Most anglers have used, or are at least familiar with Tsunami's line of soft plastic swim baits. The Tsunami Swim Shad, with it's thumping boot tail, is an absolute striper killer when they are feeding on wide bodied baitfish such as bunker or herring.
The Split Tail Minnow is another great lure from Tsunami. This bait more closely imitates more narrow bodied baitfish, such as spearing, sand eels and rainfish.
As great as these baits are, they aren't necessarily cheap. A four pack of the 5" Split Tail's run close to $5.00. While that may not break the bank, it definitely adds up when the bite is on, and they are getting chewed to pieces, and you start going through multiple bags of them.
That's exactly what happened the other day while fishing on the Cock Robin. The little tunny were, once again, responding well to the Split Tails and just tearing them up! Generally, if you can catch four albies on one bait you're doing well. With bonito, because of their teeth, it's often one and done.
Usually, if I get a bait back that's all torn up, I'll cut it off and throw it in my tackle bag for some "Crazy Gluing" later. However, if all that is left is the lead jig insert, I would most likely toss it. And that's what I was doing again last week as the albies were eating the plastic right off my jigs.
However, when I got home, I realized that I had stuck a couple in my pocket. I was going to throw them out, but after I looked at them, I realized that I could probably recycle them into some perfectly good jigs.
Because of their shape, they're not a good match for solid bodied soft plastics, such as traditional shad bodies or Fin-S type baits. However, I realized they are perfect for hollow bodied soft plastics. So I dug around on the freshwater side of my fishing room (garage)
and pulled out some gitzits (tubes) and some hollow body shads. The inserts fit perfectly!
I can't wait to try them out!
Pic 1. Tsunami Split Tails
Pic 2. The inserts out of the bodies.
Pic 3. The top insert weighs 1/2 oz. The bottom one is 1/4 oz.
Pic 4. Rigging the gitzit is easy.
Pic 5. Just slide the insert jig up into the the body and pop the eye out near the top.
Pic 6. Rigging the hollow belly shad is a bit trickier. Start by placing the hook point into the head of the bait (about 1/4' back from the nose).
Pic 7. Slide the hook and lead fully into the bait, bringing the hook point out of the back of the bait. Make sure the bait lays straight when finished.
Pic 8. The finished products, ready to fish! The holographic foil really shines through the clear body of the shad!
