Reviewed by: CAPT. MIKE SCHOONVELD
Bandits weren’t the original deep-diving stick bait designed to catch walleyes in Lake Erie or other places, but over time, they’ve risen to be the top pick for many anglers. Plenty of other brands are available and no doubt, they work, but time and again, Bandits seem to sniff out and hook into more fish on a consistent basis.
One thing deep-diving stick bait users found however is they often lose their allure when fishing tight areas when trolling requires making more than just moderate turns. Anglers noted when turning the fish would hit on the planer board lines pulling Bandits even though these lures were speeding up. The ones on the inside died.
Precision Trolling Data research shows lures don’t dive deeper as speed increases, but a buoyant lure, slowing to almost zero on a can float higher in the water column. Walleyes will often nab every Bandit or other lure it spots at, say, 22 feet deep regardless of how fast it’s going. The same lure at 14 or 15 feet will be ignored.
So the Bandit “boys” engineered their “new for ‘22″ Suspending Bandit to have neutral buoyancy, without losing any of the Bandit, fish catching action. The decrease in buoyancy makes them run about 10 percent deeper than the original Bandits. Adjust your leads accordingly to hit that perfect depth. But don’t worry about spinning around to head back through an active school. These Suspending Bandits won’t float towards the surface as they slow to near zero on the inside of a tight turn. Instead, they hover in the strike zone and those using these last summer report strikes coming just a few seconds after their speed increases and the lure’s action starts to speed back to normal.
Suspending Bandits were originally introduced in a dozen of the most popular Bandit colors. New for this season are some all new colors in the Suspending Minnow and I was able to pick up some of these in time for an early November trip to Huron, Ohio. On this trip, one of my new colors – Blue Back Black Stripe – was the stud muffin for the trip. Another Suspending Minnow in the venerable “2052” pattern was also a solid producer.
When restocking your tackle box for the ’23 season, pick-up some Suspending Minnows and check out the new colors at: https://www.lurenet.com/brands/bandit.
FISHING TOYS 