Paddletails and swimbaits are the hottest presentations happening today. If you’ve thought you’ve seen them all by now, you haven’t and there’s more yet to come. This segment of soft baits continues to evolve and expand with new designs, colorways, shapes, styles, formulations, features, functions, swimming actions, and iterations as tackle manufacturing continues to advance and evolve. More anglers are relying on these hard-thumping, tail-wagging swimmers for smallmouths than ever before – year-round – in a variety of conditions and situations. I don’t know about you, but paddletails pursue smallmouths with timeliness and efficiency, catching more and bigger fish than most other techniques out there. Over the years I’ve caught several 5- and 6-pound class fish on them, including a personal best 7 and a half pounder, and many customers have captured their personal bests with them too. What started it all for me with paddletails and smallmouths was a flat calm, Indian summer day fishing on the Manitowish Chain. Water temperatures were in the mid-60’s, and I was poking around on a pelagic fishery of the chain trying to find any combination of cis