About 10 years ago my buddy Sam calls me and tell me about a bird that came out of fish Booby Cobo caught. He said it was still alive. A couple weeks go buy and I head to Watsonville for some lake fishing and he hands me of the rats with a piece of living rubber glued to the top. I’m thinking, WTF… So he hammers them that day and I just laughed. A few years go by, he keeps on tweaking. The baits get better and we start using them at Clear Lake and the Delta. We quickly learned browns and whites get more bites and the black/red ones would get your picture taken.
Sam starts working with liquid plastics and various materials to make the wings; he would hold it up above his head and look at it while explaining the next variation. He kept on tweaking until the spring of 2010, when 9 years of bird talk finally came to fruition. He and the Watsonville rat boys were catching them like never before. My Aunt lives on Pinto Lake and so I was aware of the fish there, but not the amount of big splashes (3.5 lbs or better) they were getting. I had to go check it out and they weren’t kidding. The (show me two rule) lasted about 10 minutes and I was tying one on was blasting them shortly. They were throwing the birds into the deepest thickest trees and tulles with a pop, pop, pause and they just waited. Fish were blasting these baits and we couldn’t believe it.
Last summer Sam flies his plane in from Watsonville and we fish the Delta and we get big splashes and catch fish in just about everywhere we went. The rat boys were catching them everywhere also. That was it. Sam started Flip in the Bird Lure Company, did his trademarks and patents. During the winter, the bird went through a few body mold designs, wings variations, hook and recess considerations, tail options, etc. He always looked at it from the bottom side. There was a time about 2 months ago, on Rev 2 when we thought we messed it up. So Sam got input from all the testers, made the necessary changes and told me in 3 weeks he have it fixed. He delivered on what he said.
A few weeks ago, Sam Brought the Rev3 Birds to the Delta to test and we tested it for 4 days on two different weekends. We fished mornings and one evening. We had 100 deg. weather one weekend and the other was 75 deg with 10-20 MPH winds with a front moving through. A full moon figured to make things tougher. Sam was using the Purple Finch and the Red Winged Blackbird. I was using the White Chested Tree Swallow. Sam’s baits were barbless. We were very pleased with our testing totals. Sam went 10-14 on the Big Splash. We didn’t count two lbers. I managed 10 for 17 for Big Splashes. Three of the fish came back for a second pass after missing. The number we thought was interesting was, 70% of our bites came on a dead stick of 15 seconds. We had a few that sat for one minute before being blasted.
My bait after 4 days of fishing looks like the day it was purchased. Sam, having an Industrial Engineering Degree from SJ State, blended the right plastics to make a durable long lasting texture. He also engineered the body angle to keep the bird from being a sinker. No sinking problems experienced.
We fish the bird many different ways. The fish will tell you which way they like it and also where they are. Meaning, some days they eat it when it hits the water or when the bird is in its zone. Some days, the fish are neutral in mood a take a little longer to commit. Dead sticking up to one minute or longer has produced some of the most vicious big slashes. The design of the bird, keeps the bait in the zone longer (drag of wings and tail in water) and angle of bait. The underwater profile is what makes the bird different any other bait. If the fish is there, it will want it outa there.
Bob Santora
Pro-Staffer
™ Flip in the Bird Lure Company
“The Bird is the Word”
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