using. This is going to be tailored a little bit more towards not newbies, but beginners and kind of Weekend Warriors; people who are just a little bit newer to inshore saltwater fishing, in particular, newer to using lures. Because, if you remember from last week's episode—we talked all about what does it cost—maybe it was two weeks ago—but what does it cost to get into inshore saltwater fishing and like how simple it can be if you're completely brand new? Go follow that blueprint; that's all in the fishing school as well. And that was just, hey, get a cheap rod and reel combo. You can get some at Walmart, and just get some shrimp and go to a bridge—either on foot, kayak, boat, whatever. Um, so this is more for people getting into lures. There's a lot of confusion; like, if you go to a big box store—man, which I would say you shouldn't—um, unless you want to get overwhelmed—but it's overwhelming. There's, there's aisles and aisles of different lures and jig heads and hooks and rigs for it. Uh, so we're going to try to simplify it and keep it simple and say the three that you need, like three that you should be using and three that you should not be using. And two of them—actually, probably all three of them—might surprise you. So all right, let's uh, let's kick it off, Luke. What are the three they should be using right now, just to keep it simple?
Yeah, this is again, this is for just keeping the basics. This is the most efficient way, the most efficient arsenal, I should say, that I found to consistently catch fish throughout all regions I fished—all around Florida, even over in Texas and uh, and in between in many cases. And these lures flat out work all season long. So they're not always the best, of course, but they will almost always work as long as you're in a good spot. So, and let's repeat that real quick; that's worth reporting, repeating, because so many people hear, "Oh, you guys just say the Slam Shady is the best." No, we don't. We say like it works everywhere; that doesn't mean it's always the best. Okay. Yeah, so, so for advanced anglers, basically, unless you're an advanced angler, you should not have—like, you can't, you shouldn't even be able to fill a small tackle box of lures, in my opinion. You should only have two or really at least three. And and we'll we'll share those. And again, it's all about keeping it simple. If you're not catching fish, it's almost always due to the spot you're in, not the lure you're using. If anything, the lure—sing it, brother, sing it, brother—and if anything, the lure is fine, and you're just not in the right depth, right? The fish—if the fish is on the bottom after a cold front or in the heat of a day, they're not going to come up and smack a topwater lure or even a lure that's going down, you know, two feet. But uh, but if, if, if you're in a shallow flat and you get that two-foot lure, you're going to be catching a ton of fish. So uh, so we'll talk about depth control, but let's go ahead and start with lure number one. And Joey kind of referenced it; it happens to be a paddle tail in Slam Shady color. But this is—you don't have to get this exact one—but basically, you get a three-to-three-and-a-half-inch paddle tail. They they call them swimbaits as well, but this is just a great all-purpose lure. It is shockingly effective. It doesn't require any fancy retrieves. You literally can just do a straight retrieve, and this tail will be moving in the back, and it makes it look like a just a like a lifelike lure, lifelike baitfish, and it gets results. This is the lure that I was able to get a ton of underwater strike footage on for big, big trout, even up to 24 inches, even with a camera right in front of it, following, you know, basically in front of the lure; big trout were coming up and smacking it in super clear water. So great lure; if there's baitfish in the area, this lure is going to get some action. And if you want to keep it simple, go with white, right, or some sort of pearl. If you can get some gold and silver flakes, like we have in that Slam Shady 2.0, that's what we use. If, if anyone who's fished with this, they will report, "Yeah, man, those guys…" I have a 100 pack of these at any given time, because that's what I go through, and I share more than anything else. It just flat out works.
