Swindle: It’s an excellent bait in the wintertime for fish that are deep and schooled up on creek channels, bends and other deep type patterns. These fish are cold, lethargic and not very active, so you have to get the bait down to them.
You can make a really long casts with the Spin Board on about 12 lb line and just kind of yo yo the bait up and down. Let the bait sink, then tighten your line up and bring it up two to three feet off the bottom and then let it fall back down. The way it’s designed is that the head falls first and the blade on the back just flutters on the way down. A lot of old timers used to throw a lure called a Gay Blade by Cotton Cordell. This bait sort of resembles that a bit. It represents a falling, dying or injured shad.

Swindle: I got turned on to the bait by fishing it in the Bassmaster Classic at Lake Hartwell. I was fishing for bunched up fish in the ditches and was able to make long casts and let it sink and stroke it up off the bottom with a slow pull and let it fall with my line tight. Almost all the strikes were on the fall, when you pick it back up, they just got it.
Then I took it down to Clarks Hill for those schooling fish. I threw like a missle into those schooling fish and then just reeled it as fast as I could right through them. And the way the blade is on the back , the thing won’t turn over.

I’ve caught them at Clarks Hill on bridge pilings, I’ve caught them at Guntersville on gravel bars. It started out for me as a lure fishing for deep fish in a summertime or fall pattern, then I realized that it was one of the better schooling baits I have.
I gave one of these to Casey Ashley, the night before the Hartwell Classic and he caught a 4 pounder on a bridge column. He was beating me on the first day on my own bait.
I also caught smallmouth on it real deep on the first day of practice at Lake Erie.

Swindle: When I go to Clarks Hill, there is always one tied on. The big factor is the distance you can throw it and the speed you can reel it. I generally don’t try to catch a limit on this lure, but when the situation arises, its perfect to pick off two or three good fish to fill out a limit. Also, I generally throw Ghost Minnow or Chartreuse Shad, but in this particular lure, MS American Shad has been the most productive for me.