A Dobyns DC795SB swimbait rod paid off with hollow bellies and Keitechs at Lake El Salto Mexico

The original plan was to bring six new rods to Anglers Inn El Salto to replenish my aging arsenal, but at the last minute I added another stick to make it a total of seven. Regardless of the final number, the one that excited me most was the first one in the tube, a dedicated swimbait rod. Specifically, it was a Dobyns Rods Champion XP DC 795 SB, 7’9” and rated for 1 to 5 ounce lures. While I certainly hadn’t dialed in the big bait game in Mexico (or elsewhere, for that matter), I reasoned that part of the problem was not having the right gear—with the proper equipment I’d be more apt to confidently and efficiently chuck the big stuff around.

Of course, swimbaiting is often a high-risk, high-reward game. The true addicts have the same DNA as big buck hunters and musky freaks. They’re not looking for bites, they’re looking for the right bites.

I must not be wired the same way. It’s why even though I’ve enjoyed the musky fishing that I’ve done, it hasn’t fully captivated me like it has some of my friends. I need more action than that. The promise of possibility is not enough. It also doesn’t help that I haven’t spent a lot of time in the boat with true swimbait connoisseurs under the right conditions. As a result, my tendency is to put them away quickly when they don’t produce. Nevertheless, I keep toting an assortment of big baits down to Mexico in the hope that I’ll figure something out.

The offshore bite for solid fish was strong when we first arrived, so I rigged up my new swimbait rod with a Shimano Curado K 300 spooled with 20 lb. fluoro and proceeded to play around with my new Huddlestons and slightly older Ospreys, among others. It was hard to stick with them as I failed to get bites—meanwhile, every time I picked up a 6XD, a Keitech or a big worm I’d get chewed on again. I was happy to be catching fish, but a little sad that this rod would get shunted off to the side.

Largemouth bass on Mexican lakes inhale soft swimbaits like the Shadalicious and the Money Minnow

Then I got a little stubborn or a little creative, depending on how you see it. I wasn’t going down without at least a little bit of a fight, so I tied on a ¾ ounce underspin with a hollow belly swimbait. Remember, this rod is rated for 1 to 5 ounce lures, and I figured it would skew away from the lower end, with 2 to 4 ounces being the sweet spot. Altogether, the rig that I was throwing was probably right at an ounce. But guess what? I could cast that sucker into the next county (does Mexico have counties?) and after letting it sink onto the tip of a point in 25 feet of water I could still feel every revolution of the small willow blade on a super-slow retrieve. Maybe it wasn’t time to put the rod away just yet.

I ended up keeping the swimbait rod on the deck, not just for the rest of that session, but for the remainder of the vacation, and on a trip where we caught an absolute shitload of fish it was either my most productive or second most productive tool. While the crankbait bite was solid and the worm bite was good, by best numbers and many of my largest fish came on a Zoom Swimmer, Yum Money Minnow or 4.8” Keitech Fat Swing Impact rigged on ¾ and 1 ounce heads. In fact, I could drop down to a ½ ounce head as needed without any loss of sensitivity or casting distance.

I’d describe the action as softer than a flipping stick but stouter than a cranking stick – just the right combination that the fish could inhale the lure to the back of their throat without me pulling it away from them. That’s been one of the problems for us with the hollow bellies and Storm Wildeye Shad swimbaits down there in the past: you feel a “tick” set the hook and there’s nothing there. You have to wait until the rod gets heavy and then lean into them. This rod somehow did the work for me. I simply didn’t miss fish, and once they were hooked I needed pliers to get the damn things back in the water.

The other thing that amazed me about this rod was its light weight. I expected it to be ungainly and taxing like the 9 foot musky rods we’ve used at St. Clair. No matter how adept you get with those, and no matter how much weight the manufacturer strips from them, you’re always well aware that you’re working with the functional equivalent of a telephone pole. Maybe it was the components, or perhaps the way they’ve balanced it, but this one actually felt lighter than my 7’11” cranking stick, more comparable to a standard 7’ to 7’4” worm rod, yet I was always aware of how much power it stored in reserve.

The other thing that impressed me was the components. This rod may be light, but it’s built durably to take the beating that equipment suffers in Mexico. The handle, too, is a thing of beauty. In recent years I’ve moved away from primarily cork handles to a mix of cork and foam components. I’m still not sure that I’ve come to prefer one over the other, but I’ve realized that there are high- and low-quality versions of both. The foam that Dobyns used on this rod doesn’t slip through wet palms, but it doesn’t wear you out, either. After beating up my hands grip-and-grinning a bunch of rough-mouthed fish, that was important to me.

Ultimately, I went from the high of acquiring this rod, to the low of thinking it was a one-trick pony, and back to being thrilled again. I’ve proven that its utility is not just limited to big glide baits and swimbaits. I can see myself throwing the SPRO BBZ Rat on this, as well as an Alabama Rig or even spinnerbaits over an ounce. In a pinch, I’m sure it would work with a 10XD, too. It’s a rod that I want to pick up, both because it promises big bites and because it doesn’t wear me out when chasing them.