Versatile, cheap, amazing diversity of colours and shapes.
That's
what soft plastic lures are. You could ask yourselves, why other lures still
exist. Maybe because a lot of fisherman don't know, what can be done with the
rubber stuff. Or is the plethora of variants just to confusing? Anyway these
lures are a bit different from the rest. First of all they usually come without
hooks and you have to mount them to a system of some sort before you can use
them. This might just be a simple jig head, where you already have x variants.
Then there are such confusing terms as the Drachkovitsch-System, the Carolina rig,
Texas rig to name o few of the more common ones. Learn more about that in the
chapter on mounting soft plastic baits.
Important Factors
Shape
The different soft plastics are mainly distinguished by their
shape. There seems to be no limit to fantasy here.
On one hand, a lot of popular models more or less try to copy natural food:
worms, fish, crayfish, frogs, salamanders and so on ... on the other hand there
are some lures which don't really resemble anything natural in our eyes like
twisters (grubs) or tubes. A twister might resemble a leach swimming through the
water, but I believe the way most people fish it it is more likely to imitate a
small bait fish.
Nobody knows, but it is a very effective lure. Reminds me of the spinner, where
also nobody can tell what it's really supposed to imitate, but it works just
fine.
Vibration And Movement
The most popular soft plastic around here, the twister and the
shad ( aka swim bait, hammertail) show two ways soft plastics can create
vibrations. One is the sickle tail of the twister which you will also find on a
lot of worms: even at slow speeds it will begin to stretch out and begin its
typical undulating movements, which are being picked up by the fishes lateral
line. The tail of a shad on the other hand wags from side to side and (for us)
it looks very much like a small fish beating its tail. Then there are a lot of
other baits which don't posses such an obvious source of vibration and mainly
come alive through the presentation by the fisherman. But because of the soft
material it doesn't take much to make even a straight stick of a worm seem alive.
Size
Of course soft plastics are also created in numerous
sizes, maybe not quite as extreme as plugs though.
Especially the worms quite easily reach more than 20cm. The first time I wasn't
very confident fishing an almost 30cm long "snake", especially because it was
only hooked on the front end, but a black bass of just about 23cm showed me,
that the lure was surely not too big for him. But in our regions you will
normally chose a soft bait just a bit bigger than the plug you would use in the
same situation.
Colour
You won't find a broader selection of colours than in soft
plastics. But sadly enough a lot of tackle dealers still haven't got a broader
selection than the standard colours of the first twisters that reached Europe in
the early 80s: white, yellow, chartreuse glitter and red. Especially the more
natural hues of brown, green and darkish red as well as multicoloured variations
are not always easy to get but very effective. Thank god for online shopping is
all I can say to that.
Consistency
Generally speaking the lures should be as soft as possible,
especially for slow presentations. Harder material is good for shads which you
want to fish in strong currents and (so they say) in winter, although the
opinions differ on that. But soft baits are also more readily destroyed by
biting fish so you might want to use harder lures if you get a lot of bites.
Smell
Another speciality of soft plastics is that they can be easily
impregnated with smell. Especially Berkleys
Powerbait series has been quite a success over here. And then there is still the
smell out of the bottle which you can apply to any of your lures. I have had
success with Berkley and Cormoran Doublefisch essences. I here a lot of critical
voices over the use of smelly stuff and one reason for this might be, that a lot
of completely useless products are on the market. There also seems to be a big
misconception about the way the scents work: you will not get many more bites
and surely you are not going to attract fishes but the bites you get will be
better and easier to set the hook on because the fish will not spit the lure as
fast. In any case the good scents do not appeal to the human nose at all while
sticking extremely well to hands and cloths.
Presentation
The presentation of soft lures depends upon what you want to
imitate. Twister and shads are usually jigged along the bottom in more or less
big jumps, but they can also be retrieved quite regularly with just an
occasional drop back to the bottom. Unweighted lures are made to dance with
short twitches, but give them enough time to sink. Worms and crayfish can be
fished very slowly.
Some Models
In the contrary to the other lure categories I will just present
a few basic types here for now (instead of individual brands and models),
because there are a lot of very similar products on the market and quite a few
reasonably usable no-names.
