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Posted

I am looking for some new tubes. I have an abundance but I can't have too many. Had reallllll good luck with gander salt tubes until they quit makin em. I use bite me exposed hooks now because gander quit making my hooks as well. Prefer that tubes just have salt, unless a guy can get craw scented. My experience is smallies hate garlic. So that's out for me. Thanks fellow bassheads.

Posted

Gander quit making tubes? That stinks I wanted to try them. I'm a second for tube suggestions.

 

As far as bass and garlic go I've had no problems at all catching many fishing using chompers twin tail grubs, both LM and SM and northern. So I wouldn't discount any because of a garlic scent. I wonder how much the fish are actually attracted to a scent be it garlic, coffee or anything else? Maybe it just masks anything scent wise that we get on the bait while handling? I'm sure there are studies out there somewhere...

Posted

Chompers twin tail spider grubs are deadly on smallmouth.

As for tubes, I don't really have a favorite brand.

Whatever happens to be in the vest gets hooked up, with no difference noticed.

They are rather simple in design, mimicking a crawdad with no pincers.

I like the Gammy EWG hooks in red and barely embed the tip, Texas-rigged.

Posted

Ya gander quit a couple years ago, I had a kind of an inside line and got a bazillion. They are gone, at least my GOOD colors are. I have caught 5 to 1 salt vs garlic for smallies. Just a personal preference thing. Also noticed that coffee tubes hang up more. Weighed them, not much different. Best I can figure its a density thing. Reg salt tubes roll along the bottom well in current. Coffee seem to sink a bit faster than salt, and therefore get stuck when rolling the bottom.

Posted

There are lots of small business' that custom pour tubes and other soft plastics in virtually every color, size and flavor you can imagine. Many will pour to your specs at close to the same prices you'd pay for stock baits at Bass Pro or Gander. Just Google "custom tube baits"

Posted

Bitsy's seem to work well. They make a color called cotton candy (I think that's the name) it usually works great if you fish it on a dead drift with very little or no weight with an occasional twitch or the typical green pump hopping or dragging the bottom. I'm going for the dying baitfish in current routine w/the cotton candy. They're about 2 1/2 inch and work good w/ewg worm size 1. work great in river and lake.

Posted

Good call Jim. ;)

 

I like that you can get them in any color or flake, just ask. The heads are weighted, no need for jigs. If you buy them, notice the fall.

Posted

Bahahaha Jonn, Italian smallies... I like it. Maybe I'm crazy, I dunno... Looks like a couple good companies do exist according to the previous posts. I need to measure mine and figure out body size vs tentacles length. I do know some 3.5 in don't work with the hooks I use. If I remember correctly a certain Indiana fella uses em too.

Posted

I have gotten great Smallies with a garlic sent, my buddy pulled out a 20 inch small mouth on a plastic stankx frog last year with a garlic scent, a beast of a fish.

 

I'll try to find the picture...

Posted

All these garlic posts, maybe I will try a couple. They'll still have to earn their keep to a salt tube tho. And travis, about them stankX, is it just me or are the tentacles on the tube sparse?

Posted

Just can't think of chewing on a garlic tube myself. I'm crazy about tubes. I've been known to chew on them before. Some are too stiff and slaughter fish after a good chewing. Or perhaps I need to market my spit as a fish attractant... Now looking for investors...:D

Posted

All these garlic posts, maybe I will try a couple. They'll still have to earn their keep to a salt tube tho. And travis, about them stankX, is it just me or are the tentacles on the tube sparse?

 

 

Honestly, I am not sure. I have owned a lot of different brands that have them.

 

John I belive the stankx line is both salt and garlic.

 

I expose the hook with these out from the tentacles, midway, and use a long shank. They tend to attract heavy strikers.

Posted

Bass proshop tubes always work pretty good. Rootbeer pepper, black red flake and green pumpkin pepper are good colors. Mostly use 3 1/2".

Phil f

Posted

These are the hooks I use. I've found some if not all 3.5 in tubes will not work as the body is too short.

 

http://www.basspro.com/Bass-Pro-Shops-XPS-Tube-Head/product/51874/-973506

 

Phil f, any experience w/ the 4 in flipping tubes from bass pro? I know some flipping models have a solid head and this is exactly what you don't want. I need soft hollow tubes. The tender tubes are lights out for big Largemouth at ice out Texas rigged.

Posted

I like the strike king coffee tubes for most of the year, and the thin-walled zoom tubes for winter months. Mostly I use black zoom tubes, and somehow I've gotten attached to the natural goby coffee tubes, even though there are no goby where I fish. I think the Strike King coffee tubes are just the right density and thickness for my applications, and I often pinch a little from the tails. The favored hook with them is an Owner finesse hook, and I like Oldman wire-guard tube inserts for the zoom tubes.

Tubes kind of rule, in the sense that if I were restricted to a single type of bait, it would have to be tubes.

Posted

Agreed Jeff. Tubes do rule. When all else fails, throw a tube. If that fails, go home. For some odd reason the coffee tubes hang up more regularly than do other models, at least for me. If I were to fish somewhere other than my frequent haunts, coffee tubes all day. It's really tuff to work Powerton and my local flows with them, using bottom hugging presentations. Maybe I'll start pouring my own. Anyone else pour their plastic here? I figured melt my old reliables down and dip a metal rod in it a couple times, sort of like making a candle.

Posted

Dana,

 

I haven't noticed coffee tubes hanging up more, but I fish mostly sand and gravel bottoms, and not the jagged rip-rap along the shore of powerton. It would be interesting to have a race, take a bunch of tubes to a swimming pool, and see how fast they drop 3 feet, kind of like a Boy Scouts soap box derby. Maybe Strike King will make a decaf tube, and that will solve things. I used to fish Powerton about 20 years ago, and it was a fascinating place. I recall hooking up with a fish I was sure was the state record smallie, casting in the rip-rap along the shore. Turned out to be some monster drum.

 

 

Jeff

Posted

It's been a couple years since I've hooked a drum in there. I feel you're pain in thinking It's the state record. Been there several times, only to see a white flash twenty feet out. My experience with the 5 +'s I've hooked that got off at the bank is they won't often jump out there. So when a drum is hooked, I think It's "her" every time. At least they put up a hell of a fight as well. Kinda makes a guy wanna go redfishing.

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