I hear some bass anglers saying that they find fishing with soft plastics a bit boring, but why is this?

A lad left a comment on my blog post from Monday a part of it was him saying that he finds fishing with soft plastics a bit boring and this then translates to a lack of confidence with lures like this. It’s always a big thanks to those of you who kindly take the time to engage with me in the comments section or on my Facebook page, and without a doubt a lot of this feedback gets me thinking about things which often lead to these blog posts. If I think about the whole soft plastics thing which I would argue has kind of exploded within lure fishing for bass, from time to time I do hear anglers saying that fishing with soft lures is a bit boring though……………

But I don’t get it. I love how lure fishing for bass fits us all in with how incredibly varied it is - way more than I could ever have imagined in fact - and it’s only natural that over time we might tend to favour some techniques and lure types over others, but to find fishing with soft plastics a bit boring? Please note that this is in no way a criticism of any angler who might think like this, rather it’s me looking inside my head and thinking about the different ways we might fish for the same fish and then wondering if any of the techniques and/or lures I might use which don’t float my boat quite as much.

Is it mostly down to the confidence thing again, in that you will naturally enjoy using the lures and techniques which work the best for you, or is this once again the whole confidence cycle thing where we might shy away from fishing a certain way because we don’t feel so confident but how can we get confident if we don’t persist? And so on. As I said on Monday, I have very little confidence in night fishing for bass on bright moonlit nights, and as much as I might try and avoid doing so because I don’t feel very confident, deep down I know that the only way I am going to stand any chance of feeling any confidence is to put some proper time in and tough it out until I either succeed or I can’t take anymore and I go back to telling myself that bass don’t like hitting lures when there’s a big fat moon shining down! It’s a vicious cycle is it not?

When I first started getting into hurling lures out for bass I knew essentially squat about soft plastics, but over a lot of water time these often less exciting looking lures have become as natural for me to turn to as a shallow diving hard lure very quickly became. If I really think about how I might fish for bass though, do I really, really enjoy fishing with something like a relatively inert, soft plastic DoLive Stick rigged weedless and weightless when I can’t actually feel all those amazing things you so often feel through your rod when a hard lure like my beloved IMA Hound 125F Glide flies out there and grips in so hard on the retrieve? How about the way a Spittin’ Wire splashes across the top as you deftly work your rod tip compared to winding a white senko in at night when if you can’t actually feel the lure doing anything at all?

My answer to the above is truthfully a big fat yes. All things surf fishing are very much invading my head on a regular basis at about 4am most mornings, but if I dial down into what makes me giggle the most when I hook a bass, I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s soft plastics for me, and especially twitching things like DoLives and senkos around, plus bumping Fiiish Black Minnows across rocky ground when you feel every single jolt of the bottom but then suddenly there’s a great big jolt and it’s a fish. Why though, and especially when some anglers find these lures a bit boring to fish with? What is it about fishing with lures that we can’t actually feel very much when they are “swimming” which does it for some anglers so much, yet it can leave other anglers kinda cold?

The hit, that jolt you suddenly feel in your hands, that’s what really does it for me when I am working soft plastics around, and I reckon it’s exactly because you haven’t got a lure on the end which is rolling and wobbling and vibrating away that the hit from a bass is so exciting when fishing like this. I’ll take any hit from a bass on any kind of lure to be honest, but when I am working say a DoLive Stick over a shallow reef and I’ve got that directness of braid to the lure but I am not feeling a load of action off a soft plastic like I might with a lot of hard lures, for some reason I feel that bit more “connected” to what I am doing - and the hit from a fish then comes like such a jolt from the blue that I sometimes find myself literally yelping with the sheer joy of it. I am a pretty useless fly angler but I have done a fair bit over the years and I have also spent a serious amount of time photographing very good fly anglers all around the world - and to me it’s working soft plastics such as DoLive Sticks and senkos and what have you around which is closest to the “direct” feel of fly fishing and how alive it all feels. Does this make any sense? I know what I feel when a bass grabs my soft plastic instead of a hard lure doing its thing on a straight retrieve and kinda “stopping” when a fish nails it, and I am sure it’s that sudden tap or jolt or bang when you are so intently working and animating your soft lure which makes me giggle so much……………..

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