Game fish like bass and muskellunge are naturally wary except when they're actively feeding. Being top predators in most of their range, when they're competing for food they tend to approach their prey with reckless abandon. An attack from small to mid-size bass, northern pike, or musky occurs soon after you drop a live shiner in their strike zone.

Bass, pike, and musky that grow to huge proportions, though, are different. Most of the time they move more slowly, drifting cautiously up to their prey until they're within inches. Then, with open mouth and flaring gills, they vacuum in their victims. Whether these rare individuals are this way from the outset or become more cautious over time is uncertain. One thing is clear, though: the biggest bass prefer something they can eat without expending much energy.

Big bass guides from Florida to California bait up with huge, live golden shiners or other prey too large to be bothered by smaller game fish. Musky guides, too, will rig up bigger shiners when they're after trophy-size musky and pike. Anything less is a waste of time and bait -- which at over a dollar apiece can get expensive real fast. Their clients lob their expensive bait fish into pockets and ambush points and then sit back and let the shiner do the work, occasionally guiding it back to open water when it burrows into cover. Eventually, any monster fish lurking nearby will sense the presence of the tethered bait and glide slowly in to investigate. If no strike occurs in six or eight minutes, chances are no one is home.

Until now, such a slow, methodical presentation has required live bait. Artificial baits usually exhibit lifelike, fish-attracting action only during a retrieve. This requires the angler to move his lure through and out of a strike zone. Their best hope is that the moving lure will pass directly by the fish of a lifetime and that the bass will react quickly enough to nab the passing bait. The Secret Weapon Recoil Rig^™ changes all that. Since its inception, the Recoil Rig^™ has caught not only greater numbers of fish than other rigs but bigger fish, too - not only compared to other artificials but live bait, too! Using it, anglers can keep their artificial baits moving in one spot, working it in a seductive, lifelike motion that fools the wariest bass.

What is the secret? Could it simply be that we were showing the fish something they have never seen before? Did that alone account for the greater catches and bigger fish? At first, we thought that might be so, and doubtless it is a factor. But underwater cameras reveal that giant fish take their time and swim slowly up to baits (live or artificial lures fished on the Recoil Rig^™) before inhaling them, sometimes with a very short burst of speed in the last few inches. These same fish ignored fast-moving baits pulled through their strike zones. In three field tests, Recoil Rig^™ prototypes were fished in one spot for over a minute before they produced huge, trophy bass.

So, next time you gear up in quest of monster fish, remember the feeding habits of trophy-size bass and improve your odds with a Secret Weapon Recoil Rig^™.

Good fishing...

Rodney Long
Recoil Rig^™ Inventor
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