And just for a little bit of science, too, the reason why white is so effective is because what fish see is basically whatever is in between them and the lure. So if the water is tannic, they're going to see a brownish lure because they see that that color of the water, um, that is basically reflecting back at them. So if you use a a lure like this, it'll automatically match to the color water that you're using, so you don't have to worry about getting 40 colors of one lure. In fact, I, I recommend just going one. I literally, if I'm fishing for myself, even tournaments, I just take one color per lure. Um, I found much better results switching lures than switching colors. But again, that's only if you want to get pinpoint results. For just catching fish, this this one lure, as long as there's baitfish around, this is really hard to beat. And this is on a—what is that?—a quarter ounce… this is on a quarter-ounce jig head. This just—that's just a good all-purpose size. You can basically get fish anywhere from like a foot and a half, two feet of water down to about five, six feet of water, which is very kind of the the norm for, um, for, you know, redfish, seatrout, and snook. Obviously, if you want to go deeper or shallower, you can use a different rigging option. This is just a soft plastic; rigs on all sorts of jig heads plus weighted hooks, so you can really cover the full spectrum. That's why, again, lures like this are very versatile versus like a plug, for example, that you really can't, you really can't control the depth quite as much, or really much at all, in most cases. And uh, on that specific jig head, what is that? That's the round… this is the Helix round eye. So I like the round shape for swimbaits, um, just because it's just all-purpose; it does good with just swimming through the water. Also, if you want—if the fish are really finicky—and and we we show you retrieves for this in the fishing school that Joe mentioned—both rigging and retrieve tips—sometimes if the fish are finicky, you have to kind of bounce it along the bottom. And so the round shape has an advantage over the others because it can do both, right? It does great bouncing bottom, and it does great swimming. Um, and a bonus is, once you get more advanced, it actually skips well up under docks and stuff, too. But again, for I think for most listeners, this is more about just getting uh, the right type of lure and then matching the depth to where the fish are hitting. And in most cases, that depth is really the the depth of the water; most of the feeding happens on the bottom, even though the topwater strikes are way more fun; most of the feeding happens on the bottom. And so to maximize results, get your lures down toward the bottom. And again, lures like this can be customized for whichever depth you're fishing, which really is why they're so effective. All cool. So that's number one on lures to use. What's number two?
So number two—sometimes there aren't baitfish in the water—and in those cases, then I go with the default Prawn USA Junior; same size, three-and-a-half-inch size. Like this works all season long. Yes, sometimes the bigger size is better, but it's very rare when, when there's, when you're in a good spot and this doesn't get results. So again, just I want to emphasize, we're not saying that these are the best lures in all cases, but what I'm saying, based on what I've seen as well as a lot of members that that we've taught over the years across all regions, that these two lures, if, if used in a good spot, will almost always, always get at least some results. So it's very hard to go skunked if you're using these in a good spot. And they can only go with different ones, in my opinion, once you're, once you're catching fish and you want to catch either the biggest ones or you want to catch a little bit more. But again, if these are in a good spot, I, I and I'm using them, I, I'm just fully confident that that they're going to get some good results. And in fact, even just recently, we, um, this was what was used down at the Keys, right? Whether it's super clear water down at the Keys, we had one of our—I won't say one of our best days of permit fishing—by far, our best day ever of permit fishing. We caught five permit just around a public bridge that everybody fishes, and we were using these lures in super clear water and getting some crazy good results. So clear water, murky water, everywhere in between, these lures flat out work. So if I'm not seeing baitfish, but I am seeing some feeding birds, I am seeing some signs of life, then I, I assume that they're, they're feeding on crustaceans, and that's when I switch to the to the prawn, which, if you're listening and not watching, that is a shrimp profile lure, the Prawn. And that's at Fish.com. And it's the same jig head, right? Same as—looks like same exact jig, right? Keep it simple. You basically get a pack of jig heads and two packs of lures, and you've covered the first two lures that we've talked about. And as far as this lure, too, there's a lot of shrimp lures out there, and I've tested almost all of them. I can't say I've used them all, but I've used a bunch. And there's a lot with like a bunch of fancy antennas sticking out and legs hanging on the bottom, and I, I, I actually recommend against those. They look cool to humans; they sell great to humans, but fish don't buy it. Fish do not—it just doesn't look as natural in the water. You want a lure, a shrimp lure, that glides nice and smooth. Fish, or sorry, shrimp, when, when they're not spooked, they, they just go straight, you know, forward in a slow manner. They're not all jerky; that they, they aren't that the fish aren't looking for the legs moving around. So this has a perfect shrimp profile in a smooth glide. And then when we twitch it and then let it fall back, that's what really triggers the bite in most cases. Again, the fishing school will, will show you the exact retrieves that gets the most strikes, but even doing a straight retrieve works, or we're kind of jigging along the bottom. And just like before, right, I like these round jig heads because it works great for the swim, just a straight swim, or for doing the twitch, the twitch retrieve, or bouncing off the bottom. So good—again, just a good all-purpose combo—for same thing. So, so in this case, the fact that we don't have the tail on the end now, we can have, we can reach a little bit deeper water, so because obviously the, the tail, the drag of the tail doesn't let the lure fall as fast for the paddle tail. So with this one, with a quarter-ounce jig head, this now will cover, say, like two feet of water down to about eight feet of water, plus or minus. And in that case, with the permit, we're actually in about 12 feet of water, but we just weren't getting down on the bottom; those those permit were feeding higher up in the column. But uh, again, just a seemingly simple lure like this can perform shockingly well as long as you're rigging it properly and retrieving it properly. And again, those tips are all in the fishing school, which we highly recommend going through. And what is number three?
