I remember when the 7" rebel and the atom swimmer were staples in nearly everyone's surf bag. I found a few of the older 7" rebels in my basement that I'll probably repaint for the season.
It seems like they have pretty much fallen "out of fashion" over the years. So I was just curious to know if many of you still use them.

I remember when the 7" rebel and the atom swimmer were staples in nearly everyone's surf bag. I found a few of the older 7" rebels in my basement that I'll probably repaint for the season.
It seems like they have pretty much fallen "out of fashion" over the years. So I was just curious to know if many of you still use them.

Don't repaint them..... just use them

I've got a cellar full of them, mostly the wrong ones, alas.

The bottom two (the F90 and F80 original version windcheaters) are supposedly what you want, although I never knew that back in the day.

The yellow color was hot years back on the Vineyard.

Anybody ever catch a fish with a sinker version?

A buddy gave me some that are at least twenty five years old NIB not that long ago. I have at least twenty hanging up next to the woodies down cellar. Take them to the vineyard every year, and sometimes they get used.
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Silver 7" used to be one of my go to plugs... still comes out in the right conditions.

I had the week before I went into active duty off,, SO what else do you do >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I fished the Gooseberry area & to the East everyday ,,,,,epic ,,,,,,,,,,if you had the yellow one ............................... I only had one & it was my new wife & I fishing ,,,,,,, we actually had to take turns with the rod that had the yellow rebel , because they wouldn,t hit anything else .

One of the days it was too rough to go by boat to I went searching from shore ,..... found a group of guys fishing . this beach down there .......... I guess they had caught some fish before I got there ...But not once I started fishing the one yellow one . it was too light to get a descent cast from shore , so my fish were limited to the ones that swam closer to the beach ...............45 years later , that [plug] hangs in the patio . never to be fished again ><><:fishin:

Yup.........

I really like the Rebel in both the old-style windcheaters as well as the standard ones (both new and old). There are times when it simply catches better than other similar Finnish swimmers for some reason.

Not as much as I should. Once in a while I break out an F80 when I need to get a little deeper than my redfins. The F90s were great boulder field plugs as they ran shallow. Yellow back/red head was the pattern of choice during our squid runs in the spring. The 5.5 inch F30 was also a killer when small bait was present - didn't cast the greatest but it sure fooled bass when nothing else caught. I should start using them again because I have at least a hundred or so.

I still fish them and all models remain most excellent fish catchers. Don't paint them, sharpen the hooks and just use them. (If you do paint a couple though, solid black is a good bet)

I actually have found the 7" non windcheater catches better than the windcheater, as the skinnier versions always seemed to bring more hits than the stouter thru wire models. Don't worry about casting distance, it's hits your after, not yardage.

Smaller versions still kick butt in fresh water too.

I still use them on occasion
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I've got a cellar full of them, mostly the wrong ones, alas.

The bottom two (the F90 and F80 original version windcheaters) are supposedly what you want, although I never knew that back in the day.

The yellow color was hot years back on the Vineyard.

Anybody ever catch a fish with a sinker version?
George Thirty years ago my goto plug.
Blackback at night,blueback first light.If you load a sinker you can drag bottom in fast moving water. If you snap off the lip on a yellow sinker it will fish just like a pogie.
Ikeep my 7" rebels under my bed.

I've got a cellar full of them, mostly the wrong ones, alas.

The bottom two (the F90 and F80 original version windcheaters) are supposedly what you want, although I never knew that back in the day.

The yellow color was hot years back on the Vineyard.

Anybody ever catch a fish with a sinker version?

Fished the Yellow one at Narrow River one epic October night with my late friend Russ Olivo and absolutely crushed LARGE. There were Pogies all over the bar that night and the Yellow one must have looked just like one.

I agree, don't paint them. I have some of those F90's that I sanded the paint off the sides to give them that "sought after" bone finish that comes from banging around on rocks and in bluefish mouths gives the lure. They were killer like that.

I don't cast as often anymore, but first light along the Narragansett shore still proves that they work. Distance doesn't matter, the hits often come right at your feet.

The 7" Sinking version is absolutely deadly during the early herring run, when rivers and like areas are in their spring flood. I recall one year using them so extensively that my buddy eventually busted the lip off of his. We ended up making a replacement lip out of scrap lexan just so he could have the plug for the next night.

I wrote this years ago for the Tattoo Lures web page "Yesteryear" section:

As I sat upon the rocks facing Stanton's Reef the sky to the east began to turn pink with the coming of false dawn. Out of the corner of my left eye I noticed movement near the remnants of the Peg Rock bass stand. Someone was already casting and it wasn't full light yet!

I watched intently as this caster made his second cast. He immediately hooked-up and landed what appeared to be a teen sized bass. His next cast produced another. At that point I got off my butt and started casting my Creek Chub popper into the darkness with no luck as this unknown "night stalker" continued to catch bass after bass. Not only didn't I catch any bass, I couldn't even get a strike.

Later, after dawn broke, I wandered over and talked with the mystery caster. It was Roger Hargrove (now deceased) who I'd met once before. Like a complete neophyte (which I was at that time), I told him I didn't think stripers would hit plugs in the darkness. Roger laughed as he strung up his half dozen stripers. He saw my popper and told me I had to use "swimming plugs" after dark. He then showed me the Rebel Wind Cheater Super Minnow that he was using. It was 6 inches long, had a yellow back, white belly and a splash of red on the head. He told me I could get some at Morris's Tackle shop in town.

The story above recounts the first time I ever set eyes on a Rebel Wind Cheater Super Minnow. The year was 1973, my junior year in high school. As an avid surf caster you never stop learning and on that night I learned two surf casting lessons: That striped bass could be caught on swimming lures after dark, and that poppers don't often work when it's dark. From that point on the Rebel Super Minnow was my go to lure when surf casting for striped bass.

The original Rebel Wind Cheater Super Minnow has long since been discontinued (1983). There was a time when it was the most popular minnow type plug used on the striper coast. There were two sizes of the old Super Minnow: the F90, which was 7 inches long and weighed 2 ounces, and the F80 which was 6 inches long and weighed 1.5 ounces. They were the "heavy duty" versions of Rebel's popular series of minnow swimmers, the F40 and F30, which were not thru-wired. The F80 and F90 were floating models and cast very well for minnow type swimmers, hence the name Wind Cheater. They were also thru-wired for extra strength when targeting striped bass, pike, muskie, and other large fish. They were the only thru-wired minnow type plug on the market. The only weakness we encountered when using them was their lip design. The swimming lip on these Rebels was brittle and would often break when they were used in rocky environments. When the lip would break they wouldn't swim thereby rendering them useless. We had quite a collection of "broken lipped" Rebels wasting away in our basements until my casting partner Zeke Silva came up with an ingenious way of replacing the broken lips with lips we made from the pliable plastic of used shampoo bottles. With our flexible replacement lips the Rebels swam just as well and they wouldn't break when hitting rocks.

The most effective color patterns of these Rebels was the Yellow Back, Blue Back, Mackerel, and for a while on the Cape, a Red Back. Yellow worked well at night while the blue and mackerel were daytime favorites. We alternated using the F80 and F90 until we found which one the bass preferred. During the springtime squid run in the Newport area the yellow F80 was a killer. After the Super Minnow was discontinued Pradco's Bomber and Red Fin series of plugs filled the void but neither has the strength to hold up to large fish like the old Rebel Super Minnow. Pradco re-introduced a new version (F85 Series) of the Rebel Wind Cheater in 1992 and a larger version (F86 Series) in 1993. Both are currently available and at times work well, but they are not nearly as effective as the older style.

Thanks DZ