TIP #9: Inspect the shaft of your MAL Lure for straightness from time to time, especially if you are having a hard time getting the spinner going, after landing a large fish, and/or after using a net to land your fish.




CAPTION: This MAL Lure's shaft is "cocked" just slightly to the left -- just enough to hinder the spinner blade from spinning freely and starting its spinning action as soon as I began reeling it. Noting this, I reeled it up, straightened the shaft as described below, and kept right on catching fish.


How to straighten shaft – from time to time, especially when using a net to land your fish, the shaft of your MAL Lure may become bent. The bend normally occurs just above the tapered tip of the bullet-shaped body. When this happens, simply note which way the MAL Lure’s wire shaft is bent, and manually bend it back to straighten it.

This can be a little tricky, as the shaft will want to rotate within the brass or lead body of the MAL as you try to bend it. By firmly grasping the lure’s body with the thumb and forefinger of one hand and grasping the wire shaft with the thumb and forefinger of the other hand and applying firm, consistent pressure, the task can be accomplished.

Normally, simply “eyeballing” the shaft for straightness will get the lure’s shaft straight enough to allow for normal blade rotation.

Avoid using tools like pinch-nosed pliers, as these can create a sharp kink in the shaft and render it irreparable.





GIVE THE MAL LURE A TRY: SEE ALL MAL LURES HERE

If you have tips of your own, feel free to respond to this post, or send a private message. I will give credit where credit is due!


A LITTLE BACKGROUND: This is one in a series of tips forthcoming in the summer of 2022. These helpful suggestions are borne out of thousands of hours of on-the-water experience in pursuing white bass and hybrid striped bass in Texas using the in-line spinners in the MAL Lure family. With tens of thousands of the MAL Lures now in use (and most of those in Texas!) I want to help give current and future MAL Lure users their best shot at catching fish by sharing what I've discovered 'the hard way' in hopes of reducing your own learning curve. These tips are in no particular order.

They are the best
Lot of the guides are using them

I use them and have great success!

But the hooks seem to rust quickly.

Fishenrod, I'm glad you are having great success with the MAL Lures. To address your observation about hook rust -- this is kind of a "darned if you do, darned if you don't" scenario.

The short length of glow tubing on the treble hook, I feel, is essential to this lure's success, as it provides a focal point for the fish to strike at. As I developed this bait, the prototypes I used without the tubing produced a lot of "blade strikes" where the fish would nip at the blade, but miss the hook.

That tubing solves the problem. But, that same tubing can also trap some water up against the hook and keep it wet. We use high quality VMC hooks -- no shortcuts. Still, water and steel don't get along.

You might consider keeping a little can of WD-40 on the boat and using the red straw attachment to spray a quick squirt of WD-40 into that tube when you are done for the weekend.

The smallest size is a 3 oz. can. I've included a photo of the can on a vice for scale ...



Please let me know how this goes for you!!

Thanks, --Bob

A can of compressed air to blow the water out of the tube should work also.

I finally had a good chance to try out my first set of your lures this weekend on Buchanan, and I am 100% a believer. We put over 100 fish in the boat between 2 guys in 2 hours on Sunday morning, and another 75 on Monday morning. Other boats around next to us were fishing slabs, spoons, umbrellas, and rat-l-traps and we were slinging fish in the boat at a rate of 10 to their 1. It took a little bit to get the feel of the blades, if they aren't spinning you aren't getting bit. Once we both figured out the rhythm, it was game on. I think our record was 15 fish on 15 consecutive drops.

Sir, I wish I could record you and play back your statements for all of my clients (pre-trip briefing) and for any doubters out there!!

I suspect that some folks just won't believe how well the MAL Lure works because I stand to profit from the sale of them. However, when someone like yourself shares a post like this, it adds so much more credibility.

I am really glad you did so well. You can expect this lure to perform well right up until the water temperature drops to 58-60F (which, at this point, seems like that me be sometime in the year 2036 LOL!).

Sure, there will be days when the fish get sluggish, like early last week after that cold front blew in, but, day in and day out, in warm water, this will beat the pants off of standard white bass presentations like the slabs and spoons you've mentioned.

Thank you for the encouraging word!! If you'll PM me your address, I'd like to send a little something your way. --Bob

PM Sent