On number three is, is a little bit of a, of a kind of a surprise, and it's really the first lure that we showed, just with a different rigging option. So again, just to keep it super simple, you don't even need to get three different lures; just get two lures. Oh man, saving money for people already! Here you go. Yeah. And and it's two rigging options. So what I like about this, when I'm fishing—which I'm often fishing shallow grass flats—most of my biggest trout and redfish and snook, in many cases, too, are caught on this type of, of combo where it's just a nice paddletail, right, three and a half inches, rigged on a weighted, a weighted hook here. And you can see this point of the hook is flush with the body, and I can even make it really weedless if I'm going in, in like around oysters and I need to be super weedless. I can basically Bally skin hook the point, and now I can cover the two-and-a-half feet of water in shallower extremely well while being weedless. When the fish hits it, it'll expose the point; still has a good hookup ratio. But fishing shallow water, this combo is extremely hard to beat; sight fishing or just blind casting, this thing flat out works. And that's the Slam Shady 2.0 paddletail on a Helix—what? 1/8 on that one? Yeah, this is a three—the three-ought size hook is perfect—and the 1/8 is a good all-purpose for a weighted hook, right? Once you get more advanced, you can—we have a 1/16th and a 3/16th—but the 1/8 is, is really hard to beat; it's a good all-purpose. And as a bonus, it actually rigs perfectly with the Prawn Juniors as well. So with these two packs of lures and two packs of rigging hooks, you can have a baitfish imitation for shallow, baitfish imitation for deeper water, and then the same thing, right? You can have the Prawn on the weighted hook for the shallows and then the Prawn on the jig head for the deeper water. So literally, with two lures and two rigging items, you can basically cover like 95% of the situations you'll face on the water, which is why, again, this is the best, in my opinion, the best arsenal for uh, for inshore fishermen that that I've ever tested. And, and for, and you might be asking, "Hey, why don't you use Slam Shady for the shrimp?" I've used that, too, and it works great. I, I just personally have more trust in natural for the shrimp; that way I'm not, I'm not dialed into having just one color. But uh, but yes, we do have these in Slam Shady, and they work great. I've just gone with natural, and that's where my, that's where my trust is. So yeah, again, and what, what we found—if case you've seen of our lure contests—I've done a lot of contests on, on color, and it's very rare when color has a very big, a very big difference. So it's a lot of it just comes down to confidence. You can ask 10 different people their favorite color, and you'll probably get 10 different answers, and and it's really going to come down to what they, what they use more, more often than not, um, because doing head-to-head tests—or do three casts with one, three casts with the other, and I keep doing that for hours at a time—over time, the, the, the actual results are, are surprisingly close, even when doing like a, a light versus a totally dark, like total opposites. Uh, is very rare where there's that much of a difference.
Yeah, and if you're wondering, "Hey, then why do you guys sell so many other colors in your store?" We got 50,000-plus members, and we're always asking for new stuff, mostly because of confidence—of what Luke just said, like, right? We fish with guys who, they swear by chartreuse tail, and they catch fish with a chartreuse tail, and I'll go switch to it; I don't have the confidence in it, and I don't catch anything, right? They're right next to me catching them; I go back to Slam Shady, and I'm catching them again. So it's, it's almost unexplainable, but so much of that is just that confidence. Yeah. And a majority—there have been tests with, with, with various fish and and as far as what they respond to, whether it's uh, the, you know, action, uh, sight, or smell—and uh, and and actually, sorry, action, vibration, and smell. So visual, feeling, or smelling—and and it's, it's just very rare that the actual visual is, is, is the best. So the color's not it; it's really motion. Motion's been number one in most cases, smell, and then the, again, the color spectrum, as far as importance, is, is very far down the uh, the importance level. So, and we mentioned, too, where these colors—again, we're not saying that the best in all conditions, in all situations—there are going to be times where different colors or different lures are going to catch more fish; it's just that these are just the tried, true, tested—uh, 100% confidence that if I'm using these lures and I have them rigged at the right depth for what the water's showing, then I have full confidence that I'm going to get at least something. And then for the more advanced anglers who really want to, again, go, go for just the, you know, the upper slot redfish—like for tournament anglers—that's when you need to start getting a bunch more lures because that's when you're going to need to, to really fine-tune exactly what those bigger fish are dialed into. Cool. All right, well, let's go to the three lures to not use, especially if you are newer to inshore saltwater fishing.
