Fierce Lures In Package
As most of you who have been with us know, we here at MVF like our swimbaits. We almost always have one or more tied on and ready to go when we hit the water because this class of baits catches fish consistently. Today we get to take a relatively new entry into this market out on the water and see whether or not it has what it takes to earn a permanent spot in our tackle box.
The Fierce Lures Hawg Whisperer is a multi-segmented, seven to be precise, swimbait. These lures are 3.5 inches in length, weigh 1/2 ounce, have a medium-slow sink rate and come in some unique color patterns.
Design
I was anxious to get the Hawg Whisperer on the water and run it through its paces as soon as they arrived. My thoughts were that this size would really lend itself to early and late season fishing because it matches the size of a lot of sunfish that are in our local waters.
The shape of the lure, while not exactly the proportions of a bluegill, is very close to that of a number of sunfish species. It also makes use of a single piece of rubber for the dorsal fin as well as the anal fin that spans across several of the bodies segments. This in my opinion, really adds to the overall appearance of the bait. The front hook is larger than the rear which are both round bend trebles and are sharp out of the package.
Inspecting the Hawg Whisperer on land you notice that the segments are held in place by some sort of material that runs through the center of the bait from the head to the tail section. This allows the bait enough flexibility to bend into a U shape without putting undo pressure on it. All of these attributes made me even more anxious to get it on the water.
Side View
We decided to fish this on our standard, small swimbait rig. A 6 1/2 foot casting rod paired with a reel with a gear ratio of 6.3:1 spooled with 10 pound line. In my opinion, you can overpower some of these smaller baits but have not had any of those issues using this gear.
Action In The Water
So on to the water we go. I didn’t expect the Hawg Whisperer to cast like a rocket and it doesn’t. I achieved the distance that I was expecting and was satisfied with that. I counted the bait down to what I thought would put it at my desired depth and started a slow, steady retrieve. I was expecting to get some feedback to my hands but didn’t. As the bait got within eye-shot, I found out why. The rear hook had flown up and gotten hooked on top of the tail segment. I figured that killed the action. Simple enough, get the hook off of the tail and cast again.
Unfortunately, the same thing was going on this time. When the bait got close enough I saw that it wasn’t the hook this time. The bait simply was not kicking. There wasn’t any action from the tail section using the retrieve speed that I was employing. Ok, time to speed it up a bit and see what happens then.
The next cast, I allowed the bait to sink and then kind of ripped it and got into a fast retrieve. This time I was rewarded with the feedback I was looking for. The problem was that the bait had rolled over about 45% as it was swimming. Now I figured it was time to get to some shallower water and just take some time to play with it to see if I could figure the right cadence to work the bait.
At this point I do want to say that the Fierce Lures product has some excellent qualities. The colors and overall shape are exceptional, the action when it’s swimming is realistic and the components seem to be top-notch.
However, we simply were unable to get the bait to remain vertical in the water when we sped up our retrieve enough to get it
Top View Of The Bend
swimming. I don’t know if this is supposed to represent a wounded fish but it didn’t inspire much confidence in us. Try as we might, we just couldn’t get the bait to swim without it rolling and it only swam at high retrieve speeds. Unfortunately we didn’t get any strikes on the bait so we can’t attest to its hook-up ratio or durability.
Sometimes a lure comes along that while all outward appearances point to it becoming a real winner, it just gets to market a little bit before it’s truly ready. In my opinion, the Fierce Lures Hawg Whisperer is one such bait. I don’t claim to be a lure designer so it’s unclear to me what it would take to fine tune this bait. The issues that need to be addressed in our opinion are these. The rear hook needs to be changed so that it doesn’t flip up and over the tail section of the bait, the weighting doesn’t keep it running true and the swimming action should begin at all but the slowest of retrieve speeds.
Over the years, we have seen baits that in thier first incarnation, came up short of their potential and we have seen some of those baits re-worked and fine-tuned so that they were transformed to very solid performers.
While the Hawg Whisperer, in its current form, will not earn a permanent place in our tackle boxes, I personally would not hesitate to try an upgraded version of this bait.
| Fierce Lures Hawg Whisperer | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |    |
| Beautiful design and detail, needs a few kinks worked out | |
See ya’ on the water …