Carousing my WON paper today in the WON bass insert, I was reading about how Byron Velvick won the Western Classic a few months ago. It was kind of subtle but about mid-way through the article he says something along the lines of: "I was fishing around the marina area and throwing something the fish probably hadn't seen before. A very effective small swimbait." He doesn't say what bait he was using, but if you watch his swimbait video he actually shows some of the smaller saltwater type swimbaits. The same kind of swimbaits I wrote about in late 1999 in my "Using Saltwater Swimbaits for Freshwater Bass Article". Now Byron probably has some cool japanese swimbait or something, but just the fact that a small swimbait helped him win the Western Classic is just way too cool to me. This is the first time I have ever read anyone say that the did well in a tournament fishing a small swimbait. The guy has probably known about that stuff for years and I just am excited that what I discovered on my own at Margarita so many summer's ago is proving to be a great technique. I believe that you can catch swimbait fish using 5" swimbaits in almost every lake in the country. I've caught fish at Shasta on them, I know Chris Y. caught a fish at Berryessa on them, the fish at Clear Lake woof them every time I go up there with John, the fish at Calero eat them, they just plain work! So I just had to gloat for a bit there and I predict that using the 4 to 6" swimbaits is going to become much more popular over the next few years.