YUM Bad Mamma

The YUM Bad Mamma soft plastic creature bait.

If you’ve seen one soft plastic creature bait and you’ve seen them all. Right?

Well, Bassmaster Elite Series pro Terry “Big Show” Terry Scroggins would disagree.

After all these years, the Florida bass pro hadn’t seen the one he wanted to use specifically for flippin’, pitchin’ and — most importantly to him — punching through thick cover. So he designed one himself, and it was introduced last year as the YUM Bad Mamma.

Scroggins is known as one of the most-versatile anglers on the circuit, but his forte is punchin’. No one knows that better than YUM, Booyah and Bandit Lures brand manager Chad Warner.

The 38-year-old Warner uses the Bad Mamma himself.

“I like the fish-catching ability, No. 1,” he said. “The action is very subtle. To me, it’s more lifelike (than other punchin’-style soft plastics). This is really realistic.”

The Bad Mamma, which has a twin-tailed sibling in the Bad Jamma, features a thick body with curves in all the right places, according to Warner.

One of its strengths is toughness — its body of work, so to speak.

“(Scroggins) kind of likes heavy-duty. He wanted it to excel in heavy cover or matted vegetation, so we beefed up the body and made the body real thick,” Warner said. “It can handle a heavy 5/0 hook. You can use that bait flippin’ or pitchin’. Then you can use it punching through mats with a 1-ounce tungsten weight, like they do in Florida with it.”

Water displacement also is what this soft plastic is all about, he said. The creature bait’s body has attention-getting ribbed body, two big flappers and a pair of long legs that brings bass in for a closer look, he said.

Those different appendages move plenty, Warner said, but they don’t catch on wood cover or vegetation, which makes it ideal for fishing in shallow brush and punching grass, as well as working deeper cover.

Scroggins likes to fish it on the business end of 65-pound braided line on a 4/0 straight-shank hook tied with a special knot that kicks the barb out on the hookset for a better hook-catch ratio.

Why is the Bad Mamma different and improved compared to similar — perhaps better-known — soft plastics on the market?

“The whole design concept around this was to fish heavy vegetation,” Warner said. “Look at the others: They have an indentation, or what they call a hook keeper. All baits made like that allow for easier hook sets.”

But those creature baits tend to get hung up more in thick cover. Bad Mammas have a meatier body and so the hook point can be protected better, even if skin-hooked.

“That’s going to increase the longevity of the bait,” Warner said, pointing out those with the predesigned indentations for hooks tear apart earlier and more often.

Basically, he said, the selling point is the ribbing that rustles more water when it’s in motion. The ridges “are in a different direction and a little higher than other creature bait-style baits,” he said.

The YUM Bad Mammas are available in 3.75- and 4.25-inch lengths, and eight popular color combinations.

They also can be fished as big, bulky jig trailers or even on a Carolina rig.

For more information about the YUM Bad Mamma, go to www.yum3x.com or call 479-652-2809.

About Don Shoopman 137 Articles
Don Shoopman fishes for freshwater and saltwater species mostly in and around the Atchafalaya Basin and Vermilion Bay. He moved to Louisiana in 1976, and he and his wife June live in New Iberia. They have two grown sons.

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