The topwater bite is starting to pick up around here especially in low light conditions. One of our favorite ways to catch bass is with walk-the-dog type lures. If you look back in the archives you will find a review that we did on the Reaction Innovations Barely Legal Vixen.
I don’t know the whole story as far as why that bait seemed to disappear but the Paycheck Baits Repo Man is the re-incarnation of that plug in its larger version.
The Repo Man uses either the same or a similar high resonance plastic in the construction of the bait as well as sharing the varied types of rattles. Those being tungsten in the rear with glass beads in a separate compartment in the head of the bait.
Between the two distinct tones and the plastic, this creates a unique sound signature for the Repo Man. So the real question is, does this thing catch fish?
Fishing The Repo Man
Honestly, we have caught a number of fish of varying size with this bait. The one that surprised me most though was only about 7 inches long. Now I know that there are times when you gotta’ go through the dinks to get to the donkey’s but when the fish you catch isn’t much bigger than the lure itself, you know somethin’ is going on. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of this little dude but it was an odd sight to say the least.
The Repo Man walks with ease and is armed with three very sharp trebles to keep fish buttoned on when they strike. You really have to work to get them to shake a hook once they have this bait. In our experience, more often than not, the fish hook themselves in more than one place as they are fighting, trying to spit the bait. Which of course, just pins them tighter resulting in even less fish lost.
There is however a flip side to this. If you’re fishing over grass, slop or other surface impediments, you now have three trebles to clear as opposed to two. If you’re a believer of keeping your hooks clean, you will spend more time to accomplish this with this bait than you would with a plug that uses two trebles.
The Repo Man is 4.75 inches and weighs in at 3/4 of an ounce. The angler can flat out put this bait into left field without a great deal of effort. The feathered tail is a nice touch although personally, I am not convinced that it elicits more strikes than a non-dressed hook.
Durability
On the issue of durability, our baits now have several battle scars on them. The paint has scratched up a bit from the strikes that we have gotten but that hasn’t dissuaded more bass from eating them. Just a side note here, the strikes that we’ve gotten on the Repo Man have been, on average, very aggressive.
One in particular, I had a fish knock the bait out of the water, missing it in the process and causing the fish to breach. If you’ve never seen a bass do this, it is flat out cool! That fish did come back and eat the bait after I let it sit for a few seconds followed by one twitch.
The tail feathers of our baits suffered the most in our testing with fish ripping them off fairly quickly. But again, that didn’t stop more fish from biting the lure.
The Repo Man retails for about $17 which, in our opinion, is on the expensive side for a bait in this class. This is not to say that the construction doesn’t warrant it. However, with this as a consideration, the bait won’t scare you spitless to use and lose but it’s no fun to break one off either.
If you’re as big a fan of topwater fishing as we are, the Paycheck Baits Repo Man is a welcome addition to your arsenal but you might consider using it a little more selectively than you would cheaper alternatives.
| Paycheck Baits Repo Man | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |   |
| Decent addition to topwater arsenal | |
See ya’ on the water …