The question commonly asked is: what lure should I use to catch fish species x. Wrong question. Over 30 years, soft plastics have been my lure preference even though I’ve caught fish on most lure types. Many angler concentrate on catching a certain species such as bass, trout or crappie and cast lures they believe get struck the most. I used to target mostly bass because I was into tournament clubs, but after catching most species on soft plastics, pretty much stay with those because they are the easiest to locate fish that are
willing to bite them.
The advantage of fishing with different anglers in tournaments is seeing the variety of fish caught on many different lures such as the jig & pig, spinnerbait and crankbaits used by different anglers. But the nice thing about have confidence in different lures is being able to translate that into smaller lure design that catch more fish species.
Take the wacky rigged Senko. Once I caught my first bass on one I knew the stick design and unweighted center-body hook was a keeper. So, a few years ago I happened to pour some 2.5″ mini-sticks wondering how they would look wacky-rigged using a center hooked light jig.
UNBELIEVABLE ! It had the same exact tip quiver of the Senko on the drop and man did it catch fish! Here’s a clear plastic stick that caught a dozen fish the first day I cast it.
Color hasn’t seem to matter and many were tried:
Okay, so the stick design catches fish, but what if it was rigged differently than wacky. Most definitely caught fish !:
Spinnerbaits taught me the value of using an overhead spinning blade which in its smaller form is called the Beetle Spin invented by Chuck Wood 53 years ago.
Many of you have used the Slider Worm with a drop shot, me included, but when used with a jig, is deadly for catching fish:
Note the modification of the worm where I attached the tail to a larger grub body. I’m sure the design can still catch fish on the drop shot rig, but at least when used with a jig, I can cover a lot more water. When I first did well on Gary Y’s Kut Tail worm I figured – why not attach it to a grub body and keep the length at 6″:
You might think that the design is very similar in action to the Slider. NOT SO! The worm is tapered from front to back and is made using a sinking plastic formula which produces a much different action than the Slider and one that has caught all kinds of fish.
One thing leads to another and that goes for lure discoveries that work more often than many others. Lure action accounts for fish strikes and the better the action the more fish caught.
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