Autopsy: Meshing with Savage Gear's 3D Line Thru Trout

Introduction: Perhaps there is no lure that captures the Angler’s Imagination more than a swimbait. These baits usually closely represent the natural prey of predatory fish, both in profile and swimming action, but it is the hope that anglers will be able to land a monster on one of these baits that makes them so immensely popular. Mads Grosell, the lead designer at Savage Gear, took an actual trout and 3D scanned it to create the new Line Thru Trout’s profile, but like so many of the company’s baits there is more to this bait than what anglers, and fish, see on the outside.

The Savage Gear Line Thru swimbait is based on a 3D scan of an actual trout

The Line Thru Trout has three distinct segments and measures 8" in length

Like other soft body swimbaits this one can fully collapse in a fish's mouth

The Line Thru Trout is not unlike many other soft body swimbaits in profile or dimension and has three segments and two distinct joints. The joints are quite thin allowing the bait to collapse under pressure, helping keep the lure pinned during the battle.

The bait is available in other patterns including shad

There are three available sink rates, sinking, slow sink and floating

In the water the bait swims beautifully thanks to these thin joint sections and the flat tail wags genuinely at even slow retrieve speeds. Though thin these joints are very strong thanks to a nylon mesh design which extends from the head of the bait through all sections. To test just how strong these joints were we pinned it on “The Machine” in the lab to see how much pressure it would take to rip the lure apart.

Time to see how much pressure it takes to rip this bait apart

This is much more stress than a real world environment since we were pulling end to end and the bait still delivered over 20lbs of pressure before the mesh started to give way

Next Section: Time to see what this bait is made of...