I can’t remember how long ago it was that I stopped carrying various boxes full of lures in a rucksack which also holds my camera gear and waterproof jacket and so on (over time I found it such a pain to carry lures like this, having to go back to my rucksack to change lures and so on), but from that day on I have only ever carried a maximum of two of those washable style lure boxes with me when I go out fishing. Sometimes it’s only the one box - night time or much of my estuary fishing for example - but whatever the case I am never carrying anymore than what can sit at my side in either the HPA Chest Pack or other stuff I might be trying out…………….

So for all my working out how to get a lot of lures into those two boxes over time, if I haven’t got it with me I obviously can’t fish with it. For sure I am often trying stuff out which is connected to my work, but my growing obsession is that with a few add-ons and modifications and tweaks and even clever decisions perhaps, I can get some of the lures I am carrying to do more than one single thing for me. I am in total agreement that a smash on a surface lure in bass fishing is pretty damn exciting, but what can a surface lure do for me except fish on the surface? I can’t think of that many bass fishing situations when I wouldn’t have at least a surface lure or two in one of my two boxes, but yet again I come back to soft plastics as the lures which I believe give me the most flexibility.

This colour of the Savage Minnow Weedless is out next month

If we look at lures like the Fiiish Black Minnow, Savage Gear Savage Minnow Weedless, Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless and those new and good looking GT Bio Roller Shads which I am seeing photos of on Facebook, then by carrying some of them I am giving myself different options from the same lures. You can of course whack any of these lures out and wind them in like you would say a Hound Glide, but as much as I love the Hound Glide, I am not a magician and I can’t get it to work with a pronounced sink and draw kind of action, nor drag it along the bottom and/or bump it down a good run of current. On its day a hard lure like the Hound Glide might well be what the bass are after of course, but I know my two lure boxes (one with the slots vertical, one with the slots horizontal) well enough to know that I can cram in a bunch of these pre-rigged paddletails on jig heads without taking up that much room. A Hound Glide or two might well live in one of the lure boxes a lot of the time, but if the location or conditions require it I can cover more bases with the weedless paddletails on jig heads approach.

You might not need different options of course. I hope that I am not a blinkered angler and I try my best to keep a very open mind as to how we all fish different kinds of ground and conditions, but how many times have you gone fishing with the best laid plans but you either find different conditions to what was expected, or else you need to move to another mark which might require some different techniques? If the fish aren’t playing ball do you spend the whole session fishing the same type of lures as your mate or do you deliberately try a different approach to see if this might produce a fish or two?

You can probably guess that I am going to get around to “my” Gravity Sticks at some point in a blog post like this, but of course it could be lures like the mighty DoLive Stick and so on. Rig any of these lures on a weedless hook and you’ve got the ability to fish shallow water and so on, but I know how to cram a whole bunch of different Gravity Sticks in those horizontal slots in one of my two lure boxes - and I can get those lures to do far more for me than just twitch or slow-retrieve them in over shallow rough ground.

I really like how the heavier belly-weight hooks I blogged about here give me a few different options, and for all my playing around with this way of rigging soft plastics like these on regular J-hook jig heads (see that blog post here), I keep coming back to the very simple but rather clever Savage Gear Balls Clip On weights. In many respects they are a variation on the jika rig I guess, but because I can so easily clip them on and off “our” weedless hooks (which deliberately have those larger eyes for lure clips etc.), I am not having to cut and retie leaders or open up split rings when I am actually fishing and so on.

You haven’t seen them yet but the new smaller 120mm size Gravity Sticks will be in the shops soon, and it’s almost silly how well say the smaller Paddletail rigged on its 4/0 weedless hook together with a 15g Balls Clip On weight casts if needs be (there is a larger eye on these new 4/0 weedless hooks as well). I don’t know why the hell a single bit of weed on a hook or lure puts fish off and clip-on weights don’t, but the more I play around with these Balls Clip On Weights - tee hee! - the more uses I am finding for them. By carrying a few of them in different weights I can now get lures like the Gravity Sticks to do that much more for me if required. Extra distance, better casting into headwinds, deeper-swimming (slower retrieve), sink and draw, plus the (nuts) shape of these clip-on weights means that they bump along the bottom really well - either over rough ground or down a run of current. The Flying Sack? Sorry. You get my drift though. I like options…………….

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I’m a bit obsessed with thinking about how to make the lures I carry with me do as much as possible

© Henry Gilbey 2023