About | Hibdon's Sweetheart Crappie Baits

ABOUT CLINT

Clint was born in Morgan County Missouri. He learned to fish, hunt, and trap as soon as he was walking. His father would put him on his shoulders and take him along, teaching him all the while. All his family fished, and hunted. That was just what they did.

He would fish the rivers and creeks above, and below where he lived in Florence Missouri. When he was a teen he started fishing the Lake of the Ozarks, then when Truman Lake went in, in 1976 he spent a lot of time on it too.

In his early 20's he Guided for Crappie, and Bass fishermen on both Lakes, for a living. It was then he started to mess around with making his own Crappie lures. He made several different types, and then would take them out to test them. It was just a few years later that he started making the Sweetheart bait. He had so much success with it, they really caught fish. He then realized that he could put eyes in the bait, and give them different shades of color. He knew he had just about perfected his lure.

He was still not completely satisfied with the way the hook sat in the lure, so after sleepless nights, and countless tablets of sketches, he got the idea to put the jig head in the body of the lure. Now was the hard part... how to make it weedless, and swim like a minnow. He spent months tying the lure on, in different fashions until one day he put the hook in the belly and twisted it around, and slid it up to the head of the lure, then just allowed the tip of the hook to exit the back of the lure’s body, and there it was.... Now perfect in every way.

This bait is so flexible, and so compatible with any style of fishing. It can easily be fished in brush, standing timber, rocks, over bottom ledges, under docks, and around most any structure in the water. Anyone, at any age can fish with this lure. You can fish with a Cane Pole, or have the most expensive equipment. If you know where the fish are, you will catch them.

In 2007 we gave some of these crappie baits to Rusty Brown, a pro fisherman/friend of ours. He fished with them and won several tournaments using just this lure. Then by the end of 2008 and the spring of 2009 he and his partners Clint Hibdon, Shannon Beckman, and Kent Braun had won 16 tournaments, including him and Kent Braun at the 2008 Missouri State Championship Crappie Masters tournament on the Lake of the Ozarks

In April of 2009, Clint, and his very good friend/cousin Shannon Beckman, won the Missouri State Championship Crappie Masters tournament, on the lake of the Ozarks, using only the Sweetheart lures, Rusty Brown and Kent Braun finished third with the Sweetheart bait being used.

Clint got the name Sweetheart while fishing in the Gravois with his nephew Bill, when Bill said " this is a Sweetheart... A Gravois Sweetheart, I can’t quit catching fish with this bait". It was then they were called the Gravois Sweethearts, now we just call it the Sweetheart. and they truly are.