I know I promised a frog last week, but I’m coming up short with it and I think it just needs more testing. So in the mean time I thought I’d share another one I’ve used recently, the 3” pearl spoiler shad swimbait by Creme. This lure is a soft plastic swimbait just like the keitech I reviewed, however its shape is quite different. It is a bright white with a silver shine and measures 3” long. The head is larger and slopes back to a paddle tail. The body is a curved diamond shape like a kite, very deep in the front but sloping and long as you go back. The body is covered with a diamond scale pattern in the soft plastic which even includes molding of the gills and fins at the front. The head sports an inserted silver eye on both sides and the hook comes out of the spine and arches up and forward from the swimbait. There is a jighead inside of the swimbait where the hook is attached. This is how the lure is manufactured, not an insertion that you as the customer has to make, meaning the soft plastic is poured around the jighead. The jighead looks to be about an eighth ounce head with a size 2 hook.

For the relative size and weight of this lure, it dives more than a grub of similar weight. Upon first testing this lure in the pond here, I realized rather quickly that this lure is intended for deep-water fishing more so than structural mid depth or even shallow-water fishing; that in mind, it can still be used in most of these environments to a certain degree. With its top facing hook, it is easier to avoid snags and tends to dive without any lax in retrieve. Therefore this lure is great for dropping amidst underwater shelves and other structure unlike floating lures which require more speed on the retrieve in order to force to dive. This lure allows for control in dropping into tighter spaces and speeding up to actually get out of them. 

With fall coming I’m starting to really like these white colored baits, especially in the realm of soft plastics. For some reason the color seems to be very effective during the late season with water temperatures dropping. If I find out why this is the case, or if anyone would like to advise me as to the reason for this I’m all ears and will happily share with everyone else. All the same, white seems to be doing it lately and with the spoiler shad it holds true. From my own testing as well as that of others, It appears this particular swimbait is great for fast baitcaster action in deeper pools and will catch bass, pickerel (because they eat anything that moves it seems), perhaps crappie or other panfish with a big enough mouth and apparently walleye. I can’t attest to the walleye, but I’ve seen others catch with it. Based on the various places to find walleye, it may be more situational than standard, but fishing is largely situational anyway, so, in the words of my father, “What can it hurt to try?”

With your retrieve on this lure I would recommend keeping it fairly quick. It isn’t like a crankbait that needs to be diving to the bottom for best action; I would go so far as to say it needs to be closer to the top to catch some light on its shiny surface. Change up the speed if you can just a little, try to keep it looking scared by darting then evening out and darting again. The paddle tail will do the work, just don’t go so fast that you outrun your predators. Cast past your target and bring it through bait schools, lag a little if the bait school wants to move on, hopefully you will be the last fish in the pack and catch attention as the straggler. Try not to drop your lure right on your target area, it has a bit of heft to it and will spook fish if not introduced in a natural way.

*If you have any luck with the lure of the week, feel free to email your pictures to events@riverreporter.com for an opportunity to share them on our website. If you have a favorite kind of lure we haven’t reviewed yet, feel free to send that lure to our office at PO box 150 Narrowsburg, NY 12764. We will add it to our weekly reviews and share the results. Check back each week on Mondays to see the new lure of the week!