Yeah, so, um, again, there's, there's—uh, really any of them other than these is what I, what I would say for a newbie. Just again, just to keep it simple, get really good at just these couple lures I talked about, and it's going to, it's going to help make the uh, the growth into lures and catching fish on lures much easier. But as far as what not to use, I'll start with one—actually, one of ours—and uh, and so topwater. So for, for a newbie who's, you know, kind of struggling with fishing, you probably shouldn't use topwaters yet. Yes, this is more fun; I personally—this is my favorite—especially like in the fall season; uh, it is an absolute blast, and it works extremely well for those who are good at using it and and are really good about picking spots. But it's very situational; it's, in many cases, that just, just a very short window of time during the day, and and and again, it does require more skill, using it; you have to actually do a lot of effort to make it look good. So although this thing does—this is one of our new colors—it does look nice and pretty. Like, literally, just like a mullet. Although it's—I'm very proud of it—this thing looks awesome. If I had, if, if I was going to only have one lure that could fish the rest of my life, it would absolutely be this one, compared to this, this other one that's way more expensive and looks what much nicer. This, this 2.0 Slam Shady on the, on the on a jig head or weighted hook is just flat out extremely productive across the entire—usually across the entire day—and again, across all seasons. So the situation, even with top, even with topwater like this, is just us being canned, right? It's part of what we do here at Salt Strong, with the most trusted saltwater fishing community. I don't think you even need the, the topwater. If you do get into topwater, it looks like, like the mullet; I almost think that's more for fishermen than fish, right? Cuz an old-school just bone or Slam Shady looking like a white—I mean, a topwater has worked for a long, long, long, long time. Uh, but you know, there are people that just like—you don't need a certain rod color; the fish don't care what color your rod is. There are people that have, that have to have the certain color braid and rod. So we do have it, if you're wondering why do they even have it, cuz we've made fun of it before. Yeah, it might catch more fishermen than fish, in terms of the, the actual design. You don't have to have it; it does look awesome. Just being canned, I will probably still keep buying the old Moonwalker and and Slam Shady, but that doesn't mean you have to; you can buy whatever the heck you want. Yeah, go with what you're confident in. Yeah, so…
Number two, and and this isn't a a dig at this lure, allll it's just any lure that's really expensive. Like this, I think was like $18 to $20 range for one lure, and that's just that's just more than you need to pay if you're if you're new and and trying to get into this. This is this is an extremely good lure for going after like big snook, where it's designed to where the hook pulls out. So really really cool. Niche lure that is awesome for the advanced angler going after specific species, but again, not something that somebody new should be fishing because this could result--right, this is an exposed hook--and for somebody new who casts a little bit closer than you should to the rocks, or uh or or you let it sink a little bit too far and gets on the bottom, now you're down 20 bucks. Uh, versus this, right? This combo, the--if you lose one of these, like this comes in a seven pack, this comes in a three pack--so this actual combo of the 2.0 with the jig head is maybe like I don't know, 75 cents or something, or a dollar, whatever. I haven't done the math, but whatever the amount is, it's way less than $18, so it's it hurts much less when you use a lose a soft plastic. And it kind of and it kind of ties in what I said earlier. I I'll I'll put in like some of the live targets--not picking on Live Target in particular, but that's those are also very realistic-looking lures, and they're really expensive lures. I'm sure they catch fish just like Spooltech can, but it's very very specialized, and you just flat out don't need it. Yep, yep. And uh, so third, again, this is another just it's really a money thing. These lures work great. This is a company that makes really nice soft plastics. Uh, they're they're again, they have a niche where if you're in an area with a lot of big fish, they they're great; they they flat out get good strikes, but they're they're like over a dollar; they're probably like $2 a piece for a soft plastic. That, if you're fishing areas where I fish, a lot of areas with with seagrass, there's puffer fish that'll basically bite through any lure that's not rock hard, and so it's really painful when you have one cast and a a stinking puffer fish will come bite it in half. So again, for that reason, I just I just I just don't recommend newbies who are just trying to get some action to go out and spend