How much do you add no extra weight to those paddletails you swim over shallow ground? I think I need to do this more…………..

To be fair to myself, I am often swimming various paddletails when there is a bit of bounce on the sea, hence me always carrying a selection of belly-weighted weedless hooks, jig heads, and increasingly various cheb weights. I tend to require the extra stability that some sort of added weight gives to lures like the Savage Gear Gravity Stick Paddletails, Slender Scoop Shads, and now these bloody Craft Bleak ones which I can’t leave behind. For me I might add, and of course you might carry very different lures to me. It’s a bit tedious to keep saying that I work with Savage Gear/Pure Fishing, but I feel I must. Whatever the case, I carry lures which I trust and if anybody doubts me then so be it………….

Yesterday’s early morning bass fishing threw up a rigging option that I am increasingly aware I don’t use enough - “naked”, or adding no more weight to whatever paddletail it might be and using nothing more than a simple weedless hook. There is a very good bass angler who I have not met but who I have corresponded with a little bit. I contacted him a while back because I kept noticing some very good catches he was talking about when fishing with the white Gravity Stick Paddletail especially. This lad was kind enough to answer my questions about how he was rigging and fishing this lure - I’d be daft not to want to keeping understanding more - and it came out that for the most part he was fishing calm conditions, often at night, and he would more often than not rig the paddletail “naked”. Which as I said earlier is something I don’t think I do enough of. His arguments were that firstly he didn’t need a belly-weight hook because the Gravity Stick Paddletails cast far enough already, secondly that the sea was usually pretty calm and the ground is shallow, and thirdly the lure does look very good when you swim it with no added weight.

We were fishing in such dense fog yesterday morning that at some point I was genuinely not even sure we were fishing in the right spot! I don’t know the mark well, but the first time I fished it I landed a bass of about 6lbs, and the where, how and why has stuck with me ever since. I am miles away from getting to grips with the area but I find the options fascinating. Ben and Andy both landed a small bass each - Andy on a surface lure and Ben I believe on a little Ecogear Grass Minnow paddletail which does look rather lovely. I blanked, but my two best chances at connecting with bass both came when I happened to be fishing paddletails rigged on regular weedless hooks and no extra weight.

It was Ben who jolted my memory yesterday morning. We were fishing close together at one point - but nearly losing each other in the fog though - and he asked me a question which got me thinking about losing the weight as such. The water was dropping away in front of me, but I had a little bit of current over some very shallow ground, and I am sure the dense fog was helping us out because the water was about as clear as I reckon it gets. I took off whatever I was fishing with (paddletail with belly-weight) and rigged up the lure above, a Gravity Stick Paddletail 120 in the wagasaki colour sitting on the 6/0 weedless hook we made for the original and larger 140mm size Gravity Stick (both the 4/0 and 6/0 hooks work well with the 120mm size Gravity Sticks). Lo and bloody behold if a good looking bass didn’t charge in behind this exact lure a few casts later, made a great big swirl, but turned away at the last moment as I am sure it saw my eager and very excited face peering at him or her through the thick fog. Damn, or words to that effect!

As I started to lose more water I moved away on the hunt for some more current. Because of the dense fog and the lack of visibility, for the life of me I wasn’t able to find where I had that nice bass the first time I fished this spot. I think I was close but I was never really sure. I changed over to the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad above, again rigged on the 6/0 weedless hook we made for the original and larger 140mm size Gravity Stick, and again with no belly-weight or cheb weight at the front like I am fishing this specific lure so much these days. I had never actually seen the Slender Scoop Shad swimming with no added weight, so before casting out for real I had a bit of a play in the calm and very clear water all around me. At a slow to medium retrieve speed the paddletail looks awesome in the water rigged like this, but as expected you can knock it off balance if you retrieve it too quickly when there is no extra weight to balance it out. You need to find the right speed.

Casting a paddletail like this is never going to reach the horizon, but I could reach the bit of current I was targeting. Because there was no extra weight on the lure I could more easily slow right down and swing the Slender Scoop Shad on a gentle retrieve. A few casts into this bit of the session and about four turns after the lure landed I got tapped then walloped hard. I was just about to sweep the rod back to help set the hook when it all went slack as the bass didn’t properly connect, but once again my best chance at a fish from yesterday morning came when I was allowing a specific paddletail to swim essentially unencumbered by any extra baggage in very calm and shallow water. Definitely food for thought for me, so now I am going to start going through different paddletails and weedless hook combinations to see what works the best. Of course I have fished paddletails like this before, but I know I haven’t given them enough time “naked”. Guess who woke up at 4.30am this morning with a healthy dose of bouncing brain syndrome?

Last week I went up to Paignton to record an episode of a new video podcast with a couple of lads, called Tuna Gear. I have known Danny Parkins for years but I hadn’t met Andy before, and the experience was a blast. I told them from the off that I had no issues with talking about skin cancer or heart attacks, but the main aim was to talk about all things fishing and especially working in fishing. The episode is above, make sure to subscribe to this new Tuna Gear podcast, thanks guys for having me along.

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