I know these Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug lures slay for wrasse, really interested to see if they do the same for bass, love trying different stuff

You know how some things really stick in your head? Last year one of our lads who came along on a guided lure fishing trip in Ireland was noticeably catching more wrasse on lures when we were on these amazing fish for a few hours one day. Now the lad can properly fish which kinda helps, but because John and I are doing our stuff and we are not fishing, you really notice things………….

The 10cm Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug soft plastic

And this lad was hammering a lot of good wrasse, so I naturally asked him what lure and setup he was using. First off I was a touch taken aback that he was wrasse fishing with that awesome Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g lure rod, especially considering the often vertical/up and down nature of this type of lure fishing - but the rod was eating this kind of fishing up with no worries at all. As for the lure? Here’s me working with Savage Gear/Pure Fishing, but apart from some samples of a larger US version, I hadn’t seen the 10cm Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug soft plastic he was fishing on a simple but highly effective cheb rig.

Giving a good Irish wrasse the gears on that amazing Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g lure rod

There are three sizes of these Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug lures, a 7.2cm, an 8.8cm and a 10cm. They are made from a TPE plastic - like the MegaBass Sleeper Craw, Nikko craw, Z-Man lures etc. - which means that you cannot mix them with other soft plastics. What this material does give you is buoyancy (they sit nice and upright, perfect for a bass to inhale them!), plus they have an inbuilt glass rattle which I guess you can easily remove if you want to, but I really like this feature. I asked to see the 10cm size because that was the version this lad was smashing the wrasse on. As with wrasse fishing with the Z-Man lures, soft plastics like these really last well when you get in amongst a lot of “chompy” fish. Not such a problem with bass of course, but if I can get a longer life from my lures then so much the better.

Check this blog post here for my current approach to this creature bait fishing

I am many miles away from being a bass fishing creature bait expert, but I do now feel completely confident that I am doing nothing wrong if I fish these kinds of lures in what I think are the right areas. It’s time to experiment a bit more though, because I really enjoy this side of fishing. I managed to recently get that all important jolt of confidence that creature baits work well at night, but I want to try branching out a bit and see how different lures might work when I work them along the bottom in the same sort of areas. Gotta be worth twitching around as well?

Why you might ask? Because who knows what might or might not produce a few more or bigger fish. You sure as hell won’t ever know if you don’t give it a proper go, and I am always perfectly happy to take a gamble with my fishing to see if I can further my knowledge and confidence. There are a lot of very good anglers out there catching plenty of bass over similar ground, but they aren’t fishing with creature baits (which I am convinced are working as crab imitations). You know as well as I do though that where there are shore crabs, there are also a lot of other food sources for fish like our bass. Surely it can’t hurt to try and imitate something else and see how that might or might not work for me? Chasing different options, you know that’s me all over, and I don’t believe in standing still and doing the same thing over and over again. I do love a good play, so let’s see what happens. What I do know is that I can almost justify going fishing like this as “work”! Gotta test different stuff out, you know how it is……………..

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Bass fishing, Creature baits, Fishing tackle, Lure fishingHenry GilbeySeptember 20254 Comments