and pay for these these expensive lures. That's what I--us do. Many of those are $3 a pop; $9 for a three pack. Yeah, maybe they are. Yeah, I haven't done the math on it, but it's just way more than than I think, again, than I think is needed for for getting action. Again, these and and those are those are pretty big and bulky, so you're going to you're going to weed out a lot of fish, whereas these, you know, these three to three and a half inch smaller lures, thinner profile, it just it just increases the odds that you're going to get action. And basically what we're what we're doing, this is really just making sure that when you go out fishing, you're not going to come home home and have to tell the spouse or a coworker or whatever that you got skunked. Right? We do not want that to happen. So this, a smaller size lure that has good action, is going to get results as long as you're in a good spot. You'll at least be catching a bunch of ladyfish, a bunch of the smaller sea trout, smaller Reds can easily suck that down, and of course the bigger Reds. I've caught overs, snook, and redfish on these little lures all the time, even again, permit. Uh, I've caught keeper Cobia. I've caught a bunch of big tripletail with this little profile. This is that prawn. So the good thing about these lures is that they basically will catch whatever's in the area, right? Pretty much all predators eat baitfish or shrimp, and when you have at least one lure that you trust for each scenario--baitfish or shrimp--and and you're able to cover the shallow water in the deeper water, you're going to be getting a lot of action with a very small arsenal of lures. Yep. I went from having I just went from having like two tackle bags that I had of all my gear, and and now I have one small tackle bag, and that covers my lures and my camera equipment. So I' I've gone smaller on my tackle bag, and and half of it isn't even for fishing. So uh, simpler is better is what I eventually learned after spending a ton of money on lures. So we just wanted to to emphasize that in this uh in this lesson to make sure that that you don't have a whole closet full of of lures that are just collecting dust, like I do. And if you guys want more of this, we have a fishing school, as Luke mentioned. All Insider members get full limited access to it. That's just one of the many perks of being an Insider member, on top of saving 20 to even 40, 50% off all of your tackle in our store for as long as you're a member. Uh, we have an amazing community; we have coaching; uh, all kinds of new content going up every uh every single month to help you get from point A to point B, regardless if you're a beginner and trying to be a more intermediate, or intermediate going to advanced, and even some really cool stuff for advanced anglers too. But we've got a ton of members who have gone from beginners to now advanced to the point they're winning money in tournaments with some of these same simple lures. There, we have a couple that are actually full-time guides who have literally been able to quit their jobs and become a full-time fishing guide, all from starting in this Insider club. And uh, so it is proof it works, why we got with 60,000 members, and uh, man, a lot of really really cool things coming here in 2025 for our members. So get in; that's all at saltstrong.com. And if you want to see the fishing school and get a little taste of that, I believe we still have it a free version open; you just got to opt in for it and give us your email, uh, so that way you can communicate; it's interactive, and it's a saltstrong.com school. So saltstrong.com/school, you can go there and opt in to get some free access to that. Yeah, and if and if you want to pick these lures up, they're they're at fish.com; that's our online tackle store. And and again, I mentioned they come in seven packs, so here's the 2.0, seven of those; the Prawn USA Juniors, seven of those; and then the jig heads are are in there as well, right? And we give we even have a rigging chart, just so in case you're fishing some um some different depths, like deeper water, we have a rigging chart that'll make sure that you have the right rigging options for whatever depths uh waters you're fishing. And so anybody can get these, right? These aren't just for members, although members do save at least 20% on all this tackle. So so if you are if you are either serious now, or you think you're going to get serious into fishing, I highly recommend just trying out the school. You you have a guarantee that that you're catching more fish, and that way you can save money on on this tackle, as along with getting, you know, all these all these different resources that that members have for uh for being a member. That's it. Member, member. All right, guys, appreciate you big time. Stay tuned for the next podcast, and make sure you go to saltstrong.com, join us in the club, get access to the fishing school, and buy some of that tackle. Simplify your gear. Appreciate y'all, and talk to you on the next episode.