ORLANDO, Fla. — If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck … then it might get eaten by a bass.
Mike Bennett and the Savage Gear team are counting on it. Their 3D Suicide Duck that won ICAST Best of Show in the Hard Bait category drew crowds to their booth Thursday. Having caught a fish with an actual duck in its craw, Bassmaster Elite Series pro Steve Kennedy was super curious about the duck bait,
Kennedy strolled up to Savage Gear’s test tank after seeing the lure in the New Product Showcase. He hadn’t even realized it won an award, so count him in as a believer in the duckling pattern.
“I had a duck, probably a little bit bigger than that lure, hanging out of the throat of the biggest bass I caught in a PAA tournament on Old Hickory,” Kennedy said. “Since everybody knows I did that because I posted about it so much, anytime anything about a bass eating a duck comes up I get tweeted.”
There are a number of videos of the little feathered friends becoming meals.
Savage Gear’s offering mimics that hope for anglers. Its lure has a treble hook on the chest and one on the back that’s clipped to the body to promise a good hookup rate. The belly hook can be removed in snaggy conditions — the lure bobs up on its belly after a cast.
Kennedy pulled one through the tank at Savage Gear’s booth, discovering the spinning feet leave an enticing trail. Kennedy called it a duck with “Whopper Plopper” feet. Attach the line to an eye on its chest and the lure runs higher like a more panicked bird.
It’s not all that strange after Aaron Martens exposed his blackbird pattern during his Elite win on Lake Havasu. Kennedy said you probably would want to catch a bass big enough to take on a duck dinner.
Kennedy said his well-documented duck-eating bass, a 5-plus pounder that won the tournament, as well as all the correspondence that followed of others with duck-bass encounters, made him realize it is a thing. (He has even been sent little rubber duckies rigged with hooks.)
He came to the booth wanting one of the 3D Suicide Ducks, and Bennett at first said he was running too low. Two fans quickly advised Bennett if he had one to give out, it would be wise to give it to Kennedy, who could very well create a trend. So he did.
Kennedy got Bennett’s contact info in case he wanted to make a significant purchase, which he’s known to do with the latest lure craze.
Bennett’s just pretty happy Savage Gear is making some waves in the fishing industry, which comes by making good lures.
“That’s three in a row,” Bennett said of Best of Show awards. “In 2014, we won with our 3D Crab, (Soft Lure) and last year we won with our Hard Shrimp.”
And the third? Yep, it’s a duck.
SPOT LOCK SPOT ON AS TOP PRODUCT
Davy Hite wasn’t mincing words about his take on the Minn Kota Ultrex trolling motor.
“It’s a game changer,” he said. “That’s why it won Overall Best of Show.”
Several features make it so, Hite said. First is power steering to reduce fatigue. That’s aided by a steering lock that keeps the boat going in the direction you left it last. It also has a reinvented Spot-Lock, which keeps the boat on a spot at the push of a button. Bluetooth i-Pilots and i-Pilot Link gives anglers programmable runs.
The Ultrex won Best of Show Boating Accessory before the overall, and Hite was certain it’s deserving.
“We see a lot of really neat stuff at ICAST every year, but I’ve been hearing rumors about this trolling motor for some time,” he said. “They’ve put all the good features of the Terrova trolling motor in the Ultrex, but you still got the foot pedal just like where we’re used to.
“The really, really cool thing is, it’s basically an anchor. I can hook a fish, just touch one button with my toe, and that trolling motor will hold me right there. I land the fish, go back and cull, get back to the front and make the cast at the exact same spot.”
Maybe the greatest feature to get away from constant contact to control the boat is being able to program movements. Hite said it will follow the contour line and can even be made to return along that same path.
“You can run a route and set it to backtrack on your trail in,” Hite said. “At the end of the day, you’re going to be less tired after fishing 10 to 12 hours. It’s a game changer.”
LEW’S SPEEDS TO AWARD
The Lew’s Custom Pro SLP won Best of Show for Freshwater Reel, and Jason Christie said it’s just going to be another of the company’s top sellers, just like its two other awards this week, a combo and a saltwater rod.
“It’s a smooth and low profile,” Christie said of the SLP. “The reel business is going to the low profile. The more you can get your hand around that reel, the more control you have over the bait, over the rod and over the fish.”
The three gear ratios, 11 ball bearings and anti-reverse excite Christie, as does the new round grips on the crank and features like the bait keeper and dial to set the line spooled on it.
“We kind of went away from the flat grip. I see this in rain, cold, hot, being a great grip,” he said. “A few things that separates it is the bait keeper — open it up and hook it on or you can keep it tucked in.
“And as a professional angler, I have a lot of reels in the rod locker. The older I get the more I forget what line I put on them. On the dial, whenever I spool it up, I can set it to 17 pounds or whatever. In the old days, I used to put tape with number on it, but those can come off in an event.”
BOOMBOOM SWIMMING ALONG
To improve on a discontinued bait that’s given Fred Roumbanis great success, Optimum Baits introduced the BoomBoom Swimbait at ICAST.
From California, Roumbanis started making a name for himself with the Bass Pro Shops XPS swimbaits more than a decade ago, and that bait’s history is chronicled in “The old bait that won’t die.”
“There were some issues with them,” Roumbanis said. “One out of five was really good. I had to nail weight them just to get them centered properly. So you had to do modifications here and there.
“What I wanted to do was come out with a bait that had the same action. We redesigned a new harness that’s weighted a little better so it won’t roll over. We flattened it out a bit so you can skip this bait. And we made a weedless version.”
The 6-inch BoomBoom Swimbaits, which come in 12 colors, are $9.99 for a two-pack.
GLASS BREAKS IN LEGENDARY STYLE
When the people ask, St. Croix delivers. Rick Belanger said anglers have been asking them old traditional cranking sticks, so they came out with a mini series of glass rods. And their Legend Glass ending up winning Best of Show in the Freshwater Rod category.
“With the demand, we went to the drawing board, talked to a lot of our pros, asked, what do you want?” he said. “We came out with four models to address those specifics need of squarebills, all the way through lipless, and deep diving.
“All are made on a linear S glass blank. They’re lightweight, a little bit of butt stiffness, a lot of tip action. Perfectly designed for the cranking needs.”
