Entry 81-1

Why Shaw Grigsby Likes Bleeding Baits

Why I Know Red Works

Editor's Note: Shaw Grigsby, a 47-year-old angler from Gainesville, Florida, has earned $1,194,655 on the BASS circuit, has had 43 top-10 finishes, has made 10 Bassmaster Classic appearances and has won eight Bassmaster tournaments. Grigsby also has a TV show titled "One More Cast" on the Outdoor Life Network (OLN) that airs from January through December on Saturdays at 9:00 a.m. and appears again two more times during the week.

Grigsby: The first time I tested the power of red hooks I was fishing a Strike King Kevin VanDam Wild Shiner jerkbait. When I first threw the bait out and jerked it by the boat, I told my fishing partner, "Watch, this." When I jerked the bait again, those red hooks began to flash like neon lights. To learn what the red hooks looked like underwater, we got a film crew to go underwater and photograph the Wild Shiner with the red hooks as we jerked the baits through the water. On the film, you can see that the red hooks reflect light every time you jerk the bait and flash like red blinking lights.

After I saw the tape, I said, "Okay. Red hooks really look good to me, but will the red hooks increase the number of fish I can catch? Will fish bite the red hooks more readily than they will the black hooks, gold hooks and/or silver hooks?" So I began to fish this jerkbait for a lot of different kinds of fish and caught largemouth bass, peacock bass, snook and two tarpons on it in the canals of Miami, Florida. Tarpon are pretty finicky. I've hooked them from time to time, but I rarely ever catch them. But on the day I tested the red hooks on the Wild Shiner, I hooked and brought two tarpon to the boat and had two more tarpon attack the bait. From this test, I learned that even really-finicky and hard-to-catch fish, like snook and tarpon, would attack and try to eat the Wild Shiner with the red hook.

Because I haven't talked to a bass yet, I don't know if they attack the red hooks because they believe the bait is bleeding, or because the red hooks put off a bright, different color flash in the water that triggers bass to strike. However, I do know that these red hooks cause me to get more bites and catch more fish than conventional colors do.

I've conducted an experiment that I believe helps prove that using red hooks will increase your amount of strikes. Fishing pros put on demonstrations in large aquariums that usually have a large number of bass swimming in them at consumer fishing shows. I took a little red laser pointer that cast a red light that many business people use to point out certain details on an overhead projector and/or a PowerPoint presentation and cast a red light into the aquarium. I watched as the bass tried to eat the red light. So, from that small example, I can conclude that when bass see a red flash in the water, they'll attack it.

The Bleeding Bait Diamond Shad

A lipless crankbait, like the Diamond Shad, is a lure that you can fish all day long. You can let the lure sink and fish it through whatever depth of water in which you believe the bass are holding. You can fish it slow, or you can fish it fast. If you need it to run shallow, fish it on large diameter line, or reel it faster. If you want to fish it deeper, you can decrease the line size and reel it slower and cause the bait to go deeper. You can fish it in grassy situations or in open water, and it looks just like a shad. Most people across the country will have at least one Diamond Shad in their tackle boxes.

By putting the bleeding bait hooks on the Diamond Shad, it not only rattles and gives off a flash from the side of the lure, but the red hooks on the bottom of it cause it to give off a red flash as though the bait is bleeding, which doubles the effectiveness of the Diamond Shad's ability to attract and catch bass. Now, we've put red hooks on the front and the back of the bait because when a bass attacks a shad it can see underwater, the bass can see the size of the bait. Generally the bass will attempt to inhale the entire lure.

When you add the red gill stripe of the bait and put the red dot on the Diamond Shad, you have a lure that imitates a shad in every way, but more importantly, looks like an injured, bleeding shad. The bass is like a lion that will attack a herd of zebras. A bass will always attack the zebra that it's most likely to catch, and that will be the zebra that is crippled, hurt, bleeding and/or young. Therefore, even if you swim your Diamond Shad through a school of live shad, you drastically increase your odds that a bass will take the Diamond Shad because it looks injured and crippled, before the bass will attack other shad in the school.




 

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