“My Tails Are On Fire”

As I promised in my last column, it figures the guy who brought Outlaw Baits FireTail tubes to market would have some darn good ideas about how they should be fished.

Jeff Staggs, the likeable president of the Oregon-based bait making company, does indeed have suggestions for us. I know because I asked him to share his thoughts in that regard. “I usually cast and let my tube drop,” Jeff says, “then I use a twitch-and-pause routine as I work the bait back to the boat. I avoid using big movements of my rod tip. I try not to move the tube more than 6-inches at a time during the retrieve.”

The Oregon bait maker recommends taking it easy when a bass picks up your FireTail tube. “I like to give it a heartbeat or two,” he says. “Sometimes bass just bite the tail. You want to give them time to get all of the tube in their mouth before you set the hook.”

Pictured are one of my favorite colors in Outlaw Baits FireTail tubes.  Additional colors in these dandy baits will be added during the coming year.

There’s something else you’ll want to build into your tube-fishing program. That’s to be a first class line watcher. It took me awhile, and cost me a few good fish, before I finally came to realize just how darned important line watching is. Oftentimes the only warning you’ll have that a bass has picked up is a tiny “tic” of movement in your line right where it enters the water.

Other times you may see the line sneak off left or right ever so slowly. You won’t feel a darn thing where your rod is concerned. The only warning will be that bit of line movement. That slight line movement has nothing to do with the possible size of the fish. Large bass can and will sneak away with baits as readily as do smaller fish.

When Outlaw Baits put its FireTail baits on the market for the first time earlier this year they were available in only six colors. “We will be adding other colors,” Staggs says. “We’re planning to add tubes with a black body and a blue tail as well as a black body with a red tail.”

If you’re reading this column, by all means take a look at the FireTail tube colors shown at this web site. The man who markets bass baits is always the best one to go to when you want to find out which color is the best seller. I also asked Jeff Staggs that question.

“The best selling color in our FireTails ever since their introduction,” Jeff says, “has been the green pumpkin with an orange tail. The second best is green pumpkin with a chartreuse tail and third place goes to a black tube with an orange tail.”

How does a certain color or color combination get to be the best seller? There’s usually an easy answer to that one---it’s probably catching the most fish. If you’re picking up some of these new tubes for the first time you’re not going to go wrong selecting the colors Staggs mentioned.

Finally, and this is something that gets my attention big time, is hearing Staggs say that Outlaw Baits will likely market a 5-inch version of its FireTail tubes during the coming year. I’m eager to get my hands on some of those larger models.

I say that in part because I’m hoping to go down south of the border again for another whack at those broad shouldered brutes in Lake El Salto. Let those other guys throw their big worms and deep diving cranks. I’ll feed ‘em tubes for breakfast.

I show our Mexican guide one of the bass I caught on an Outlaw Baits FireTail tube at El Salto Lake.  I hooked seven bass on the first eight casts I made with these baits at the famed Mexican lake this past summer.

I already know they like the Outlaw Baits FireTails in the smaller sizes. Experience tells me old grandma bass down there in those submerged El Salto trees doesn’t eat often, but wants a mouthful when she does. I’m fixin’ to give her just what she wants!

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