Much of the success that Texan Chris Zaldain has had fishing the Bassmaster Elite Series can be credited to his mastery of swimbaits. While this is no secret, you may not know that Zaldain often embellishes his swimbaits with an underbelly spinner blade.
His favorite setup for this is a 6-inch Megabass Magdraft Freestyle Swimbait rigged on a Lazer Trokar Swim Blade, which is built on 3/0, 5/0 and 7/0 weedless hooks and in a variety of weights. It features a screw-lock bait keeper and a hammered willow leaf blade that spins behind a weight molded to the hook’s shaft. Zaldain dotes on the Swim Blade built on the large 7/0 hook.
“You need a big meat hook when you’re fishing a 6-inch swimbait,” Zaldain stressed. “When a 5-pound bass clamps on that bait with its bear-trap jaws, that ultra-sharp Trokar hook penetrates.”
This sizeable underspin swimbait produced some heavyweight bass for Zaldain at the 2019 Bassmaster Classic on the Tennessee River. He finished 12th at the Classic with 34 pounds. The same swimbait was his primary lure when he finished 13th with a weight of 63-10 at Lake Fork during Toyota Bassmaster Texas Fest in 2019. He missed the Day 4 cut by mere ounces.
“I used it almost exclusively at Texas Fest,” Zaldain said of his underspin swimbait. “I caught a lot of 6s and 7s on it. I was throwing it on extremely windy, shallow clay points where gizzard shad were showing up.”
