I have touched on this before and wanted to write a little more about it, making your baits your own ! What I mean by this is experiment with different things, sure they work just fine off the shelf BUT sometimes you want to stand out a little more and have what you are throwing that day look a little different.
These are some Optimum Baits in this picture, huge musky swimbaits that are very well made for the price. I love to keep learning about different things and always wondered why manufacturers never really focused on putting gills inside the gill area of the baits.
I came across a video of YouTube where a guy was suggesting using red pipe cleaner to make gills inside huge soft plastic swimbaits. You basically trace out the gill line in the bait with a small knife cutting it open a little so you can put the pipe cleaner inside and use some glue to secure it in place.
Honestly never thought of that myself, pipe cleaner to make gills in baits. As you can see it looks pretty cool and definitely will be an advantage especially if I fish these are dying bait fish at the bottom of some deep water. When fish are ready to die they flare their gills open and closed so this look will be very close to resembling that.
In the past I have used red garlic scented markers from the fishing store to trace in red lines where the gills are but when I saw the pipe cleaner idea in that video it was just another unique way of making your baits different !
Do you have to do this kind of stuff, NO but is it fun experimenting with stuff like this “YES” it is ! Whether you cut off some tentacles from a tube jig, snip up your flipping jig by making the strands a lot shorter, they key thing is you have taken a step to make your bait stand out amongst all the rest.
Give it a try you may just see on those days where people are using the same baits, yours may be the only one getting strikes !
The AMFisH guy…