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Jackall Mikey Swimbait

Author: Rob Belloni

Overview / History: The Jackall Mikey became commonly available around the Fall of 2004.  This small hardbait measures 5.5 inches in length and weighs 1 and 1/8oz.  The Mikey is available in six colors which cover your basic categories such as trout, bass, shad, and bluegill.  This bait is a buoyant floater and will dive down to approximately 3 feet on a fast retrieve.  The Mikey retails in the US for around $30. 

Pros: When I get a new bait, I always take a moment to gauge my very first impression of the lure.  With the Mikey, the first thing that came to my mind was “attention to detail”.  The lure is very nicely crafted with clean lines, an excellent scale pattern and a tightly integrated hinge system.  When you look at the clear model Mikeys, you can see the internal weighting system and it’s very intricate.  Clearly the designers of the bait spent some time balancing and weighting the lure to get the swimming action they wanted.

The primary action on the Mikey is a pronounced S action.  The bait curls to an open C shape as the bill moves left to right, and the faster you reel, the more pronounced it becomes.  Considering how long the lure is, the head moves a great distance on every kick of the bait, and you really can feel this in your rod trip on the retrieve.  Trying to make a comparison, the head action feels somewhat like you get on the small AC Minnow, a very wide rolling head kick. 

On a slower retrieve, the Mikey will find its way to the surface and act more like a wake bait.  You can retrieve the bait very slowly on top and it gives off a nice little wag.  As the lure loses traction in the water, the tail action becomes looser and more irregular, and amazing thing really happens when you slow all the way down to almost nothing, the lure will often times continue to 'swim' very slowly, especially if you have it on heavier line that is pulling slightly down on the nose of the bait.  I think this happens because of the careful internal weighting of the bait, and it's a pretty cool feature!

The hooks and hardware on the Mikey are all premium.  I don’t have the brand on the hooks but they like to me like 2x strong EWG style trebles.  Definitely no need to replace the hooks or split rings on this lure.  The line tie has a split ring on it, which is OK, but you might consider replacing the ring with a small snap to avoid any potential problems with the line slipping into the groove on the ring.  I very rarely tie to larger sized split rings like this, not that these are big rings, but they’re right on the border of being too big to tie to. 

The fact that the Mikey is only 5.5 inches long and has three treble hooks on it means that if you get hit on this bait, you’re very likely to hook and land the fish.  This bait definitely has tournament potential.  If you were on a shallow cranking or ripping pattern, this could be a great bait to mix it up with.

Cons: I mentioned above that the lure is pretty small, so you should not get your hopes up too high that this will be a 10lber killer.  You’re much more likely to catch 3-6lbers on this bait than you are to nail a big one on it.  That’s not to say it’s a bad bait, but I feel like a lot of smaller baits are marketed as swimbaits to imply that they will catch big bass, and this is really not a big bass lure … it’s a medium bass lure. 

From a color standpoint, I thought that Jackall did a good job with the limited number of colors available, but the trout pattern was a bit of a letdown.  It’s a bright green back with a loud pink stripe down the side and a silver belly.  The spot pattern is very spaced out and looks a bit odd to me also.  If they had a nice subtle trout pattern I think it would really enhance their color lineup. 

Average Rating out of 1 voters
Taylor Posey( Sacramento, CA) Apr 20, 2007
Great Clear Water Day Time Finesse Swimbait
I love this bait for daytime fishing in clear water in lakes that do not have trout. It has a great action premium finish premium hooks great overall bait solid fish catcher. Highly reccomended not a big fish bait like Rob said but catches fish and lots of em.
 
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