One of my favorite swimbaits on the market is the dipper series from Reaction Innovations. They work great, are relatively inexpensive and durable, and come in a bunch of awesome colors. There are also three different sizes you can choose from. The smallest size is the Little Dipper. This version is 3.5 inches and works great on umbrella rigs or as a small swimbait if the fish you are targeting are under a lot of pressure and you want to downsize your lure. Here’s a picture of one on a 3/0 Owner Weighted Twistlock CPS hook:
You can also use this version with a small underspin and one of my favorite options is a weedless underspin with a 3/0 Owner Flashy Swimmer.
The next size up in the series is the Skinny Dipper. This version is 5 inches and it is probably the most well known and widely used version. There are a lot of different ways you can rig this one and plenty of videos out there on that topic so I won’t get into them all, but one of my favorite ways to use it is as a weedless underspin on a 5/0 Owner Flashy Swimmer:
The final lure in the series is the Big Dipper. This one is 6 inches and I don’t see it mentioned as much but it has become one of my favorites. You can rig it on a weedless swimbait hook and throw it that way, but another way to rig it up is with a 5/0 VMC Drop Dead hook. This hook is normally used as a weedless swimbait hook, but with a little tinkering you can actually set it up as a regular / non-weedless lure and here’s how that looks:
This rig took a little time and effort to figure out. The lure also doesn’t come with eyes and I actually got those eyes off a Bass Mafia Daingerous and super glued them on. If you are interested in doing that you can buy swimbait eyes online and I’d personally suggest getting ones that are around 8mm in size as these ones were a little small, but I figured I’d reuse them anyway. I’ll actually post another article that explains how to set this up in case you want to try it out on your own, but long story short this thing works great and is also relatively inexpensive. It also weighs just over an ounce, which means you can throw it on a typical heavy fast rod and won’t need a separate swimbait rod to use it.
As far as colors go there are a lot of great options to choose from. The shad color pictured above is called Lab Rat and is one of my favorites. The little dipper in the first picture is Watermelon Green Pumpkin and I like that one when I think the bass are targeting bluegill. The two other colors I really like are White Trash and Sexy Shad and both of those do well if the water is stained or the visibility is lower.
In summary, I really like all three of these swimbaits. I don’t see them mentioned as much these days so I figured I’d take a few minutes and share my thoughts on them as they have worked really well for me and are less expensive than a lot of the other swimbaits that seem to be more popular at the moment which makes them a great value.
Tackle Summary
Product: Reaction Innovations Dipper
Category: Swimbait
Length: 3.5″, 5″, & 6″
Suggested Colors: White Trash, Sexy Shad, Lab Rat, Watermelon Green Pumpkin
Suggested Lures: Small Underspin, Small Swimbait, Large Underspin
