Testimonials & Tips


If you have a catch story or pictures, I'd love to hear from you!  Send your stories and pictures to:
lawlllawlll@aol.com



July 2019


 I've got to disclose right here that I've known the folks at Humdinger for many years. They used to help me by supplying baits for an on-air prize giveaway I did for many years on the show. Now they've expanded their line-up to include these "Spinner-Cranks" and I'm a big fan. These are almost finesse cranks, having a spinning blade where the rear treble usually hangs. I say finesse because these seem to work especially well when a regular crankbait doesn't. It's almost as if the spinner attracts the attention of the fish more than the crank itself. Whatever the reason, these baits will flat catch fish! In addition, many of the Humdinger baits are UV coated to help them glow in certain light conditions. If you're looking for a bait for pressured bass, clear water fishing or any conditions where the fish seem a little skittish, try a Humdinger Spinner CRANK!


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 August 2018
SPINNER CRANK RESULTS






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June 2018
Humbugs been catching em for fourteen years!

Two at a time makes for fast limits.




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Yellow Jackets working on Ray Roberts!




Leroy,
Yella Jackets did great at Ray Roberts. Caught sand bass limit 4 straight days. Also
caught black bass and a great cat.
Thanks, great product.


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JUNE 2017
Made the second trip out in my new kayak. Had my limit before 7:30!
All on the most fish catching lure I've ever thrown, Humdinger!
T.G.

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Regino caught these Walleye on this crank bait that I used ultraviolet air brush paint on.

Good catch!



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Lake Fork  April 2015 








Saltwater Fish love Humdingers!







"Hey man I've been using your lures since I 1st got introduced to them last summer. I've caught well over a 100 whites and a few 5+ pound bass and even a big cat.  I work out at the docks on e m [Eagle Mountain Lake] and would like to invite u to come fish with me on us.  Here are a few pics of fish from this weekend."

Shorty82
April 2014



"Guys I give credit when it's due. I have learned a lot from the guides on here that I have fished with over the years. Have also credited baitmakers and such on here......all I am gonna say is WOW!!!!! Leroy dang good job on your blade baits! I ordered some from Leroy of humdinger lures about a month ago. I liked the looks of the bait...for dead sticking the bait sits right in the water for the taking... Drop to bottom and tickle the bottom, with slight twitch. In the cold water we boated 100 fish yesterday, the blades got roughly 75% of them."






 Bryon Nolan and friends catching hybrids in the cold with the the new Dinger Blades!  December 28th, 2013


We had an excellent day fishing with your baits last week. My customers had their limit of 50 big white bass with very fast action using Humdingers. Since I have been using your baits I find myself tying one on before any other bait. It has become our bait of choice on my boat for white bass. When I take people white bass fishing they know the Humdinger name when they get off my boat. I look forward to continued success using your baits... Call anytime
Thanks,
Chuck Rollins
Owner/Guide

903-288-5798


  



 Went fishing this morning and boated around 200 fish! All caught on the Hum bug! Cleaned 125 and the guys were still bringing them in as I cleaned fish. This new lure works good slabbing, and on a slow retrieve through schooling sandies. EM (Eagle Mountain Lake, Azle, TX) was the lake and we caught them as deep as 24 ft and as shallow as 8 ft. Thanks again Humdinger for two great lures! - Brother Terry (TFF)
 Just thought I'd let you know how the Humdinger is doing in Iowa.  I spent the last 22 years in Texas and the Humdinger was the best White Bass/Hybrid lure I have tried to date.  I just moved back to Iowa (my home state)  and thought I would see what the fishing was like here in Iowa City since it's been so long.  I went down below the dam and noticed people were catching white bass on jigs.  Well since the dam is very close to where I live I can fish there every morning for one hour before work (doesn't get much better for me).  So,  on a Friday I tried the white jigs everyone else was using and caught 6 fish.  I guess not bad for an hour.  The following Monday I thought I'd try again but it seemed slow for the first 40 minutes (3 fish) so I changed to the white 3/8 oz Humdinger. Caught 21 whites in the next 20 minutes.  Awesome right?  It only gets better for me.
I have gone fishing 4 days this week for a total of 4 hours and here are the white bass numbers for the humdinger on each day:
   Monday    21
   Tuesday    23
   Thursday  34    Also one 10lb Buffalo
   Friday      60    I had one guy offer to buy my lure on Friday morning  :))

Anyway, I ordered a few more today since I have a feeling my stock will slowly dwindle.  I will tell as many people about your product as I can.....but maybe not exactly right away.  I'd like to catch a few myself before I have to give the secret away  :))
Thanks for the great lure,

Gary Reittinger
 

I caught it [Catfish] on your 3/8 oz pearl white with glitter, slow rolling it in about 23' of water while fishing for crappie.  I was using a 5'6" crappie pole and it took about 15 minutes to bring it to the surface.  Don't know what the fish weighed, as the 50# scale bottomed out.  Thanks for letting me use your jigs.  I've now caught black bass, sandbass and catfish on the Humdinger............all while crappie fishing.  I know that eventually I will start to catch crappie.

