Like you, we constantly have our radar on looking for something new or unique that the fish haven’t seen before that can increase our catch. Today’s review is on one such new product, the Bombshell Turtle by Castalia Outdoors Inc. You may not be familiar with this manufacturer but they have, to this point, concentrated on salt-water offerings. Â
The Bombshell Turtle is a 3 inch bait that mimics any number of infant or immature turtle species both in size and appearance. The design is well thought out and has all the same appendages as a real turtle. Those being four legs, a tail and a head. The colors, of which there are 16 currently, are mostly muted and natural looking.
The body of the Turtle is soft with the top of the shell being slightly rounded and smooth. The underside has a split belly for easy rigging that also serves the purpose of minimizing the amount of plastic your hook has to go through on the set. So with all the perfunctory description out of the way, how does this bait perform on the water?
Rigging The Bombshell Turtle
Let’s begin by looking at different rigging options. Castalia suggests that you will get your best results by using a 3/0 hook with a bullet weight pegged to the head. They also, on their website in a video, rig the Bombshell Turtle with a weighted swimbait style hook.
We tried both and found that our preference is the latter. In our testing, the Turtle swam much more consistently and naturally when using the swimbait hook. Here, our choice was the Mustad Power-Lock Plus. As we have mentioned in our review of this product, the sliding weight allows the angler to change how the bait falls by sliding the weight up or down on the hook shank. For fishing the Turtle, this proved to be invaluable.
You might be wondering at this point if this is a bait that can be employed whether or not you have turtles in the waters you like to fish. The short answer to this is yes. We tried it on waters that do and do not have them naturally. Yes, we got more bites where turtles were indigenous rather than non-existent but still got strikes on water that had none. That could be due to the fact that while this bait is 3 inches, it is a small 3 inches. It really doesn’t present itself as very large at all.
Action
In our testing, the most effective way to retrieve this bait was by thinking about the way a turtle uses the water column. That being that they don’t just go up and down from the bottom of the lake to the surface. Instead, they kind of meander between the two as though they are riding an elevator that takes one step forward, two steps back or vice versa.
In other words, we were constantly changing between hopping it off the bottom and letting it settle and hopping it followed by swimming it for short periods at different depths. This might sound a little confusing but this is what worked for us.
As far as the durability of the bait is concerned, it is able to take more punishment than we thought prior to using it. Personally, I expected some or all of the legs to be ripped off after the first fish. A pleasant surprise is that our test samples have held up rather well to abuse from ol’ Big Mouth Billy.
Is this a lure that you should pursue getting? That is entirely up to you but in our opinion, it is one that can be effective. Between its diminutive size, unusual profile and when rigged properly, its weedlessness, it is one of those baits that at the very least, we will have in our tackle boxes ready to tie on when the bite slows down.
The single biggest negative to the Turtle is the fact that when casting, its shape catches air which cuts down casting distance.
The other characteristic that we noticed is that those little legs don’t put out as much off a kicking action as one would think. However, if you’re fishing it in amongst the cover, where it is most at home, these drawbacks are minimized.
For more information, including how to order, visit www.bombshellturtle.com.
| Bombshell Turtle | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |    |
| Unique bait for very specific situations | |
See ya’ on the water …