Simple River Rat Lure Mod -- Flat Rubber Skirts
Most of today’s preferred spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, vibrating jigs, and swim jigs are adorned with silicone or living rubber skirts. They’re almost infinitely customizable in terms of colors, easy to maintain, look good in the package – and they catch fish. That doesn’t mean they’re the only option, though.
As we’ve seen in recent years, it’s possible to get rid of your skirt altogether. In many cases, a naked buzz toad has become the preferred option on a buzzbait, and you can put fluke-style or dipper-style plastics alone on the back of a number of different lures. Nevertheless, if you still want a skirt – as I often do – and particularly if you fish river systems, consider a comparatively ugly flat rubber skirt. They pulse differently, flare different, move water differently, and provide a distinct look that moving water fish sometimes seems to prefer.
I’ve been using a basic white, white/chartreuse or white/chartreuse blue flat rubber skirt on vibrating jigs and spinnerbaits from Delta Lures over the past couple of years. I can’t say for certain that it’s the skirt that has made all of the difference, but there have definitely been times when they’ve outfished other baits, even similar models from the same company. Furthermore, if you look at the top river rats from various places around the country, like Louisiana, a lot of the top sticks keep these in their arsenal. For a while, it was tough to find either these skirts alone, or lures dressed with them, but now that’s not quite such an issue. In addition to the Delta Lures products mentioned above (and the H&H, which I need to be convinced to purchase), here are a few you might want to try:
Spinnerbaits
Humdinger Colorado Spinnerbaits
Humdinger Colorado Indiana Spinnerbaits
Humdinger Colorado Willow Spinnerbaits
Humdinger Double Willow Spinnerbaits
Luck-E-Strike Redman Colorado Spinnerbait
Buzzbaits
Skirts
Humdinger Replacement Rubber Skirts
Andy's Custom Bass Lures Old School Flat Cut Rubber
Notes
As I’ve written about before, my personal best largemouth came on a Jeane Tackle ¾ ounce spinnerbait with hammered blades and a flat rubber skirt.
I still have some old Lunker Lure buzzbaits that came with flat rubber skirts sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, but typically when I open the packages the skirts disintegrate.
As noted above, the H&H is popular in some river systems, but I just find it to be a little bit too primitive to get confidence in it.
While combinations of white, chartreuse, blue and occasionally black have been best for me, there are some options outside of that range, like Humdinger’s brown and orange with orange blades. It’s just harder to get as many color variations as you can get in more modern skirts.
