All soft plastic baits catch bass because of their action in the water. Now this action can mean two things, the action they have in the water, or the action they don’t have in the water. Now that may seem confusing, but some soft plastics have kicking legs, kicking arms and countless appendages that make it look like a creature from another planet, these baits provide ACTION. Other soft plastic baits are streamlined, and just have a slight curvature in their tail, or because of the baits design, it provides just the ever-slight shimmer in the water, this baits also provide action.
One of these baits is the Spunk Shad, a bait that Missile Baits has partnered with Hog Farmer Manufacturing on. This soft plastic swimbait features a thick ribbed body, and a small pintail that creates the slightest seductive shimmy in the water.
The Spunk Shad was originally designed to be fished on a Scrounger style jig head. The reason here is you do not want the soft plastic trailer on this style jig to overpower the action of the jig. A Scrounger style jighead has a plastic bill on the head of the jig to make the jig dart back and forth, perfect for copying the action of fleeing baitfish in the water column. By using a Spunk Shad as your trailer, it is along for the ride on the Scrounger, and is like the closer…if a bass is following your jig in and then sees that slight shimmy and movement from the ribbed body and pintail on the bait, that is when they commit and bite.
The Frosted Purple color is my choice when the bass are feeding on shad or other baitfish, and you need to match that. If I’m fishing mid-depth (five to eight feet), I’ll use a 3/8-ounce scrounger style jighead and the 4.5” Spunk Shad is my choice. If I’m targeting bass in deeper water and I need to go up to a ½ or ¾ ounce head, then the 5.5” bait gets rigged up. A sneaky color option is Goby Bite, and not just when you are fishing the Great Lakes where Goby’s are the forage. This color has a top section that is a light green pumpkin, with the underside being pearl, this also offers a shad look, and can be a more natural looking choice than the Frosted Purple if the water is clear.
Like a Scrounger style jighead, the Chatterbait was designed to catch bass because of the action the blade of the jig provides, from the vibration, flash and then the erratic side-to-side action it delivers when retrieved. So again, this is an excellent situation where the Spunk Shad signs as a soft plastic trailer. The thicker, ribbed body of the bait gives it enough meat to rig up on a Chatterbait, but as the bait moves down to the tail section, the thin pintail provides the slightest bit of action to entice a bass into biting.
My go to color choices when fishing a 4.5” Spunk Shad on a Jackhammer is Frosted Purple (white) whenever I need to be mimicking shad…which is NOW! Then in the early spring Lava Craw is dynamite when the hot red craw color pallet is what bass want, and it is darn hard to beat Bruiser Flash (black/blue) any time of year, as we know bass love a black and blue bait.
Fishing a jig worm or Ned Rig can be a common technique to target bass on weedlines during the summer months. Many anglers use small soft plastic baits, like three- or four-inch stick baits, or the tried-and-true original curly tail worm. A different look that I have found for my jig worm is the Spunk Shad. It’s compact, streamlined profile helps the bait fall uninhibited through the weeds, and then the slight action of the pintail is perfect to entice finicky bass.
Another way I’ll fish the Spunk Shad is I’ll rig it on an All-Terrain Tackle Smallie Smasher Swimbait head for finesse fishing smallmouth, or the Smasher Head for fishing this finesse style swimbait for shad feeding largemouth.
If I’m fishing the Spunk Shad on one of the jigheads that I talk about above, I’ll either be using the Green Pumpkin or Goby Bite color and most of the time it will be the 4.5” size.
As you are head into your fall fishing season and looking to give the bass a different looking soft plastic trailer, give the Spunk Shad a try. It is available in two sizes, the 4.5” and 5.5”, and is currently available in six color choices. A seven-pack of 4.5” has an MSRP of $5.99 and a six-pack of 5.5” are $6.19.
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