My Introduction to Soft Plastics

[Rainman]

I got a gift voucher for $50 worth of fishing gear from the family for Xmas so I thought I'd better try out some soft plastics having only ever read about them!

First attempt was yesterday morning when I went down to Cape Pallaranda (Townsville) and threw some 3 inch shads into deep water. I got a strike on my first retrive and wound in half a SP. The water was alive with lots of rays, mullet and turtles so I rigged another shad and tossed it out. As it was sinking it go hit by a medium trevellay which I managed to land after it tried to escape around the rocks. I continued for about an hour and got busted of several more times and landed a nice sized queensfish. I was getting plenty of follows and almost managed a mackeral to the rocks but it busted me off.....considering this was my first SP experience and I was using light spinning gear I had a great morning.

This morning I went down to the Haughton River (Sth of Townsville) with mate to see if yesterdays fishing with SP's was just luck. Between the two of us we boated 7 barra (all bewteen 40cm and 55cm which were released), a long tom and two catfish!. I've got a photo of the barra but can't work out how to post it just yet. I'll keep trying.

You could say I am now a SP convert................time to throw all those hard-bodied lures in the rubbish! (not).

I'll have a final attempt on Monday morning before going back to work to see how I go!

Cheers

[keen_as_mustard]

Congrats Rainman - once you catch a few fish on sp's it is hard to use anything else! They are very addictive - next thing you will know you will have more plastics and jigheads than your local tackle store.

...and the best way to get better at them is only take plastics when you go fishing - that way you don't turn to the bait after 15 mins fishing.

I would reckon living in FNQ would be great for plastics fishing?

Good work

Marty

[PinHead]

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...another bugger catching fish on those annoying plastic things...I cannot even get the attention of some mongrel vermin with them let alone a decent fish. Looks like I am destined to stink of bait forever.

[Scalem]

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...another bugger catching fish on those annoying plastic things...I cannot even get the attention of some mongrel vermin with them let alone a decent fish. Looks like I am destined to stink of bait forever.

Pinhead, I had a plastics session in the bay today, and you can't get away from the smell of these things either!! Handling either Berkley's or Zoom leaves a very long lasting odour that stays with you all day, especially when the fish keep knocking the tail sections off them, which means renewing the plastic every 3rd or 4th cast.

I admit that most people think of the SP's as lures, but I would question putting them 100% into this catagory. I think that if you start thinking of them as a bait, not a lure with respect to how you work them in the water, catch rates are bound to improve!

Scalem