YUM'S "Dancin' Eel"

3.4 out of 5!

    Well, the majority of anglers have seen the Dancin' Eel. As a matter of fact, if your any kind of Bill Dance fan, you've probably seen his 2007 episode about this lure. So is it really that great? Is it something you should buy? Let's get into the dirt and see what it's all about.

        As usual, HTB staff members headed to the local lake in search for bass, and other anglers to test out the lure. Surprisingly, we had one of those "that's a first" moment. What happened you ask? Well we approached another angler and he refused to fish the lure saying, "it's junk." We asked if he had used the lure before and mentioned that we were doing a review for the website and would love his input. Now HTB staff members are a bunch of friendly guys but this guy woke up on the wrong side of the boat apparently. He wouldn't answer the question or talk to us anymore for that matter. If you are reading this "we hope you feel better."

    Back to the lure however. The design is a good concept and we managed to find other anglers that were more than happy to help us out. After approximately 4 hours of fishing we met back up and asked for their input. As you can see below, it was close to the same ratings for everybody. Other anglers liked it more than others and you'll always get that. 3 out of the 5 anglers said that their lure was running to one side. Two of the anglers actually knew how to fix the problem and the last one kept fishing with it running to the side. (We gave him a card and told him to check out the site) Another angler said, "It was snag after snag" and "I don't think the hook placement was in the best location."

    Your probably getting a bad vibe already, but it wasn't all failure. The last individual came in with a limit. (5 bass) and said he was skeptical but it just really turned the bass on. Between all the HTB staff members that joined us for the trip, we caught a total of 11, the biggest being a 6 pounder.

    Some of the pro's of this lure were of course the color selection. They have many for all different types of conditions you may be fishing. Everyone seemed to agree when the lure was running right, it did have really good action. However, as we were creating this review, we were contacted by 2 anglers that participated in the testing and they said the tail of the lure and curled upwards towards the body and basically couldn't fix it. Of course we just threw the lure in a box and came home too, so we were curious to see if ours did the same. Sure enough, the tail was slightly curled. We wondered if we could fix the problem with the boiling water trick like other soft plastic baits, so we tried it. It did work. We dipped the tail in boiling water (just 3 dips for no more than 2 seconds) and it went straight.

    So it's up to you. There are pros and cons for this lure and you are the one that will ultimately make the decision which out weighs the other. Our goal like always, was to inform you what we encountered during the testing of the product. Enjoy.

    If you have a lure or product you would like HTB to test out, send an e-mail to tips@howtobass.com and title it New Product Testing.