Fishing - soft plastics

On Jun 13, 7:51 pm, fishtale wrote:
Bass season is about to open. Up to now I have been using jerkbaits
for another species. I have a favourite place to fish for bass, From
experience soft plastics are good and I also use jointed rapala,
regular rapala and spinners. Soft plastics are a bit of a problem
since there is a lot of sticks on the bottom resulting in snags. Would
like to develop some effective techniques for using soft plastics.
The simple cast and retrieve a soft plastic doesn't work well. You
need a bottom presentation. Techniques...please.

Soft plastic worms remain the top bass catching lure of all time. You
can't go wrong with them. Most success is when fishing them at a
snail's pace.

Texas rigged worms using a bullet sinker will work free of most snaggy
bottoms. So will weightless texposed worms and other soft plastics. If
your soft plastic baits are not so thick you have to use an extra wide
gap hook, stick to older style offset/straight shanked heavy. You
should be able to Carolina rig soft plastics and work lake bottoms
easily.

For all of the above a hook point is inserted into the nose of the
bait then pushed out through the "throat" about 1/4-1/2" down
depending on style of the hook, turned 180 degrees, then poked into
the worm belly and exited out the back. Choose a poking place that
will allow the bend of the hook to slide easily through the body. I
lay the hook against the worm to mark a spot at the back of the bend
before poking the second time. Bunch the back of the worm up so you
can bury the point under the "skin". That makes it quite weedless.

Another hook to consider is one with a wire weed guard. Play with that
to teach yourself how to put it in without tearing the worm up. It's a
little tricky, trickier to try describing it with mere words. Yet
another favorite of mine is to barely hook a straight shanked bass
hook against the side of a large swim bait, grub, or tube. Before
inserting the hook I take a small rubber band and attach it through
the hook eye in a simple loop. After hooking the bait's side I hook
the barb with the other end of the band. That works well with live
baitfish, too. I also use the band on conventional hooking
arrangements that leave the hook point exposed, as with pre-hooked
soft swim baits. It not only reduces snagging hard objects, but cuts
collection of floating weed strands. I get the bands at a local craft
shop that offers many sizes and high quality bands. Office variety
bands are too weak. It needs to be a tight stretch.

Jim