The Arashi® Swimmer, Storm’s new multiple-joint, hard swimbait features a life-like action that draws in fish from long distances. And like the Arashi® Glide, which it resembles, it will put big bass into your boat.
“I use it for finding fish and covering water,” said 2017 Bassmaster Elite Series Angler of the Year Brandon Palaniuk, a Storm® and Rapala® pro. “It’s another look for those fish when maybe they are looking up more and chasing bait.”
At first glance, the Storm Arashi Swimmer closely resembles an Arashi Glide, Storm’s original jointed hard swimbait. The most obvious difference between the two is that the Swimmer features two articulated joints, rather than one.
“We took all of the great features of the Glide and then added some more,” said Palaniuk, who worked closely with Storm to design both the Swimmer and the Glide. “We slimmed down the body, added another joint and added a rotating line tie.
“We wanted to have another bigger swimbait in the arsenal for different situations,” Palaniuk continues. “That’s the whole premise – still having that big profile, to appeal to larger fish, but being able to fish it in a different style with a slightly different action and different retrieve.”
Palaniuk ties on a Storm Arashi Swimmer “when the fish are roaming flats or are around standing timber — where you’re able to cover a little more water and still able to throw a big bait,” he said. “Where the Glide is more of a target-oriented bait.”
The Storm Arashi Swimmer cuts through the water with a consistent and stable action over a wide range of retrieve speeds, allowing anglers to easily create different fish-triggering actions. Similar-looking baits often swim effectively only at one retrieve speed. A moderate sink rate – 0.8 feet per second – creates the stable action at faster retrieve speeds, while still allowing the lure to remain in the strike zone when paused or twitched.
“I can throw the Swimmer and reel it in as fast as I can possibly reel it without that bait blowing out,” Palaniuk said. “But it also fishes great at slow speeds.”
The Storm Arashi Swimmer’s durable, multiple-joint, construction is among its most important features. “You gain a lot more fluid, forward movement,” Palaniuk says of the design. Additional features include: a replaceable soft tail; a rotating line tie that prevents line-twist issues; and swiveling hooks, which increase your catch ratio by eliminating most of a fish’s leverage during the fight.
The Storm Arashi Swimmer comes armed with two sticky-sharp 1/0 VMC treble hooks. It measures 7 inches and weighs 2-3/16th oz.
“It’s slimmed down quite a bit, compared to the Glide, especially the width of it across the back,” Palaniuk said. “But being still in that 7-inch range, that’s that happy medium between your Go-Big-or-Go-Home-type swimbaits and your just kind recreational swimbaits.”
Storm Arashi Swimmer lures come in ten highly detailed, premium color patterns, each designed to precisely match a regional forage species: Bluegill, Rainbow Trout, Blue Back Herring, Ghost, Rainbow Trout, Threadfin Shad, Oikawa Mesu, Green Gill, Pro Blue and Black Silver Shad.
“It’s the combination of those really high-detail colors and the swimming action that triggers those big bass to bite,” Palaniuk said.