Soft Plastics

I apologize for being ignorant but I am going to ask about this anyway. I have been reading here on this forum the last few years about many of you using jigs and ringworms ( and a few others) with Much success. What makes these plastics seem to work at times, better than live bait?
Here is my thoughts and reasoning and am wanting some of you guys who really fish the river alot to please tell me or educate me on where I am thinking wrong.
So the river is usually dark, muddy stained and from what I have seen over the past few years a person can barely see into the water 18″. And I would guess much much less 7-10 feet down. add to that overcast and some waves and I do not know how a walleye can see the bait at all. So to me the only thing left is any movement or vibration that these plastic could give off. A live minnow theoretically will move on it’s own, AND give off scent And is, well, alive plus if they bite it, it feels and tastes real.
The scent part also confuses me. some of these baits are simply plastic with no scent impregnated into them. My thinking would be that one would ALWAYS want to use a bait that was scented ( like the Berkely Alive etc….and other brands). considering that the fish could be a foot or two away from the bait ( down stream) and the scent would lead right to the bait.
Is vibration that big of a key. also with the river usually being so dark and dirty only a few feet down. Is color really important?
So this year I went out and bought a bunch of different types of jigs and plastics and I am going to try it this years because most of my fishing life has consisted of Lindy rigging and pulling spinner rigs.
Thank you for your input.

Is color really important?

YES. Days when they would eat a dog turd painted in Vikings’ colors…it wouldn’t matter much. When they are more in a neutral state, color and jig weight can mean everything.

Walleyes can see a lot better than you give them credit for. Remember, a color to you and I in daylight will have a very different color in stained, deep, dirty, muddy, and so on water.

It’s more about the action and vibrations they give off

Randy,
It’s not that I am not giving them credit for being able to see. I just don’t have the experience that you do to understand how good it is. That is why I asked the color question.

On some days scent will matter. On others it will matter little. On others is about like Randy said….they’ll hit a dog turd painted green and gold. If you use scent, add it if your confidence is with using it, otherwise let the fish tell you if scent is needed.

Plastics will emit sound in the water too. Fish can “feel” the sonic waves in the water and this in part helps in locating food when the lights are out or the water is almost mud. As far as action, there are days when too mush action will put fish off the bite and other days they’ll seem to want something rip-jigged. Again, the fish will tell you.

In the fall when I fish walleye and sauger, I use plastic almost exclusively. While I could, I don’t carry twenty different bait styles. Instead I carry about three, but I carry a ton of colors in each style of bait. I think color increases the likelihood that fish will see the bait against the color of the water or they bait’s color will help it stand out against the dark in deeper water. As Randy mentioned, there will be days when color is a very important component of the bite while yet on other days walleye will, as Randy also alluded to, hit a dog turd painted green and gold. Color is one aspect of plastics that you really need to play with.

Not really color, but uv enhancement sprays and dips can greatly increase visibility to the fish. Uv enhancement draws the invisible uv portion of light that we cannot see but which fish are acutely aware of even in heavily soiled waters or in periods of near dark. Even strong moonlight will offer uv light that the enhancers can work off of.

Plastics are fun. Give them a try, but don’t judge them too much until you’ve fished the dropping water temperatures of late fall right thru the dead of winter and into the spawning season we see happening now. In the post spawn and summer heat I’d pass on plastics.

There are times in early spring where you can see a bait 5 to 8 feet down, and plastics still shine. Each type of plastic has it’s own action. That’s much more versatile than the limited actions you can impart on live bait. Flukes and mini flukes imitate lethargic bait fish well, Moxies, ringworm, and curly tail flukes provide a lot of action at low speeds, pulse Rs and ringger paddle tails have a wider wobble.

Last Friday I caught a bunch of big Saucers holding Prescott Bait mini flukes 6″ off the bottom. That’s a great way to target fish chasing bait pods in cold water.

Is that BfishnTackle thread still somewhere with all the hogs on there? Most all being river fish too if I remember. Turned me to plastics.

I’m no expert but so far…

I visualize a scale in my head, with each sense. Start at water clarity, that pushes each scale its certain way, then water temp, again pushes it another way, then time of day and so forth. By the end you got a good starting point.

You ever wake up in middle of night to take a leak and just don’t want to make an effort to turn on lights? You just feel your way? When water clarity goes to crap, which for most of open water on rivers that is the case, I just figure most fish do just that. Turn off the visual cues and feel their way around, specifically for food.

Obviously you are going to want some colors for them to cue in on once they are in the general area of your bait, but the lateral line is at full attention.

Scent doesn’t rank up to high for me for walleyes on rivers. Don’t get me wrong I haven’t tossed the idea out but hasn’t made to much difference. Most all my fish producing plastics are unscented.

As far as holding onto the bait, if you need a fish to hang on to the bait any longer than it takes to set the hook something else is wrong.

Here’s a real simple response. Guys that catch em on plastic consistently are on the pod, experienced, have good feel, and pay attention to detail.

Smiling good natured emoji didn’t work.

I agree with P4,confidence is a big factor too.
BB2

My 2 cents worth on plastics. For me it’s more about convenience and confidence. If I’m heading out targeting just walleye on my local river and fishing all day I’ll have at least a couple dozen minnows (mostly pre-spawn), crawlers (post-spawn/spring) or leeches (summer) and rarely open a bag of plastics. If I only have a couple hours, it’s too hot for live bait, targeting multiple species, or traveling I never use live bait.

Confidence for me in plastics is to find ones that life-like in color, feel, size, shape. Natural colors for me are more versatile since they’ll work on almost any water type – stained, clear, muddy.

Plastics have been a battle for me and most people and confidence in them only comes over time. I have thrown away or given away almost every type of plastics I’ve tried but do have my go-to’s I’ve built confidence in using. I’d recommend buying just a couple bags of Berkley PowerBait or Gulp (though the mess sucks) or Kalin’s grub or Uncle Josh Meat and learn how to work it and find confidence in 1-2 products before buying zillions of different ones which will only add to confusion as to what to use and when.

Plastic storage is the next problem. I’ve had some melt and glob together, bleed into each other, spill all over and ruin other plastics, rot themselves, or rot right threw the bag they were sold in, etc. Too many plastics isn’t a good thing either unless you enjoy throwing money away.

Lesson learned: never leave a bag of TriggerX leeches in the sun even on a cold day. The heat of the sun turns them into a pile of goo. I think I’ve melted at least 3-4 bags of them already not to mention the ones I forgot were on the desk and must of flown out of the boat

From reading many of your comments, it may just be my confidence and patience, slowing down and letting the jig and plastic do it’s work. And maybe it’s just my ability to be in the right spot to be jigging over fish and not dead water areas.

Confidence was HUGE for me. Find a spot where you KNOW there are fish, then try different actions and retrieves until it clicks… like others have said, the fish will let you know. Now I have all the confidence in the world in plastics, then when the fish are ornery, I will experiment with color, jig weight, retrieve… until the fish let me know again what I did right.

I fish less and less with bait. And what I really like about plastics is that when you get it right… you lose very few fish because they EAT it! Bring a pliers because you’ll need it sometimes.

Don’t be afraid to try a really light jig that never gets close to the bottom… especially early or late in the day during low light. Randy has a good video of underwater footage that turned me onto that (Thanks Randy ). Walleyes in low light move up off the bottom and are looking up to feed. Bottom presentations fished underneath them won’t catch as many.