MC Swimbaits: A California Fishing Staple

Corey Sanden, the founder of MC Swimbaits, started making swimbaits after spending fifteen years working for the bait company in San Diego Bay. During those years, Corey spent countless hours watching the behavior of baitfish, which gave him a leg up on the competition when designing both the body styles and color combinations of his swimbaits. After making baits as a hobby for four years, Corey founded MC Swimbaits in 1999 and almost three decades later, he is still pouring each and every MC Swimbait personally and by hand.

Why MC Swimbaits Work

The core of the MC Swimbait lineup is built around a simple idea: a lifelike profile paired with an energetic, fluttering paddle tail that fish can't leave alone. That action holds up across retrieve styles. Anglers fish MC Swimbaits on a steady grind, a slow crawl along the bottom, and on the fall, and the bait maintains its swimming posture at nearly any speed. That's a big part of why it shows up in so many different fisheries around the state: it doesn't ask you to change your presentation to match the bait, it adapts to how you're already fishing.

A Go-To for Multiple California Species

What sets MC Swimbaits apart from a lot of single-purpose lures is how many species they cover:

• Largemouth bass: the original target for the line, and still where a huge share of MC Swimbaits get thrown, particularly in Southern California's big-bass reservoirs.
• Calico bass, spotted bay bass, barred sand bass: rigged weedless around kelp, rock piles, and boiler rocks, MC Swimbaits have become a staple for the nearshore calico fishery that's grown dramatically along the coast over the past 20-plus years.
• Striped bass: the same profile and tail action that draws largemouth strikes translates directly to spots and stripers, especially in reservoirs and estuaries where baitfish patterns overlap.
• Halibut: fished slow along the bottom, the swimming action and profile match up well with the flatfish's ambush style of feeding.

That range is exactly what makes the MC Swimbait worth having in the boat regardless of what you're targeting on a given day.

Matching the Bait to the Water

MC Swimbaits come in a range of sizes, generally 3 to 6 inches, along with weedless and inshore weedless versions built around larger hooks like a 7/0 or 9/0 Owner Beast hook. That range matters:

• Smaller sizes (3" to 4") are a strong call for finesse or smaller bait presentations: drop shot rigs, underspins, or situations where the fish are keyed in on smaller forage.
• Larger sizes (5" to 6"+) are built for bigger bass and for the heavier gear used around structure and kelp.
• Weedless models are the standard choice any time you're fishing grass, wood, or rocky, kelp-covered structure where a standard jighead would hang up.

Color selection follows the same logic as size: match it to the forage in the water you're fishing, whether that's shad, bluegill, or the baitfish patterns common along the coast.

The Takeaway

MC Swimbaits didn't become a California staple by accident. They cover a wide range of species, hold their action across retrieve speeds, and come in enough sizes and configurations to match almost any situation an angler runs into, from a stocked local lake to a kelp bed just outside the harbor. If there's one soft swimbait worth keeping stocked in multiple sizes and colors, it's this one.

Stop by Blue Water Hunter in Santa Barbara Harbor to see our current MC Swimbaits selection and get dialed in for what's biting right now, or shop online: Swimbaits, Lead Heads to rig them on, and the full Lures collection.