Lovely 70cm bass yesterday morning on the lethal little, not very expensive, and very long-casting Berkley DEX Strider 9cm surface lure

Not caught by me I might add! We were doing some filming stuff over the last couple of days for various Savage Gear items of fishing tackle which will be on the market next year. Will Cooper was kindly helping out and fishing with us, and yesterday morning he was just upstream for me and working away with what I know is his favourite surface lure - the little £9.99 Berkley DEX Strider 9cm/9g. At one point he shouted over that he was into a good fish so I dumped my gear and went over to him while Ben rolled the camera. I don’t know how much was captured on video, but a short while later Will slipped a rather stunning looking bass into his landing net……………

Which was nice! It looked like a cracker of a bass, and on the measuring tape which I carry but rarely use, it went 70cms. A fantastic bass any day or night of the week, but when you’re filming? Even better. Will was over the moon, I was most likely talking a load of gibberish for the camera, I also managed to shoot a bunch of photos, the bass was very well looked after, and after a short while the fish swam strongly away. That my friends is a result, and it’s a big well done to Will for hooking and landing the fish.

I was nothing at all to do with the development of these Berkley DEX Strider surface lures, but at some point a few arrived here at home and in fact the larger Berkley DEX Strider 120 (12cm/20g) was my surface lure of choice when I was chasing striped bass the other day on the east coast of Canada. I love it when a hard lure works really well and doesn’t cost too much, and after a lot of use on a lot of hard-fighting stripers, there was no sign of damage to any of the ones I fished with. You can only use barbless single hooks out there so I rigged them with 4/0 Mustad Kaiju inline singles and to be honest I am going to leave them setup like that for my bass fishing here at home. They worked perfectly, and at £11.99 for this larger size I like them even more. The trebles that come with the lure out of the box are good quality if that helps.

I have been aware for a while now that Will has been doing rather well on the smaller Berkley DEX Strider, the 9cm/9g version. Seems to be a lot of lure for only £9.99. They frigging fly for a “small” surface lure, and the action on them obviously appeals to bass because Will has nailed a bunch of fish on them. Will reckons the lure is doing something a bit different when you walk it across the surface, and with what he’s been catching on them I am inclined to agree. He said that the stunning 70cm bass he caught yesterday literally sipped the lure off the top, much like a wild brown trout might take a dry fly. Guess who is now going through various boxes here at home to see if he can find one or two of the smaller versions which he knows were sent to him at some point?

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