We’ve been fishing a bunch of new top-water baits lately but as every good angler knows, when you’re fishing top-water, you have to have a follow up bait.
There are times when bass will flat out miss a frog, spook or other bait. When this happens, you need to be rigged and ready to fire right back in there with something that will sink a little bit but still tempt a fish into striking.
Some folks like to use worms or paddle tail swimbaits or a whole host of other plastics. One of the baits that we have found that is very effective as a second chance bait is the Strike King KVD Swim N Shiner.
The Shiner comes in both 4 and 5 inch versions with the color choices identical for either size. The plastic used in making the bait is the Perfect Plastics formula that is rich in salt as well as having the caffeine scent infused to mask human scent and oils.
As far as colors go, there are approximately ten available. Nothing earth shattering, just good solid colors that will work across a wide range of water clarities while mimicking any number of baitfish.
The packaging utilizes an inner clam shell of plastic that the baits fit into so that they aren’t bent out of shape when you’re ready to use them. Furthermore, if you want to put one back, there is a slot for each individual bait so keeping them ready to fish is a non issue.
More Than One Way To Use This Bait
This bait is usually used for more traditional purposes such as a jig trailer, an umbrella rig or on a weighted swimbait hook. While it has proven to be a good choice for those techniques, we like to use it just a little bit differently.
We like to rig it on a 4/0 or 5/0 unweighted wide gap hook. Nothing fancy, just a hook and a bait. This may be a little old-school for some but for the purpose of getting a bait in front of a bass that just blew up on your topwater plug and completely missed, it is an ideal presentation for a few reasons.
Strike King designed this lure to have a subtle action both as it swims and as it falls. The tail starts to kick immediately with any forward motion. You don’t have to jerk it, yank it, rip it or use any other abrupt motion. Just start reeling, the tail starts kicking.
Once it’s moving, the Shiner stays horizontal with little to no body roll. It’s like watching a shy kid at a school play. They’re present but trying not to get noticed.
Kill your retrieve and much like the caffeine shad, the Swim N Shiner will exhibit a nice little waggle on its slow descent.
This inherent action is the key to getting those fish that can’t seem to get a good bead on a topwater plug to eat it. It’s an easy target, an easy meal that requires very little effort on their part to destroy. It exhibits no negative cues for bass either. They are already amped up at having missed your first bait so eating this thing is a no brainer and eat it they do.
Bass will annihilate the Swim N Shiner used this way. You know, the kind of strike that just about rips the rod out of your hand. That’s the rule, not the exception, when using the Shiner as a follower.
Some Things To Think About
Strike King designed this bait without a hook envelope in the belly but with a groove on the back of the bait to hide your hook point. You might think that this would cut down your hook-up percentage due to having to go through too much plastic.
That just isn’t the case. We’ve had no issues with the bait interfering with the hook point nor has it gotten balled up on the shank causing fish to be able to easily throw the lure. It may be an unintended feature but that also helps with the durability of the Shiner.
The solid body helps in another important way, it allows for excellent casting distance on an unweighted hook. Some of the plugs we’re throwing are pretty hefty so they cast a country mile.
The Shiner can’t compete with that distance but it sure beats out a lot of other soft plastics in the long cast category.
The head of the bait is shaped so that it glides through weeds and grasses well. Without any hard edges for the salad to hang onto it is one of the more weedless soft baits you can use.
We don’t want to discourage anybody from using the Swim N Shiner for the more standard applications but we will say that if you haven’t considered it as a viable option for following a topwater plug, you haven’t gotten everything out of it you can.
| Strike King KVD Swim N Shiner | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |   |
| A great second chance bait | |
See ya’ on the water …
