I must admit I am very weary of anything that has the “As Seen on TV” logo on it. The Banjo Minnow 006 freshwater fishing kits are one of these. All too often I see fishing advertisements "guaranteed to catch the big one," only to know they cannot deliver. I have never seen the infomercial or the sales for the banjo minnow on TV. I saw the banjo minnow kit from a friend that bought it and I was impressed.
The banjo minnow 006 is a 100 piece rubber minnow kit. What makes these minnows unique is the hook, eye and minnow combination. The eyes are easily interchangeable. The fisherman can put gold, eyes on a green minnow and then use the same gold eyes on a red minnow. The eyes come in different colors and weights.
The hook is specially designed to hook onto the eye socket of the minnow. It is very easy to just push the hooks through the eye and past the barb and now the minnow is locked onto the hook. To make the hook weedless, there are small rubber bands that connect to the eye of the hook to the barb. I have found that you do not want to use a swivel when fishing the banjo minnow. A swivel seems to offset the weight of the minnow and cause it to swim front heavy. It is best to tie the banjo minnow hook directly to the line and just change minnows as needed.
There are special fishing techniques when using the banjo minnow, all are described on the enclosed DVD. The best technique is to use the short jerk motion. This technique requires the fisherman to give the rod a series of short jerks, then to reel in the slack with out reeling in the minnow. This causes the minnow to behave like an injured fish.
The kit includes minnows in length from 3” to 7”. It contains hooks, weedless adapters, eyes, and the DVD. It attracted me because it was only $20 US dollars. This is a lot of fishing equipment for only $20. A fisherman can easily spend $20 at a tackle store and only get a few rubber worms. This is a very good deal. Moreover, when I purchased on-line I got a second set as a gift for only $14.95. My package arrived within a week when purchased on-line.
So far I've been fishing only with the 3” minnow. I caught a number of large mouth bass with it, no "big ones" yet. But I expect to soon. The freshwaters in Rhode Island are tough in the summer since they've been so over fished in the spring.
