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November/December 2006

A New Senko Comes On Board
Story and photos by Steve Price

Gary Yamamoto remembers the conversation well. He and fellow FLW Tour pro Shinichi Fukae had just weathered a tough day trying to solve the challenges of Lake Okeechobee's miles of shallow grass; Yamamoto had been flipping while Fukae had alternated between a Senko and a GYCB Swimbait.

"The fish hit the Swimbait but don't take it well," noted Fukae. "They'll take a Senko and I can catch them, but it's too slow and I can't cover enough water. We either need a larger Swimbait, or something else."

That 'something else' has turned out to be the new Swimming Senko, which Gary began working on as soon as he returned to his home near Athens, Texas. To fast-forward several months, the new lure literally proved itself in national competition before it was ever put into production, and since its formal introduction at the ICAST tackle show this past July, orders have flooded in from around the world.

And a Candle
The very first Swimming Senko was actually created on Gary's office desk. Mind you, his big brown desk isn't quite the same as the ordinary office desk. True, there are stacks of papers and notes, a few bills, a telephone, and a cup full of pens and pencils, but in the middle of it all sit such oddities as piles of hooks, a leadhead jig mold, bags of various Yamamoto lures, a pair of scissors, and a candle.

To make his first Swimming Senko, Gary simply cut a five-inch white Senko in half, then cut half an inch off the head of an orange Swimbait, and fused the Senko head and Swimbait tail together with the candle (a candle works best, he's learned, because the flame is not as hot and it allows him to hold both ends of a lure at the same time). It's not a color scheme any angler would ever dream of using, but this first lure wasn't about color.

"The problem wasn't so much about designing a new lure," laughs Yamamoto, "but rather, learning what to do with it after we'd created it. I wanted to Texas rig it, because a regular Senko always swims properly that way, but changing the tail design basically changed everything about the Senko."

Nonetheless, the initial swimming pool tests as well as the first follow-ups in private lakes indicated the new lure produced the exact action he and Fukae had discussed at Okeechobee. Yamamoto telephoned Danny Berndt, the plant manager at the Page, Arizona plant and described what he wanted. Two weeks later the first samples were completed, and amazingly the design has not changed a bit since then. (Editors note: As you might guess, Berndt has received a lot of those telephone calls in his near two decades of service. He used to have a full head of hair - I rest my case.)

Now What?
Gary essentially used the 2006 FLW Tour season to test his new creation, learning how, when, and where to use it to determine - and extract - its maximum potential. The first test came almost immediately, at Lake Murray, South Carolina where he found bass schooling in shallow water.

"I rigged the Swimming Senko weightless on a spinning rod and caught fish immediately," Gary remembers, "but schooling fish like that can be pretty easy. Later I rigged it with a Screw-Loc sinker and swam the bait and caught fish that way, too. Then, I couldn't help myself; I started flipping it. When I caught fish that way, I decided the lure would work. For it to be a truly worthwhile lure, and to follow faithfully in the Senko's footsteps, it had to have more than a single application."

The next test came at Kentucky Lake in May where Gary tried to fish the Swimming Senko deep, but he had difficulty getting solid hook-sets, so he moved to shallow water and started flipping shallow brush. He rigged with both ¼ and 3/8-ounce sinkers and a 5/0 Gamakatsu round bend (not off-set) hook.

The Secret is Out
The first day of the tournament he caught bass weighing five and six pounds this way, and going into the final day he stood in third place. With FLW television cameras on him that entire day, he caught a seven-pounder that showed the prototype lure clearly; some competitors had already noticed he was fishing something different, and when he finished third in the tournament the word spread even faster. Overall, the Swimming Senko accounted for four fish over five pounds that week.

"Kentucky Lake, of course, was a great confidence builder," Gary explains. "I was also getting quite a few strikes with our GYCB Craw, as well; those fish had seen a lot of craws flipped at them but they'd never seen a Swimming Senko before. I had plenty of action all week and probably should have won the tournament." Testing and evaluation of the new lure continued through the remainder of the 2006 FLW season as Yamamoto slowly explored and refined the Swimming Senko's wide range of possibilities. As Yamamoto showed at Kentucky Lake, the Swimming Senko can also be an effective flipping lure. The lure swims to the bottom, then can be raised so it swims back down again. Because it's basically a slim, five-inch lure with heavy tail action, it presents a much different appearance than a jig, grub, or craw, yet it contains some elements of each in its own swimming motion.

Can it be fished on a round jighead like a shaky head? Yes, in fact, Yamamoto has designed a special wide gap, round ballhead hook (which will soon be on the market) for this very purpose. The shank is slightly longer, and the round bend allows it to be fished hook exposed in open water applications. That hook design, which involved modifying a lead mold with a Dremel Tool as well as heating and bending hooks to meet his satisfaction started, not surprisingly, at that same big brown office desk, too.
 

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