It fascinates me when somebody fishes one of “my” lures in a way that I haven’t and catches fish (and they are kind enough to tell me about it)
Where somebody catches their fish is none of my business and I guess we all do what we can to protect where we go fishing for various reasons. I wish it didn’t have to be this way but we live on a relatively small island with an increasingly high population density and most of us value quiet fishing as such. Many anglers enjoy talking about the how of fishing though, and then if you subdivide that category of good people, you find a group of what I call your thinking anglers. Anglers who have a natural talent at taking on the natural world with the tools we have at our disposal, and they really think about their fishing and how to keep improving and adapting and so on……………..
When it comes to my work with Savage Gear, I try my best to use the sample and production lures in as many different ways as possible, but I also know that I can’t cover all bases. I don’t know enough to know about all methods and techniques for starters, and like any other angler I am prone to fishing certain types of lures in certain types of ways because something similar has worked before and caught fish. I think about fishing far too much as it is, but there are a lot of far better anglers than me out there who are naturally going to see things a bit differently to me. It really, really interests me when somebody starts doing something very specific with an item of fishing tackle which I have been directly involved with bringing to market.
The Gravity Stick Pulsetail soft plastic was the third one that Mads suggested we make when we first discussed what has ended up as the Paddletail and the Pintail. I had never heard of this type of “pulsing tail” on a soft plastic before so I was a bit sceptical because surely a tail should be a paddletail? When somebody as experienced as Mads urges you to give it a go, you’d be daft not to open your mind up and take his advice, so I did, and I have loved the Pulsetail from the moment I caught my first bass on it. I can remember exactly where and when this was, and in fact it was on a very early sample that was too light and narrow - but the pulsing tail thing worked. I can also remember it so well when the first lockdown put paid to me trying what was then the finished Pulsetail at night for bass. That first night session after that first lockdown when I caught a bass on my first ever cast at night with a white Pulsetail produced a yelp the like of which I still reckon Mark thinks was a strange wild animal standing on a rock not far from him!
So I have fished with the Pulsetail in both sizes of Gravity Stick over all kinds of ground and conditions and caught plenty of bass on them. I love how the body of the lure doesn’t move at all like the Paddletail does on a straight retrieve, and just that (pulse)tail is pulsing away. All very deliberate I might add, but my fishing with this specific lure has always been whack it out and wind it in. Whether that be naked (lure plus weedless hook) or with belly-weight or weight spike or rattle or a combination of them has come to depend on location and conditions, but however I have mine configured I am whacking them out and winding them in at different speeds. I have always seen the Pulsetail as a kind of straight stick type soft plastic - but with a little bit extra. Along the lines of less is more, but with an added bit of temptation which isn’t too much.
Anyway, one of those thinking anglers who I talk to a fair bit because he is such a nice bloke is Marc Cowling of the excellent South Devon Bass Guide service. If you have read Marc’s two books on bass fishing - you should (I have reviewed them on here) - then you will be very aware of how generous he is with sharing how he goes about his bass fishing. You should also keep a close eye on his blog, plus he’s got a new book coming out March/April of this year, and from a few chats about it I think it’s going to be another cracker. Hoping I get an advance copy to read and review on here, not that I am hinting or anything Marc!
I am fully aware that one of the lures which Marc uses a lot at night himself and for his clients is the Gravity Stick Pulsetail, but for a while he has been rigging it and fishing it somewhat differently to me and my straight retrieve. He or his clients have caught a lot of bass so I would be remarkably stupid not to be interested, and especially when somebody like Marc kindly shares such information with me. I guess that my twitch/pause kind of retrieves with the DoLive Stick and the Pintail means that I have sort of caught a number of bass “on the drop” as such, plus spin-stops with the Sandeel Pencil and Surf Seeker also technically work like this. What I have not done though is very deliberately fished the Pulsetail on the drop as a whole sort of technique on its own, as in you are very deliberately winding but then stopping to allow the lure to fall through the water column - and then winding and dropping and repeating. I know that Marc is going to throw some numbers around in his new book because it’s pretty amazing how well this very deliberate fishing on the drop method with the Pulsetail specifically has been doing for him on the bass front - often when a straight retrieve produces nothing.
To get a level-drop on a tight line to the lure, Marc is taking either size of the Pulsetails - the 140 or the smaller 120 - and rigging both of them with the 6/0 3g belly-weight weedless hook we made for the original, larger Gravity Sticks. He is then putting the ever so slightly heavier 1.8g weight spike for the larger Gravity Sticks in the little slot which is on the underside of either size lure and just in front of the (pulse)tail. I say slightly heavier because the weight spike we did for the Gravity Stick 120 weighs 1.3g, and the hooks are 4/0 (the belly-weight 4/0 weedless hook has a 2g belly-weight on it). The combination of 6/0 belly-weight hook and 1.8g weight spike in either size of Pulsetail produces a level-drop when fished on a tight line, and this is what Marc is after. I believe he changes between the two sizes of Pulsetail mainly depending on if he needs a bit of extra distance where he is fishing. Very early on with testing these lures, it was apparent how well the Pusetail casts because the tail doesn’t need to almost “fold away” as much as a paddletail does. If you have used the lures I am sure you have realised this already.
Sorry for this, but if I don’t provide some info on where to buy these weight spikes then I will get messages asking me about them. Fishing tackle companies don’t tend to be that great at communicating to anglers about the little things. Here are a few pretty cheap and easy weight spike options if you are interested in any of this (there are some 1.8g weight spikes included with the original Gravity Stick Kit):
Savage Gear Rattle & Spike kit - 6 x 1.8g tungsten weight spikes and 6 x medium glass rattles
Savage Gear Balance Spikes - 8 x 1.8g and 8 x 3g tungsten weight spikes
Seadra Tungsten Balance Spikes - various sizes of tungsten weight spikes, including a 1.8g option
I can’t yet go into all the exact ins and outs of how Marc is then fishing the lures rigged very specifically like this, mainly because I haven’t seen him doing it. We have talked about it plenty and I am going to give it some serious water time this year. I have recently been playing around with it myself in some clear water and the Pulsetail looks so good when it falls horizontally. I do know that he is mostly using the Pulsetail like this when there is a little bit of current to help keep a tight line to the lure when you allow it to drop, but I see no reason why I can’t fish the lure like this over say a reef at night and make sure to use the rod tip to gently keep my mainline as tight as possible. Marc tells me that he gets nailed by bass both as the lure is dropping (because he has stopped retrieving), and also when he picks the retrieve up again after however many seconds he deliberately counts the lure down for. I also know that he has got multiple examples of sessions which have produced no hits from bass on straight-retrieved lures and every fish or bang has come when fishing the Pulsetail deliberately on the drop like I have been describing. This really, really gets me thinking, both about less is so often more, and when bass are for whatever reason not really in a chase mode. As I talked about last year, how often are the fish there but if we get no hits we don’t know and so we assume there were none around?
I guess that some of you will not get to here because it’s all got a bit technical, but if you have then I am going to guess that like me you are really interested in learning about subtly different ways of going about your fishing. You might be doing all this already of course, but I am not, and I fully intend to really give it a good go. As with starting to get into night fishing and literally needing that first fish to give me the jolt of confidence I needed to keep going, it will be the same with fishing the Pulsetail like this. As an aside, how good is the Six Nations this year? Wow. Good to get a win with a new coach, but Ireland especially are looking scary-good, and Scotland are increasingly looking like the real deal. Nervous weekends ahead!
Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.