Swimming In The Salt

Product:    Hollow Belly Swimbait
Company:    Berkley
Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Big plastic swimbaits are all the rage right now in the cast-for-cash bass-fishing scene. The green-fish chasers are using mega-sized baits, sometimes as long as a foot, to catch record-breaking limits of pot-bellied toads.

The soft-plastic swimbait has been around as long as anglers have been trying to fool fish with artificial offerings. You might call them paddletails, jighead swimmers or baitfish imitations. They're called by many different names and come in all shapes, sizes and colors, but the bottom line is they catch just about everything that swims from bass, to redfish, to speckled trout and pike.

The Hollow Belly was made with bass in mind, but the redfish like it just the same.

The problem with many of the most sought after swimbait designs is that they're produced by smaller companies that haven't been able to pour enough plastic to meet demand. And the prices on these hard-to-find baits have skyrocketed to unbelievable numbers.

Big-bass fanatics are willing to shell out big bucks for the plastic tails, but inshore anglers chasing strong-jawed, toothy critters like speckled trout, redfish and even flounder are reluctant drop the coin on the ultra-realistic swimmers - no matter how great they supposedly work. But thanks to Berkley, that should no longer be an issue.

Berkley is the latest to get their feet wet in the swimbait craze with the introduction of their new PowerBait Hollow Belly soft-plastic swimbait. The Hollow Belly has the same high-quality design, realistic features and tantalizing actions of hand-poured baits, but at a much more affordable price.

I recently took my kayak out to some remote marshes in Galveston Bay to test the Hollow Belly on some cold-water redfish. Here's how it performed.

Basic Characteristics

The Hollow Belly checks in at 5 inches from head to tail. Just about the perfect size for many inshore baitfish species like mullet and pogies.

When you take a good look at the Hollow Belly, two things that immediately jump out at you are the highly-detailed scale patterns and realistic eyes. This isn't your everyday 2-tone, chartreuse-tailed soft-plastic bait.

And you don't have to worry about a hungry redfish coming along and chewing off the paint or knocking off the eyes. The entire body is protected in a clear coat finish that enhances and magnifies the natural image of the bait. One thing is for sure, this bait should be a killer in clear water.

Rigging Methods

The rigging possibilities on the Hollow Belly are just about endless.

The bait comes packaged with a weighted, flutter-style wide-gap hook for weedless applications and a treble hook, swivel and bullet weight for use in open-water. While those are two popular rigging methods, they're certainly not the only way to make the Hollow Belly work for you.

Here's a shot of one of the massive reds that tried to have the Hollow Belly for breakfast.

I experimented with a few different rigging styles and finally settled on a simple, but effective jighead rig. For my particular application I used a 5/0, 3/8-ounce screwlock jighead.

The screwlock worked particularly well because while the body of the bait is hollow, hence the name, the head of the bait is solid and the screwlock held solidly in place.

Action and Application

With the colder water temperatures, there's a shortage of small bait like shrimp and crabs throughout Texas' bay systems. The primary forage right now, as it is every winter, is mullet, so upsizing baits makes perfect sense.

The bait has superb action and requires little work on the anglers' part. I simply cast the bait out and slowly retrieved it back to me on a steady reel, occasionally stopping it to let it settle head-first to the bottom before hopping it back up again.

I threw the Hollow Belly near schools of mullet making their way into the far reaches of a marsh system on an incoming tide.

I have to admit, when I first started throwing the bait I didn't have much confidence in it. The soft-plastics I'm accustomed to throwing are smaller, more finesse type baits, and throwing the Hollow Belly felt like I was launching a giant hunk of plastic through the air.

But it didn't take long to convince me.

The Hollow Belly might seem like a large bait by most inshore standards, but when 4- to 6-inch mullet are the primary baitfish, this swimbait is tough to beat.

I landed some monster reds up to 33-inches long and 13 pounds on the Hollow Belly, including one perfect tournament fish that checked in just under the 28-inch slot and pulled my Boga down to over 8 pounds. In this instance, the big bait/big fish theory proved to be true.

And the best part is, I was able to catch all my fish on a single bait without tearing it up.

Versatility

You can do just about anything with the Hollow Belly. You can swim it near the bottom on a heavy jighead. You can rig it weightless on a big, wide-gap hook and throw it over grass. You can hop it around reefs, let it freefall near jetties, swim it down the beachfront for trout and snook - the possibilities are endless.

This bait should prove effective in a variety of conditions. I'm convinced it's a good call for our mullet-ridden wintertime fishery we have in Texas. The ultra-realistic finish and enticing swimming action should prove effective in clear-water applications as well.

As someone who can't help but to tweak a bait, the Hollow Belly has lots of potential. I inserted a large glass rattle into the belly of the bait through the opening in the tail. I was happy to discover that the hollow chamber inside the bait actually served to magnify the sound of the rattle.

And while the bait is packed with Berkley's tantalizing PowerBait formula, you could really get crazy and inject a little Gulp! juice into the body for the ultimate in attraction.

The big reflective eyes put the finishing touch on the Hollow Belly's realistic appearance. The eyes are sealed onto the bait by a thin outer layer of plastic.

Notable

> While the colors were designed for freshwater applications, you'll have no problem fooling inshore species with them. The hitch color is a spot-on mullet immitation, the trout color could easily pass for a small speckled trout, and the gizzard shad and Tennessee shad patterns resemble just about anything that swims.

> The Hollow Belly retails for just under $10.00 and comes with three plastic bodies as well as everything you need to rig the bait two different ways. They're available at the BassFan store. Click Here to check 'em out.

> Swimbait specialists often purchase a bottle of Mend-It glue. The Mend-It actually works to fuse ripped and damaged plastic baits back together, but it won't cause your plastic to stick to your fingers or the hook. If you plan on trying your hand at the swimbait craze, the Mend-It might save you some money in the long run. You can get it HERE.