Butch Brown Mod on Soft Body Swimbaits...???

[OG_ZILLION]

I know that people have been modifying their HUDDLESTONS for years with the Butch Brown mod by cutting the stock top hook and replacing with a treble hook & steel wire or braid.

1. Most of the top hook style swimbaits besides a Hudd (Optimum, Osprey, RAGO, Mattlures etc.) come with a decent hook but if someone would ever want to replace the top hook...will a butch brown rig work on these also...???

I don't like having a belly style treble hook on a line thru swimbait as some of the waters I fish (Urban Ponds/Lakes) are kind of shallow and I want to crawl my swimbaits near the bottom and don't want to get snagged/hung up.

2. Was wondering if it would be possible to rig line thrus butch brown way...???

If its not...probably best to use these swimbaits for situations/areas or scenarios where I need to fish the bait near the surface or even sub surface at a certain depth where I know there is no apparent structure/cover to get snagged on right...???

[IAY]

Personally never saw the need for the Butch Brown rig, but here is a video of Mike Long applying similar type of mod to a bottom inthrough Rago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUixA1wuhYs

[Toadslayer72]

I know that people have been modifying their HUDDLESTONS for years with the Butch Brown mod by cutting the stock top hook and replacing with a treble hook & steel wire or braid.

1. Most of the top hook style swimbaits besides a Hudd (Optimum, Osprey, RAGO, Mattlures etc.) come with a decent hook but if someone would ever want to replace the top hook...will a butch brown rig work on these also...???

I don't like having a belly style treble hook on a line thru swimbait as some of the waters I fish (Urban Ponds/Lakes) are kind of shallow and I want to crawl my swimbaits near the bottom and don't want to get snagged/hung up.

2. Was wondering if it would be possible to rig line thrus butch brown way...???

If its not...probably best to use these swimbaits for situations/areas or scenarios where I need to fish the bait near the surface or even sub surface at a certain depth where I know there is no apparent structure/cover to get snagged on right...???

One of the main attributes of the BB rig on an 8" Hudd is that when a fish is hooked, it breaks away and the bait hangs down helping to greatly reduce that fish's ability to throw the bait, at least that's the idea. All of that weight and the leverage it can provide is off to the side. It brings some of that advantage the line-thrus have. This concept is put to use in the Roman Made custom baits too. I think I even read about other guys starting to implement a similar system on other hard baits. It's also something I only bother doing on the 8" Hudd, not the 68 or smaller baits (anymore) because the weight thing feels like less of an issue.

Now there are plenty of great big bait heads that roll with the stock hook and they seem to do just fine. I know one thing, for me, EVERY single largemouth that I've caught on the 8" (which admittedly isn't a bunch ((but they have all been super quality fish)) has been pinned, solid, with those two points. I continue to marvel at it with each successive toad that I add to the count

As far as other baits go, I did try to do this w a couple of Mattlures Ultimate Gills. I ran into several problems. Due to the shape of a gill, there really isn't too much real estate to work with between the line tie and the dorsal fin. With a trout or similarly shaped bait, it's not an issue. The other thing that really bothered me was the size of the hook I had to use. Not that small hooks can't get big fish but with my system (braid with a leader) I prefer an much more stout treble, like an Owner ST-66.The problem then becomes modifying a heavier gauged hook, I was able to do it but it's hard as hell. Oh and then there is the issue of the hook staying in place. Again, with the Hudd, you have some "meat" there to peg the cut off shank. On the Mattlures, the outer skin is a lot thinner. To solve this I ended up cutting open the back and carving a channel in the hard inner foam to peg the cut/bent piece into. This was an OK work around but still not as good as with the Hudd. In the end, I decided that I needed to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and just threw a hyper wire and ST-66 combo on the belly and I use those baits in open water. I will most likely try to convert two Huddleston weedless gills this winter to straight up line-thrus. The early batch of Hudd gills seemed to be hit or miss with them running true so I pretty much have a couple of baits that I don't use anyway. Perfect candidates for experimentation.

That's all I got