“My Tails Are On Fire”

The friend I’d taken along on a bass fishing trip earlier this year hadn’t made a cast for at least five minutes.

I swung around in my bow seat to see what he was up to. He had a towel across his lap and was busy dunking some of his tube baits into a jar of liquid.

“What the heck are you doing”” I asked.

“I’m dyeing the tails on these tubes,” he replied. “I’ve heard that the bass sometimes really go ape over tubes with a chartreuse tail. You ever tried ‘em?”

I didn’t answer that question. Instead I reached into my container of plastic baits and grabbed a handful of tubes. “Here,” I said, “Try these new tubes I got about a month ago. I really like ‘em. Quit fooling around with that dye and get back to fishin’. These tubes already have a chartreuse tail. They’re made that way.”

Be careful, friend!  That's a piece of dynamite you've got in your fingers.  Well, maybe not dynamite but new Outlaw Baits FireTail tubes like this often work about as well where both largemouth and smallmouth bass are concerned.

The tubes I gave my companion to try that day were the new FireTail tubes that Outlaw Baits introduced in early 2005. My friend asked me some questions about the Fire Tail tubes that I couldn’t answer at the time. I can now. I can because I just got done talking to the guy who brought them to market.

The man I’m talking about is Jeff Staggs, the president of Outlaw Baits. Outlaw Baits is based in Florence, Oregon. That’s the community where I once lived myself. I always enjoy talking to this genial bait maker because he just doesn’t sell baits---he fishes the darn things!

He’s in an excellent position to do that. I know executives of certain other bait and lure companies who spend more time on a golf course than they do in a bass boat. Not Jeff. He lives smack on the shore of a small lake just north of Florence. Don’t expect to find him parked in an easy chair watching television when his work day is done. He’s more apt to be out in his bass boat experimenting with the plastic baits turned out in his Outlaw Baits plant.

Jeff provided the answers I didn’t have for my friend on that morning I told about in the beginning. “We decided to make tubes with a different colored tail,” Staggs said, “because we knew the combination had worked well in some of the other plastic baits. The reaction we’ve had to our FireTail tubes has been just great.”

That’s not hard for me to understand. The first time I tried the Outlaw Baits FireTails was on a trip to Mexico’s El Salto Lake earlier this year. You don’t hear that much about tube lures when you’re at El Salto. Most of the anglers I’ve seen down there often spend their time throwing large lures or plastic baits---something like 10-inch worms or 5-inch swimbaits.

I first used the new Outlaw Baits FireTail tubes at Mexico's El Salto Lake.  There they were especially effective in cover like that pictured here.

Those lures are effective, especially for anglers concentrating on larger fish. But don’t try to tell me tubes don’t get their share. Every now and then they get more.

That was my experience at El Salto the first time I threw tubes there several years ago. My fishing partner was Mike Pedersen, of Longview, Washington. Mike and I flat clobbered those El Salto largemouth on a grayish blue flecked Outlaw Baits tube made to resemble the tilapia baitfish those El Salto largemouth gobble.

My introduction to the new FireTails was every bit as successful. On my first eight casts with one of these new tubes---and my fishing partner will verify what I’m saying---I caught a bass. I’ll grant you that El Salto Lake is loaded with bass, but even there the fish aren’t always all that eager to bite.

I didn’t do any fancy rigging with the FireTails I used at El Salto. I simply rigged them Texas Style behind a half ounce slip sinker. I used that heavy a weight because the fish were holding 10 to 20-feet down in submerged timber. Most of my hits came as soon as the tube hit bottom and I wiggled my rod tip to move it a bit.

There are a number of other ways to rig these Outlaw Baits FireTail tubes. I’ll get into more details in that regard in my next two columns. I’ll also detail how Jeff Staggs uses them in his own fishing. In the meantime, if you’ve not already laid in a supply of these dandy little fish catchers, I recommend you do so.

My own experience with them indicates you won’t regret it.

-go to part 2-

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