Guy Skinner
 
The blade configuration is great.  I can feel it spinning while dropping it down!  I used a Candy Chartreuse in the 1/2 oz. My first trip out I caught 30 sandies on that lure. After that trip I ordered 12 more in the larger size and various colors. The next trip out the bite was slow on the Chartreuse and the Candy Chartreuse and I ended up catching them on Pearl White. If you use this bait and they don't bite it, they either aren't there or they want another color! 
T- Gilstrap
 
Humdinger Hung Up?  Bob C has the Answer!
Some have said they have had a problem gettin the HD loose from a bottom hangup. I have had great success in getting them loose by moving the boat so that I'm right over the hangup. Then, keeping the line slackless, popping the rod tip up and down. If the lure is hung on a limb or branch or in a rock. the lure seems to just pop loose more times than not.
I bounce the HD along the bottom quite a bit and get hungup pretty often, but I'd bet I've lost only two or three HD's in the last 18 or so months....and I use the HD most of the time, fishing at least once a week! I don't lose them, my fishing buddies just "borrow" them and forget to give them back!

What a wonderful lure....for many species...especially sandies, stripers, and hybrids! 
Tip from Bob C as posted at the Texas Fishing Forum
The Hum-Jig Trolling Combo is Born
I had the good fortune to meet Howell Dodd (of HD Guide Service) this spring and have hired him quite a few times since then.  In that time he has become a great friend and my sand bass mentor. (More like a drug dealer encouraging my white bass addiction)  The first time I went out with Howell he showed me how to Hell-Pet even though it was not the best time time of the year to do it. Slabbing, cast and retrieve  and chasing birds was the order of the day but I had read about it and wanted to learn so like a great guide he showed me how to do it purely for educational purposes.  
Clearly it is a great and well proven technique but as the owner of a small jon boat the idea of trying to handle those rods with that hellbender pulling like hell (pun not intended) and running my boat alone seemed like it would be a real pain in the butt. I also noticed that guides kept rods permanently rigged for Hell-Pet and this might be fine for them but unlike professional guides I don't have a garage full of rods each rigged for a specific purpose.  So I decided for the time being why worry go slab and you will do fine. That worked for a while but summer came and when that happened the fish suspended. So I considered the options.
Option One - Go to Academy, by all the stuff to rig up Hell - Pet and try it.  Further do so knowing that I would have a hell of a time running this in my tiny boat when I fish 90% of the time alone.
Option Two - Give up Sand Bass till early fall or only fish them at the tail end of the day (clearly this was not an option for a new addict)
Option Three - Find a way to mimic the hell pet technique in the key ways that made it work.  To me these were the following:

  1. It put the lure at a consistent depth that was controlled by how much line one let out and could be adjusted to a degree simply by raising or lowering the rod tip.
     
  2. Used a shiny lure that was small enough to attract the strike of a suspended sandie that was not really on the feed.
     
My first thoughts were of a very heavy lure that Howell had also introduced me to namely the Humdinger.  These come in a 3/4 ounce size and are like a much improved version of the famous "Little George".  One other thing Howell had taught me was to use a double rig while slabbing.  This rig consisted of a heavy slab and a small crappie jig about 12-18 inches above the slab.   Doing so provided two benefits, one it often appeared, to the fish, that you had a small sand bass (the slab) chasing a minnow (the jig) so it triggered competitive feeding and further if you hooked a sandie and allowed the bait stay deep for a bit, you would often hook a double.  
Now when I was slabbing I decided to come up with a leader that used snap swivels so I could change out slab and jig sizes and colors quickly.  When I wanted to slab, I attached a jig to the upper snap and a slab to the lower one.  I also used a snap swivel on the main line so I could remove the entire leader and change to a more conventional rig in just seconds.  I decided that this leader could form the basis of my new trolling technique.

Here  is a picture of the leader I use, now the cool part is I can tie
 up a few leaders like  this and just snap them on quickly.
First I  take about 2 or so feet of heavy clear mono, say 20 Lb line (because it is what I had around the house you can certainly go lighter). At the top I tie a standard snell type loop... so I can use the snap on the main line to attach it.  Next about 6-10 inches below the loop I tie a dropper loop.  When I do this knot though I don't just tie it I put a snap swivel on the line first and tie the loop so the snap hangs off it. This will be later used to attach a sassy shad or jig.  Then about 12-18 inches down from there I use a standard palmer knot to attach the last swivel.  So in the end I have a leader with a loop on top, a dropper loop holding a snap swivel and a snap swivel at the bottom.  If you click the image above you can see a full sized picture of this leader.

The newly named Hum-Jig trolling rig.
Now the terminal tackle.  I put a Humdinger in the 3/4 ounce size on the bottom snap swivel then at the top snap swivel I put on a small sassy shad or some type of small jig. Because I use snaps I can change out jigs or hummers to different colors and sizes quickly. Best on my first outing seemed to be a silver hummer and a 1 inch sassy shad.  I troll with this stuff about 2.5 mph which is top speed for my Min Kota Trolling motor. To me this may sound complicated but in reality it is far less complicated much easier then Hell Pet. After you do it once you will be amazed by how simple it really is.  I believe this rig runs about 14-18 feet if you let it out for a 15 count. I did hang the bottom a few times, during s-turns, in 20 or so feet of water so it gets close to that depth anyway.  I thought to myself, that is pretty damn close to Hell Pet Territory, huh?

The results of my first attempt were impressive.  I trolled for about 90 minutes with the rig pictured above and in that time I boated and boxed 12 keeper sand bass in the 11-13 inch range (nice fish for Joe Pool) and released another 18 or so that were dinks or just barely legal.  Had I trolled for say 2 1/2 hours and kept all legal fish a limit would have certainly been the result.  I would also say that by letting the fist hooked fish drag for about 10 or so seconds before reeling him in, yielded a double about every third catch.  It also appeared on singles that 90% of the time the first fish hit the humdinger.