Stop Overlooking This Urchin Bait (Not a Fullcast)

So many anglers are overlooking the smaller coike/urchin sizes when it comes to the urchin craze! They catch em just as good, just need to swap up the hardware and setup to assist with casting and hookup ratio.

Here are the links to all the baits and gear talked about in today's episode: Use "SERIOUS10" at the links to Omnia Fishing for 10% off your whole order:
📌 Hideup 17mm: https://omnia.direct/rht
📌 Hideup 13mm: https://omnia.direct/srrth
📌 Berkley Moeba 3.25": https://omnia.direct/zedth

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This sucker right here has started an absolute storm in the world of bass fishing, but there's something that you guys are overlooking that's not being talked about enough. All the emphasis has been put on this full cast size, 20 millimeter, 19 millimeter size koiki or urchin style baits as they're coined as now. And not enough people are talking about the small ones. I'm talking the 17 millimeter, the 13 millimeter, and they even make smaller. And let me start this off by saying these aren't just made smaller to catch smaller fish. Now these are great if you're targeting small mouth, spotted bass, potentially smaller bass, but do not think for a second that a big old largemouth in Texas, somewhere where the full cast has been shining, will not catch them. It absolutely will. And we're gonna talk about why you need to be throwing these, how to rig them, and the setups to throw them on here on this video. So thank you guys for joining us here on the lure lab. This video, like I said, we're gonna be talking about the smaller size koikis, like the 13 millimeter here. There's some smaller sizes in like the six cents abstract, the Yamamoto unis. There's a bunch of different styles that you can get, brands you can get, but for the most part, we're be talking about is simply just the smaller size, the smaller profile of the little urchin bait. And I'll give you guys an example of why I wanted to talk about this. We were down on Santee Cooper, I was fishing a tournament, I was throwing the full cast, I was catching some big ones on it, had a great event there. But a buddy of mine, Ryan Nye, was actually throwing the 17 millimeter Koichi and in practice caught like two eight pounders, something ridiculous, caught some very big fish, throwing it on spinning tackle for these giant southern Florida strain largemouth. So I'm gonna put this in terms of how to rig them, how I would throw them, the setups I would throw them on, and then how I might beef it up if I'm going for some bigger largemouth, especially in the south when you have timbers, things like that. So, first and foremost, I'll start off with rigging. We'll work to the setup and then talk about actually fishing them. Now, the most popular way to rig it is quite simple. It's the most popular one, it's just putting a nail weight in the bottom of it there, and then rigging either a treble hook or a single style hook. Personally, for me, I'm looking at this as yes, this causes a lot of attention and disturbance in the water, but I feel like especially on the smaller ones and even on the full cast now, I'm gravitating more towards single hooks than treble hooks. At least for me, I was throwing the quad hook on the full cast, and there's a lot of times if you don't have it weighted absolutely perfect, that sometimes that treble hook can roll on the bottom, and when these fish go to eat it, you can tongue hook them. Yes, you get them in the boat, but for the conservation side of me, I don't want to tongue hook any fish because once they're tongue hooked, they're bleeding and their chance of survival goes down, even if they swim away from the boat. So typically I'm gonna go gravitate towards the single hook, something like this in the 17 millimeter. You'll have to excuse me, some of these are kind of uh kinked, and I have to go and boil them and reshape them, but uh, I'll throw like a two-watt Ryugi style Talisman hook. So, because with that single hook, you can hide it a little bit better in those appendages, especially some of these darker colors that will blend in the hook and just hide in there a little bit easier. Whereas the treble hook is a lot more hardware that those fish could potentially see if you're on pressure in more clear water fisheries. Now, we're gonna have some other videos coming out on some more unique ways to fish the Koiky beyond just what we're talking about now of most people putting in a Nico weight and fishing it like a jerkbait because there's other ways you can fish this that are very impactful that can catch a lot of fish that a lot of people are missing out on right now. But the two big popular ways that I'm seeing this be fished personally, and also just talking with a bunch of my very nerdy fishing avids is the Niko style, like we mentioned, but also on a Jika rig. Now, a Jika rig is simply kind of like a Tokyo rig, but take that weight and instead use a talisman style hook or a wacky rig style hook, Nico style hook instead of typically the jika rig comes with like a worm hook or a flipping hook. Similarly, you can throw it on a free rig. A free rig is where you have your hook through here and your weight is free swinging on the line. We'll show you guys all of that on an upcoming video when we're on the water actually fishing them. Those are the main ways to rig the bait. And don't get this twisted, guys. A lot of people confuse the urchin bait with a similar to like the jig head minnow, where it's predominantly a forward facing sonar bait. That is not the case, especially not with the urchin style bait. I can't tell you how many fish I've caught with it without even having four facing on the boat, having it turned off, is a great bait to where wherever you're going to fish a wacky rig, you're gonna go fish a jig, flip a Texas rig, things like that. Try the urchin bait in place, and you might find that you're actually getting some more bites because a lot of those fish there have not seen that bait, especially in the place that you're putting it. So a lot of people are overlooking the smaller size right now. Some people might go down to laydowns and throw your bigger style, your full cast style urchin baits, but I do recommend you put down that casting rod, the full cast, for a second and give the smaller ones a try. Now, this is now this is a 7-3 medium mag fast spinning rod. You want a little bit more backbone just so that you can drive that hook home because a lot of times you're gonna be bit on slack line, and you need to reel and kind of give those fish some beans. And by beans, I mean give them a little bit of elbow juice. You can get away a lot of times by just simply reeling hard and leaning on them, but a lot of times when you feel that slack or you feel that bite on slack line, you're gonna want to reel in tight and kind of give them a good hook set, almost kind of like with a drop shot or a Niko rig. Nothing too crazy like you're swinging the bat on a frog, but giving it a little bit more of a hook set to try to get that hook pinned into those fish. So I have this rig Nico style here, and I'll show you again. This has been sitting in my garage for about a month now, so it is all kinked up. I gotta boil this again, but that is on a two-att Ryugi hook. You can see how I mean that single hook hides itself very well within those appendages, but a little Nico aid on bottom, and the rod and the line are gonna be the most important part of this. This is a 13 fishing enzo Diowa Tatula MQ, and what I have on here is 14-pound braid and 10-pound fluorocarbon leader. I'm gonna beef it up a little bit because for two reasons. One, when you're setting the hook a little harder, you want some more leverage on these fish. One, so that your line won't break, two, so that you can gain leverage on the fish, and then three, the heavier the line, the slower the sink. And typically, unless you want to be fishing this on bottom like a JK rig, things like that, I would still throw the same line, but the way I'm fishing right now is I want this bait to be above the fish, so the heavier the line, the slower the sink. And so the lighter the line, the faster the sink, so on and so forth. You can even go up to a heavier uh pound monofilament line if you want it to sink even slower. But anytime that I'm throwing like the 17 millimeter or less, those smaller size urchin baits, I'm gonna gravitate towards a spinning setup. Now, if you want to, if you're throwing on the Jika rig or on a free rig, you can go back to a casting depending on what size weight. If you prefer to use a casting setup, if you do, I would use a medium heavy. I wouldn't go too heavy on that setup. It's a lot bit a lot different than a full cast, the bigger size uh urchin baits. There's been a lot of buzz on these suckers and they absolutely catch the fire out of them. And if you have it Nico rigged, fish it like a jerk bait, hover over top of them. Try even just super slow reeling it because if you watch these appendages in the water, they kind of just flutter a little bit as the water moves. And the reason that the hide up, the koike style baits work so well compared to the rest is that they're a stiffer plastic, and stiffer means it moves more water. Moves more water means the more those fish can feel that. And that is my theory as to why they bite them more than maybe some of the others. The others work great, but I still think you get more bites on the hide up just because of a stronger, more stiffer plastic. As to what I think they are, I've heard so many theories, I have no idea why. But if you're throwing the Jika rig or a free rig, cast it, let it hit bottom, and I would similarly work it as if I'm throwing the Nico style with some pops in there, twitching that line, almost kind of like you're throwing a Nico. Let it hit bottom, twitch it a couple times, let it kind of sit there, twitch it a couple times, let it sit there, drag it a little bit, twitch it, and you'll be surprised the amount of bites that you get picked up on this thing. So it's the most popular bait right now in bass fishing by far. Uh it dominated eye cast, and I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. But I will say, while the buzz is on all of these bigger urchins, don't be afraid to downsize to something a little bit smaller because even these big melons in the south will eat this thing.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Oh, and I forgot to mention if you don't trust me, take some advice from my pal, Mr. Benjamin Nowak.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Hi everyone, my name is Benjamin Nolak, and I want to show you how to rig these 13 millimeter or 15 millimeter urchins. So this is the smaller size, and this is the one I prefer when I'm fishing for smallmouth, or I need just a little bit more downsized presentation or profile. This is a doable swimming and then I cut off and then screw lock on there and actually screw this into the original. It does take a little bit of force. I like to throw it on a spinning setup. I can get a lot of distance casting at 80 plus feet. And I like to use the Great Lakes Finesse Finesse CX 7 for medium light. So this is how I rig my 13mm and 15mm urchins.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So this is one to all anglers all over the country. Smallmouth, largemouth spotted bass. Pick up the small urchin, go have yourself a field day. We will link everything that is in this video down below. If there's the rod and reel stuff like that is not available, we'll link a similar setup for you guys to go check out in the in the description. You can use code series 10 to save 10% off Omniafishing. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed this rendition of the 3,000 million freaking urchin videos that are out there. No one's really talking about the little ones right now. So figure to put that out there. Hopefully, you guys appreciate it. Like, subscribe, and we'll see you on the next one.