Bandits

[Meat Wagon]

My experience with bandits is that they can catch fish but are made quite poorly. Day one we were netting the walleye as they were coming into the boat and had the larger fish breaking off hooks, split rings and even the eyes off the body of the bait. On day two we left the net in storage and pulled the fish out of the water by hand. We lost a few fish partway in on the retrieve and upon bringing in the bait found hooks broke off.

Bandit was bought by Pradco Outdoors about this time last year. I battled with them just to replace the few baits that were ruined after very little use. I had to mail them the broken baits at my expense and then they mailed me a couple of replacements. They did nothing for the 15 other baits I have with. Token hooks and split rings. I won't be buying many more bandits.

[Gradyfish]

I called them last year about the eye pulling out of the body and they told me they had never heard this before. I didn't really believe that to be true.

Gradyfish

[Jawbreaker]

I called them last year about the eye pulling out of the body and they told me they had never heard this before. I didn't really believe that to be true.

Gradyfish

Had this exact same conversation. Took about 3 months for them to send a replacement after I sent the one that broke in. Was the first fish on that bait.

[tcfosburgh]

We had that problem when we ran power pro or fire line there was no stretch on fighting the fish .
Went back to mono and haven't had that problem sense.
Tf

[freddie]

Have to say, with all of the fish we net on the Eyehunter throughout the year, I don't remember seeing this on any bandits. And I net/unhook/untangle every fish that comes to the boat. We use braid.

[Gradyfish]

Below is a quote from a previous thread about Bandits. This quote is from Matt Hougen who I believe is the Pradco rep. It sounds like these issues were present on early Bandits but have been resolved by Pradco.

The issues with the Bandit lures are all Pre-Pradco inventory. As soon as I started hearing about hardware issues I notified engineers and they have made corrections. I stressed to them that the Bandits are doing extremely well and we cannot have any issues. I have been very transparent about this and have been your biggest advocate.

[mikecat13]

Just replace the hooks. Tackle warehouse sells VMCs for $3/10. Stainless split rings are that or less. So $2 or less per bait and you're good to go no more issues. Cut the old ones off, put new on its a couple minutes per bait. Worth it to me as they catch fish

[Burkcarp1]

I have never had a problem with bandits and I fish them a lot.