Bass fishing livestream host Debo, joined by long-time online friend Adam "Fish Hook" Terry, used a three-hour Saturday Night Live session this week to stake out his 2026 predictions for the American bass tackle market — and the headline call is that the swimbait craze isn't slowing, it's shrinking. Physically.
"I think that the swimbait thing is going to keep going," Debo told viewers early in the predictions segment. "There's so many swimbait heads and people wanting to sling the big swimbaits."
But where 2021 and 2022 were the era of the oversized glide baits, Debo argued the mini-swimbait trend is now the dominant force in garage builders and mass-market lines alike.
"I remember, geez, probably the heart of COVID, right? Like everybody wanted big, big swimbaits, right? Like that was the trend," he said. "Like if you're not throwing a giant swimbait, then you're not a man kind of thing, right? And then now even all the garage-built guys are all running minis, right? And everybody and their brother wants a mini swimbait."
"It's crazy to me, but yeah, I mean, yeah, mini swimbaits, I think, are going to be the rage," he added.
Terry, who spends much of his time behind the scenes at a manufacturer, agreed there's "still this love affair for the swimbaits," and pointed to rebranded minnow-style baits as the other shape category he expects to see a flood of in 2026.
"I think that's still going to see a lot of new shapes and a lot of, from large manufacturers to small poor guys, pumping a lot into minnows," Terry said, noting the ongoing pro-tour arms race around forward-facing-friendly minnow presentations.
That arms race — and the broader reliance on live sonar in tournament bass fishing — drew the sharpest prediction of the night. Debo said he expects the backlash against forward-facing sonar to escalate through 2026 until some form of regulation lands on pros.
"I think that'll continue to grow until something happens, until all the Randy Blaukat fanboys and everybody finally get it outlawed and it's criminal to have one on your boat," Debo said.
"I'm hoping that some of the traditional techniques kind of come back into style, right? Forcing these guys to not have to use forward-facing," Debo said. He argued that the pros who've mastered forward facing — he name-dropped one he'd filmed with — actually have the deepest knowledge of fish behaviour because they learned to catch before the technology dominated the sport.
Terry added one prediction he called the most genuinely surprising trend he's watching: a budget-build movement pushing back against $1,000 swimbait combos.
"I want to see more of the trend of guys going, how budget can I get to catch a giant, right? Rather than having to spend $1,000 on a combo, what about a $50 combo, $200 swimbait?" Terry said.
Both hosts pointed to affordable platforms — BFS SK rods, swimbait-specific SK blanks, and older workhorses like the Fenwick Eagle — as evidence that reach-of-the-bank bass fishermen are increasingly sceptical of the premium-price spiral that defined the last tournament cycle.
The bet from both sides of the stream: 2026 is the year of smaller swimbaits, back-to-basics minnow profiles, a meaningful pushback on forward-facing sonar, and a quiet boom in sub-$500 bass kits aimed at anglers who'd rather catch a ten-pounder on budget gear than spend the price of an outboard on a single rod-and-lure combo.