Megabass's MagDraft Soft Bodied Swimbait

Total Score: 8.21 - GREAT

Introduction: Megabass is spitting out baits and new iterations of baits faster than we can keep up. Case in point? The MagDraft is a bait Megabass introduced just two to three years ago and last year at ICAST, they introduced a new bait with the same basic profile, but with a different action in the MagSlow. So before we can check out latter, we need to finish up with the former. Here now is our look at the MagDraft swimbait by Megabass.

Performance: I fished all three sizes of this bait settling mostly with the eight and ten inch (8" and 10") sizes. I think the eight inch is my favorite because it is big enough for a good sized bite and not very cumbersome to cast at only three ounces (3oz). Remember when that used to be a lot of weight? I fished these baits on nylon monofilament.

Ready to test out the eight inch version.

Castability : All three sizes of this bait cast quite easily. There's plenty of weight behind all three sizes and they fly through the air with minimal tumbling. It really depends on how smooth your wind up and release are to how straight the bait flies, but regardless, they always fly far and are not a difficult bait to target cast.

Casting is a breeze.

Ease of Actuation : Dragging the bait next to the boat, we can see the bait swims very true but in order to get that tail swimming, you have to retrieve this bait at a medium to medium fast pace. Apparently, according to Megabass of America, this bait was not designed to fish super slow along the bottom. This bait is targeting active feeders.

This square-ish tail is meant to be fished at about a medium retrieve or faster.

Quality of Movement : When retrieved at that medium to medium fast retrieve, the body of this bait does a tight shimmy and the tail moves side to side in typical fashion with baits of this design. Preferences vary among different anglers as to the degree of shimmy or wobble they want to see in their soft bodied, paddletail baits, but the MagDraft's shimmy is relatively tight at a medium to medium fast retrieve. The faster you retrieve this bait, the more exaggerated this shimmy becomes.

There's no dorsal fin on this bait, but the adipose fin is well defined.

Position at Rest : Kill your retrieve, and this bait sinks like a rock - literally. Like most soft bodied swimbaits, there are no hydrodynamics built into this bait to aid it during the descent, so it is descends rather ungraciously nose down and does so at a rate of roughly one and a quarter feet (1.25') per second. However, once it does crash down to the bottom and the tail catches up to the head, flipping the bait over, the MagDraft usually comes to rest with its belly down sitting upright on its hook and its tail slightly elevated.

The 10 inch version takes a little more work.

If your goal is to deadstick this bait on the bottom, one way to ensure it eventually rests on its belly is to cast far beyond your intended target and retrieve the bait very slowly so that it glides, instead of dives to the bottom. This will also mitigate against your line getting tangled around the bait as it descends.

Fortunately, we have the gear to pull it off.