Let’s talk about…………..paddletails/shads

Is there a more versatile or useful kind of lure for bass fishing than a paddletail or shad? I’m choosing to call them paddletails rather than shads because as a name for a type of lure the word paddletail makes far more sense to me than shad, but this aside I would suggest that if you go looking at the many different types of soft plastic paddletails and how they can be rigged and fished in so many different ways, I can’t really see myself ever going out bass fishing or indeed targeting pollack and wrasse without some kind of paddletail(s) in my lure boxes……………

Before we go any further though, it’s only right for me to give the French company Fiiish a huge amount of credit for coming up with their Black Minnow “system”, whereby they started to make specific paddletail lure bodies to perfectly match specific jig heads and specific weedless hooks - and then they sold what we all know as the Black Minnow as a complete system. Anglers who jump all over any other tackle companies now offering these types of systems need to accept that paddletails, jig heads and weedless hooks all existed well before Fiiish did what they so cleverly did, but yes, I can’t get away from tackle companies at least nodding with a degree of deference to the French lads as they come up with their own matching paddletail/jig head based systems.

But paddletails and rigging are obviously not all about jig heads and having the potential to fish these lures deeper if needs be. How many of you use paddletails which by design are all based around some kind of thumping paddletail on the end of the lure as a sort of shallow-diving lure which you can swim like you would say an IMA Komomo SF-125? Whack it out and wind it in, but of course with a paddletail rigged on a weedless hook your chances of snagging the lure up are hugely reduced. If fishing is so much about confidence then I have complete and utter confidence in fishing paddletails like this - being lucky enough to land your best ever bass on a particular lure tends to do that. The fact that the paddletail was the Gravity Stick Paddletail made my day almost more than the fish did.

I got to thinking about this blog post partly because I have been doing some filming over the last few days with a couple of lads from Svendsen Sport/Savage Gear. We have a heap of new products out at the start of June and we were out and about getting footage of all the new gear being used in specific types of locations and so on, and the other morning we spent a few hours capturing as much underwater footage of certain items I can’t yet talk about. Trying to nail certain items (which might or might not have been a bunch of different lures) underwater and looking like they are being properly fished is not that easy, but we had very calm weather water and we got some pretty good footage which will cut in with other stuff we were filming. It’s fascinating scrubbing through this underwater GoPro footage and watching the various new items of fishing tackle and how they move on a retrieve or when worked along the bottom and so on, and if by some chance we had been filming various paddletails then it would have been especially interesting how different designs of jig heads promote subtly different swimming actions and the ability to effectively work stuff along a rocky seabed for example. I am sorry by the way, there is so much I want to tell you about but I can’t quite yet………….

I have no idea if your head is anything like mine, but I sometimes sit down and wonder if I could only take only one type of lure out fishing with me, what would it be? I’ll take bass on surface lures as much as the next angler with how exciting it is, but trying to bump a surface lure along the bottom down a strong run of current ain’t exactly going to happen for example. If I think about how many different ways a paddletail can be rigged and fished, and also how much more there is to do with them than I yet realise, for me that one type of lure only would have to be a paddletail. Versatility is surely the key here.

Swim them on weedless and belly-weighted weedless hooks like shallow-divers, swim something like the Savage Gear Sandeel (watch this space) or the Westin Sandy Andy (paddletails on pointy style jig heads) in deeper water and/or rougher conditions, fish paddletails on jig heads with a sink and draw action, bump/swim weedless paddletails on jig heads (like the Black Minnow of course) along the bottom over rough ground, trundle paddletails rigged on jig heads down a strong run of current, bump paddletails on jig heads around in the surf, hell, I saw some photos last summer of some European anglers catching black/largemouth bass on the Gravity Stick Paddletail fished as a surface lure and I am going to have a crack at this for our own bass later this year in a few specific spots I have lined up.

I would argue that there is no more versatile lure than the humble or perhaps not so humble soft plastic paddletail and the endless different rigging and fishing options these rather amazing lures give us. Feeling that “kick” on the end of your line as you work a paddletail gives me so much confidence, and as ever with this whole lure fishing thing I am fascinated to find out more ways of rigging and fishing these lures over time. I hope you are all doing well, have a good weekend, we had another bloody frost here in south east Cornwall this morning which doesn’t feel right at all, but roll on the change in wind direction which is forecast from Monday morning. If that forecast is correct I have a location in mind for 5am Monday to coincide with the early pushing tide…………

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