Hover/ Mid Strolling 101: Baits and Terminal Tackle

Video Transcript

What's up everybody, it's Polish Pete. I'm here in our studio in Gold Valley, Minnesota, at Omnia Fishing, and as promised, we're back with some more content around our brand new technique we've added to our site called the mid stroll/ hover strolling technique, which is basically a fancy way of saying Ford facing sonar pinging a minnow. That's what at least a lot of like the tournament anglers have coined it. This is an extremely popular technique that is dominating and a lot of tournaments around the country. It is an extremely effective way to catch fish. It is the newest technique to date that I can think of that we've added to our site. Now obviously in the world of fishing, there's a whole bunch of techniques that we don't even have listed on there that are much smaller and get deployed for certain species or certain times of year or certain fisheries. But our techniques on our pages are pretty broad ones that can get used all over the country. And we are asorted for, we have all the tackle for, we have an added one in a long time. And this mid/hover strolling technique is one that had to be added because it is what we're doing the volume of our bait sales in. It hasn't affected the durable side, which what we might mean by when we say durable is that it means rods and reels. It hasn't affected that side of our business as much as it has definitely affected the consumables, which are baits that people buy in the terminal tackle. And it has affected our electronic sales a lot. We're selling a lot more, as you can imagine, forward facing sonar units, transducers and things like that mounts for that. And we're selling a lot of these minnows and the terminal that go in conjunction with that for that mid strolling hover strolling technique. This video is basically just to point out to you the baits that are shining for that right now. And explaining to you kind of where things have fallen so far. And what we're seeing is a fluke minnow or a minnow style bait. Now when people have been saying fluke style bait, it oversimplifies it a bit too much, right? This Scented Jerk Shad here does look a little bit more like a zoom fluke, but there is some characteristics that you're looking for out of them. And that is their ability to roll. And this is the most popular one by far for us so far to the point where we order in large, large quantities and they go as fast as they show up. And that is the Depth's Sakamata Shed. So if you were to say who's the Senko of all the Senkos, it's the Yamamato Senko Green Pumpkin, who's got the best fish rolling minnow or hovers strolling minnow out there? Right now the king of the hill is the Sakamtta Shad as far as sales go anyway. Very dramatic rolling action to it. You see right here I've got a loop knot tied because in the tank we have seen a big difference between a loop knot or just tying directly to a ball head jig and you'll get more of a rolling action out of the minnow. The Sakamata Shad comes in several different sizes. I kinda locked it up here with the smaller ones like the Scented Jerk Shad here. And you've seen, obviously our friend Gussiy win a Bassmaster Classic with this bait. Wasn't necessarily doing that hover strolling technique. Close to it though. Demiki rigging is, can be demiki rigging straight below the boat like Gussy's deployed it or way out in front of yourself. That's what mid strolling or hover strolling is. It's technically trying to demiki rig a bait but out at the end of a cast. Which is hard to do because the bait wants to sink obviously. So there's new tackle being developed all the time to make this easier. What I showed you there were those first two minnows with the Scented Jerk Shad and the Sakamata Shad. I would say these are the two most popular for us right now. And what would be right there with them in sales would be this guy right here. Which you've seen when just about a hundred tournaments already so far it seems like. That's the Crush City freeloader. But we haven't got enough of these every time we've sold them out. So kudos to the folks over at Crush City. And there are buddies at Rapala that developed this bait. It is winning tournaments. And I guarantee you the sales be right there with Sakamata Shad or Scented Jerk Shad if we were able to get them in enough volume. These things are flying. If you see them somewhere. I know a lot of box stores have them. Independence haven't been able to keep them in stock. But if you see them in a box store, I don't blame you, buy them. You should try these things. They've been really good. Hopefully we get more soon. Next up is like this Sonar Minnow from Yum. We play to this. This to me would be your best kind of bang for your buck. It's really inexpensive. And they do work. They come in a bunch of different sizes as well. But lastly, along with that Sakamta Shad that I had mentioned that comes in multiple sizes. I've had the best success. And I know a lot of tournament anglers have as well. Fishing these minnows in like the six, seven, and even all the way up to eight inch sizes. So you'd have to ask yourself then, how, what type of terminal tackle are you using to combine these with? Just to point out, this one here happens to be the raid fish roller. We've sold a bunch of these already. This one's pretty slick too. This one in the tank look really cool. This is the armor shed in a seven inch version. And I know that looks big kind of right here right now, but think about this. This is not that big of a meal for even a two pound bass. And I know that firsthand because I've got a lot of two pound bass doing this technique already. Seven inch minnows, not too big. So the terminal that goes in conjunction with these. If you see this big old hook in this Sakamata Shad, that's the horizon head in the LG that you guys have heard and you probably talk about a ton of your omnia customers. But if you're not familiar, these are EWG hooks and a ball head jig still with that 90 degree line tie. So it's perfect for trying to keep the bait vertical or horizontal I should say in the water column. But it's got a bigger hook. So that if you are fishing around heavy cover or you're fishing for just bigger fish in general, you have more muscle, more hook there to fight a fish and hook a fish farther away and keep them out of the cover and put more pressure on them. Also, if you're just fishing a larger minnow, you get a lot more hook further back in the bait than you would if you just use a little round bend like you've got in this range roller here. Now the reason why I'm showing you this smeltenator and the owner range roller and also this core tackle, hover rig is because what's weird is we're selling a lot of the bigger minnows, but we're selling most of the terminal we're selling. This is smaller and more finessie jig heads, which leads me to believe the people are finding a lot more confidence doing this technique with the smaller sized minnows or even with a big minnow with a more finessie smaller head in it. If you're not familiar with the hover rig, there's tons of good content out there. Check out Matt Steffen's YouTube page. It's incredibly good content on there about how to rig this thing and how to fish it. But this is another way to keep that bait even looking more natural without a ball head at the end of the nose. This is internally weighted inside the bait and it's an easy way to keep it just above those fishes head on your forward-facing sonar. The range roller's got a great keeper on it. I wanna point that out that if you're fishing with the Elastic style plastics or salty plastics, the keeper is really slick. It works with both very, very well and this has been an extremely popular one from the hook and you have to point out the old smeltenator and that's because this one's probably won the most money of all these so far that I'm aware of. This one's won a classic and another tournament that I know of for sure. I know it's taken down some sturgeon bay opens and some other stuff too. This is a really, really popular swim bait head/demiki style head that does work for this technique as well. This stuff has been the most popular stuff so far. This is an evolving technique that is getting more and more popular as the weeks go by and you're seeing people get better and better at it. So stay tuned for more baits that are coming in but if you're getting into this new technique of hover/mid strolling, check out all this stuff. Load this stuff up in your cart and I promise you, you'll see some success. This stuff is working right now and it's catching 'em. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)