A gift your fisherman won’t return

This is for anyone that has yet to buy their favorite fisherman or even Santa Claus a gift that can’t miss. Unlike most of the problems associated with any gift, other than money, you don’t have to worry about size or color!

That gift is a Bubba Blade fillet knife. I am not going to waste your time by listing all of the things that make it so special so you will just have to trust me on this one. I don’t catch or keep fish on every trip, but I still cleaned fish at the end of the day in the neighborhood of 160 days this past year so I have given the Bubba Blade a fair test!

I recently started receiving emails and phone calls almost every night asking which Bubba Blade to buy or even where to buy it for the best price before I snapped to the fact that a few of my clients had just waited to buy one as a Christmas gift. The majority of them ordered one as soon as they got home and one group ordered six while waiting on me to finish filleting their fish!

I say only a few of them waited for Christmas to buy one, because I either personally purchased or helped clients order over 150 knives between March and the end of November. I have no idea how many more they bought for friends, family and in at least two instances, several of their employees.

The most impressive number, however, is zero. That is the number of complaints that I have personally heard from anyone that has used one.I did read one comment on the internet, which only confirmed my belief that less than one percent of what you read on the internet is true, that the Bubba Blade wasn’t as sharp as advertised upon arrival.

The first fish I cleaned with a Bubba Blade was a redfish and I cut completely through the armored scales and backbone before I realized it. We all laughed about it, but “seeing was believing” and Capt. Lamar Belcher bought that knife on the spot. In fact, even after cleaning all of those fish this year I have never had to do anything other than hit it a few licks with a steel and it is good to go every time.

I think it was just a marketing scheme, but Bubba Blade seemingly comes out with a new and improved model every month. In my opinion, if you are buying one for your fisherman I would recommend the nine inch tapered flex.If you can only find the seven-inch tapered flex this late in the game buy it as he is going to buy the other one in the near future as well! Your freshwater fishermen will never have a need for anything other than those two models with the seven inch probably being the most preferred choice, but folks faced with filleting redfish will eventually add the nine inch stiffie or flex to their arsenal.

Regardless of where you buy one, the cost is somewhere between fifty and sixty dollars. We initially ordered every knife on Amazon via the internet, but Simon Outfitter’s located on McArthur Drive in Orange and Daley’s Hunt N Fish in Pt. Acres also had them in stock last week. Daley’s may be in their new location in Nederland by now so I would give them a call before driving over there.

“No”…don’t even ask! Bubba Blade is not one of my sponsors. The biggest reward gained from time spent writing this column each week is the opportunity to pass along techniques, lures and equipment that work for me every day that will make fishing more enjoyable for you and the kids. In this instance, however, I have an opportunity to help Mrs. Claus as well!

The warm-up this past week was as unexpected as the back to back freezes and at least for me, the flounder and trout temporarily went into hiding while the redfish continued their blitz. The redfish bite was so good in fact that yet another group couldn’t resist keeping a few fish over the limit early last week. This will be an expensive Christmas for them!

The water is in great shape and the surface temperature was back up in the fifties in the afternoon so we should see better numbers of large trout by the end of the week. It also came as no surprise that the flounder bite slowed down.

We are catching redfish on everything from tails to crankbaits while the live bait fishermen are scoring with everything from live bait to cut mullet. The full moon made things a little tougher for the trout fishermen, but some of them did catch a few big trout and that bite was the strongest just before dark.

Before signing off, make an effort to purchase a Christmas gift for your fishermen as well as yourself at local tackle shops like the two previously mentioned. They can only continue to grow and carry more of the items you need if you shop their stores!