Bladed swimbaits are very big over in Europe, if you check out European fishing store Pecheur.com you'll see a variety of different bladed swimbaits to choose from for european pike, but here in the States this style of swimbait is just catching on, just recently a new bladed swimbait called the Hyperlastics Dart Spin hit the bass market, other than that you have a few underspin jig heads to rig up on a swimbait for largemouth and smallmouth bass, but for the most part there aren't any other bladed swimbaits on the bass market. So why is that?
Even for pike and musky, there aren't many options on the market, you have the Bondy Bait Jr and Bondy Hot Orba, along with the Shadzilla V from Waterwolf, but other than that nothing much else on the market. Until a young musky angler by the name of Alex Conforte has come out with his own bladed swimbait called the Bunsfish. This lure may not look like much, but I'm telling you after seeing how many strikes and follwups I had at Lake St. Clair in June with Livescope until I blew my knee out, I'm convinced the Bunsfish is quite a deadly lure for musky. He has all types of colors to choose from, you can contact Alex on his Facebook page if you're looking to buy some, he actually just received an order from Japan for saltwater fishing. He's also selling these at the St. Lawrence Musky Shop and Lakeside Fishing Shop if you want to buy them locally. Lot of times these soft plastic swimbaits get torn up from the big teeth marks from musky, so what you can do to extend the life of the Bunsfish and many other swimbaits buy some Mend-It Glue to repair them.
But bladed swimbaits are huge in Europe, whether it's Germany, France or Italy. Again, if you head over to a popular european fishing store Pecheur.com, you'll see a variety to choose from, such as the Suissex Shad Spin Blade which I was sponsored by and even tried using these from the shoreline at Lake St. Clair. Bottom line, these bladed swimbaits work very effectively on musky. However, the problem is they are very small, the largest size Suissex makes is 7" long. After receiving a few in the mail and trying them out successfully on Great Lakes spotted musky, I emailed them immediately telling them they need to make a lot larger size such as a 10" or 12" like what Chaos has to offer with the 10" and 12" Posseidon. That's basically how I caught my biggest 47" tiger musky and biggest 53" spotted musky with a white 12" Chaos Posseidon all in one day. Size matters, especially targeting the bigger musky. Many believe there's a 60" musky roaming around somewhere at Lake St. Clair, especially since this lake is connected like a heart to all the great lakes through the St. Clair River like Lake Huron and even the Detroit River to Lake Erie. There's massive musky and pike roaming around all the time, cycling these various species of Esox, some even proclaim there's really large 50" pike hanging around Grassy Island and other locations like the Clinton River.
Bottom line bladed swimbaits in Europe are too small and we don't have enough bladed swimbaits in America. So I decide to take upon myself to recently modify a 12" Chaos Posseidon and add a #8 Hildebrandt willow blade to it for more attraction, just recently I caught a huge walleye on it, then I had hurt my knee and was out for a couple months, just getting back into musky fishing now for 2025, so I'll be throwing this modified Chaos Posseidon in the Fall for huge musky and even Alex's Bunsfish. So hopefully this modified swimbait and Alex's Bunsfish gives you ideas for maybe you're own custom swimbait, because we need more innovative musky lures on the market, especially when it comes to blades swimbait. Even Jon Bondy's swimbaits use double colorado blades with a three part swivel, the mad scientist some people call him, he has some of the most innovative musky lures on the market, I just ordered up three Royal Orbas recently through his website, his bladed big rubber baits produces massive musky from the shoreline, even massive pike if you're looking to order some up for pike fishing overseas in Italy or France.
And if you ever get fatigued or burned out from casting these bladed swimbaits, be aware these baits are super valuable to use when vertical jig fishing for musky in waterways where there is current like the Detroit River, better yet how about the freigther channel in super deep water where a 60 inch musky may lurk!? Even working them vertical jigging in drop off points, these bladed swimbaits work especially well when paired up with Garmin Livescope or Humminbird Mega Live.
Last edited: