An easy and rather clever way to add some extra weight to some of your lures

I have a feeling that these Savage Gear Balls Clip On weights (tee hee!, kit here) were available a few years ago but over time were taken off the market. Earlier last year I was talking to Mads about how we might add a bit of extra weight to the Gravity Stick soft plastics for certain situations, and he sent me a few of these clip on weights he had hanging around to see how I got on with them. I started playing with them (tee hee again!) and in no time at all I found a few different uses. This led to me asking if we might think about getting them on the market again. I have also made a very simple “how to” video about these clip on weights which is further down the blog post………….

I don’t know about you and your bass fishing, but I will tend to do what I can these days to use soft plastics as much as I can in as many different bass fishing situations as possible. Hard lures will always be in my lure boxes of course - who doesn’t love taking bass off the top? - but soft plastics cover so many bases for me and I really like that bigger single (barbless) hook whenever possible because I fancy landing more fish on one. If I can get a bit more again out of soft plastics that I already use a lot anway, well that’s all good in my book. These clip on weights also work with various hard lures.

There are most likely a bunch of different ways you can use these clip on weights which are outside of what I’ve been doing with them, but I will describe what these little balls shaped add on weights have done for me so far. Joking aside with the shape and name of the weights, they were actually designed to sit flush with a weedless hook especially when you clip them into the eye of the hook and retrieve the lure. I don’t know if you use the 6/0 weedless hooks which are designed for the Gravity Stick soft plastics, but the first thing I asked for with these hooks was a slightly bigger eye to better allow for lure clips. I am glad I did, because it’s also pretty handy as you can very easily clip on one of these weights and still use a lure clip and the hitchhiker and everything can still move around just fine.

The first way I will use one of these Balls Clip On weights is as per the photo above - either with the Paddletail or Pulsetail rigged on the belly-weight 6/0 hook. This is when I am after more weight to help hold the lure a bit deeper in rougher water, fast current, or because the location might call for it etc. For sure I could often use a hard lure or indeed soft plastics like the Sandeel V2, Savage Minnow, Fiiish Black Minnow etc. to do a similar job, but I like options, and I seriously like how the Gravity Stick Paddletail and Pulsetail swim. Slow that cast down to say 75% and the Gravity Sticks on the belly-weight 6/0 hook with a clip on weight go out really well.

From early on with the Gravity Sticks I was also after a way to bump them along the bottom over rough ground or fish them in current like I used to fish say the XLayer or the Black Minnow. These clip on weights are not the perfect way to do this - I prefer jig heads overall, no comment - but they are an option, they work well, and you know I like that. The more I can do with the same lure, the better in my opinion. As per above I will tend to use the regular (non belly-weight) 6/0 weedless hook when fishing any of the Gravity Sticks like this, and if you slow down a bit the lure casts fine when rigged like this, without a doubt the belly-weight hooks helps promote a better flight if you need more distance. Sometimes this matters and sometimes it doesn’t. Options, that’s what I’m after. I only ever carry two of those medium size washable lure boxes and if I can get the lures I am carrying to do a bit more for me without having to carry loads more stuff? Job done.

When I am clipping these little weights into the eyes of the 6/0 weedless hooks I have only lost one of them when the lure smashed hard against a rock when I went to try and “bounce” it back to me across some horrible ground. When you clip the little weights into the eye of the hook you will feel them literally “clip” in as you do so, and from my experiences they hold really well like this. For sure you could squeeze the clip bit down a little bit more if you feel like it, but I haven’t found the need to do this when used with the 6/0 weedless hooks. As I said at the top though, other anglers will most likely find a bunch of different ways to use these things………………

And one way I have found rather interesting is to take the Sandeel Pencil 125 (yes, I am obsessed with this lure, I still think of it as a very long-range soft plastic with how well it casts and how shallow/subtly it swims) and clip one of these weights onto the middle of the lure where you could put a second hook which I don’t think this lure needs. If you are going to use a clip on weight with this lure then you do need to squeeze the clip part of the weight a bit tighter so it doesn’t come off. The Sandeel Pencil 125 is a missile already, but put one of these clip on weights on and it goes even further again - I really like the 7.5g one on this lure - and now I can get the same subtle action but at a bit of a deeper swimming depth which suits things like surf fishing and so on. A lure I really like doing a bit more for me again.

I am sure you could so the same sort of thing with the bigger Sandeel Pencil 150, but I haven’t done much with this yet and I know that for all the stuff I do try I can’t cover all bases. This is why I am so interested to hear from other anglers about how they do things. I do what I do, I try as much stuff as I can, but somebody here is going to look at these Savage Gear Balls Clip On weights (kit here) and “see” a completely different and quite possibly much better use for them than me and what I’ve been doing with them so far (adding weight to different hard lures perhaps, clipping the weight actually onto the weedless hook and above the belly weight?). If you do, please come back and share your techniques in the comments section below, thank you! You all have a good weekend, please stay safe and well, did any of you think that we would still be in a situation like this not far off two years ago now?

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