Canyon Lake 3/26/15

I had the pleasure of fishing for the last few days on Canyon Lake with Tim Austen (Fishing Production Manager, Big Game Intl.), Mike Butler (Senior Photographer) and Steve Mui (Matzuo Pro Staffer and BASS Elite Pro). We were product testing and photographing Matzuo products and the new Ultrafight brand products for their new catalogs. Ultrafight is a new brand of affordable crappie products consisting of rods, reels, tackle, jigs and lures. Ultrafight will be introduced to the general public at this year’s July ICast show in Miami, FL. It will be marketed under the legendary South Bend brand.

Our first day of testing the new Ultrafight products produced well over 70 crappie and the bucket photo below shows how a 5 gal bucket looks with 36 crappie. Some folks in Illinois will be having a fish fry with Texas crappie, soon. We only kept fish from the first day and all the other fish were released. Attachment 196625Attachment 196626Attachment 196627Attachment 196628Attachment 196629

The next couple days was spent testing and photographing the new Ultrafight equipment and lures spider riggings and then testing the Matzuo line of hooks and prototype lures for bass. I have no idea how many typical size Canyon bass we caught but we had at least 7 from 3 to 5 pounds, including smallmouth. The bass are in a transition pattern with almost everything coming from the edge of breaks about 10‘ to 15’ and close to spawning grounds

The larger crappie have moved from the deeper river channel into the tree tops. They are suspended along the edge of the channel at about 6’ to 8’ deep over 18’ to 25’ water depth. All the crappie were caught jigging with jigs, jigs under slip bobbers and casting micro crankbaits. We used all sorts of their crappie jigs; including feather jigs, micro swimbaits and jigs with plastics. We tested their ultralight 5’ and 5 ½’ rods equipped with their spinning reels throwing crankbaits, which was a blast. Everything else was caught on their 9’, 12’ and 14’ rods. Each rod had either their spinning reels or their new “flatline” reels. We also tested the longer rods spider riggings and they worked well and had no problem getting the crappie hooked. However, all the crappie caught in the deeper water were small.

I even decided to see how well the spinning reels and all the rods (5’ to 14’) would hold up using 12# super line and fluorocarbon leader. I did just about everything I could to break a rod, and to my amazement, I could not. I even spent a half day bass fishing the ultralight rods and caught a bunch of bass without a single problem. Those darn rods and reels are tough as nails. There are a lot of folks not willing or wanting to spend $60 to $90 each for six to ten rods and then another $30 to $60 each for reels. This new Ultrafight line fits a more moderately priced niche market very well. Keep your eye open for these new crappie products from Ultrafight.

As a disclaimer, I am also on the Matzuo National Pro Staff Team.