Making your soft plastic lures work that bit harder - new video up (are you loving the current weather as much as I am?!)

First off, how many of you here can’t wait for the new zombie film “Army of the Dead” which is out on Netflix today? I have always loved a good zombie film, the trailer looks awesome, I loved the director of Army of the Dead’s remake of Dawn of the Dead back in 2004, and with the current “summer” weather making my local coastline completely unfishable at the moment, dad here has told his family that tonight the one television in our house is his. Close the curtains, jack the surround sound up until the doors start shaking, bring on the zombie mayhem - with a break for the chicken curry that my youngest girl is making for supper when she gets home from school…………...

Above is a short video I put together which details how I often take one of our Gravity Stick Paddletail lures and stick two of these 1.8g weight inserts in there if I need a bit more distance or control or “grip” - use the rattle slot behind where the hook comes through the body of the lure, plus the slot down by the tail. Rig this lure on one of the belly-weighted 6/0 weedless hooks and you’ve got a soft plastic with that lovely thump of a paddletail which now weighs around 22g. A big part of my working on these Gravity Sticks was to make sure that for soft plastic lures they cast really well, but with these simple additions the Paddletail now becomes a bit of a missile into the wind especially. The trick is to cast it nice and smoothly.

And yes, I will admit to being a touch sceptical when Mads first suggested putting a slot in these lures to allow for the addition of a weight spike. I always wanted to be able to easily slot a rattle in there, but a weight spike? I refuse to go at any of this fishing tackle design work with a closed mind though, and over a lot of testing time I really went to town on a number of different modifications with these Gravity Sticks. This “two weight spikes” thing with the Paddletail is a particular favourite which I find myself using a lot.

It’s nothing remotely complicated of course, and it’s not meant to be because I love how easy it is to fish with so many of the soft plastics we turn to. There is absolutely no need to add weight spikes to any of the Gravity Sticks by the way, but as you know I like options. You all have a good weekend, hope you enjoy Army of the Dead if zombies are your thing - how could they not be? - and I will see you next week. Thank you as always for reading my blog and interacting via the comments section, I cannot tell you how much it means to me to know that so many anglers seem to get something out of it………..

Nearly forgot - Savage Gear UK have put another video up which is me (sorry, and damn I dislike watching myself on a screen just as much as I ever did!) talking about our brand new Savage Minnow, a J-hook paddletail on a jig head, out in June - and yes, there is a weedless version which will get its own video soon. Damn right a huge number of people within the fishing tackle trade have been inspired by the awesome Fiiish Black Minnow and how those very clever French anglers took a bunch of components which were traditionally sold separately - and often confusingly so I will always argue - and put them together to create the easy to understand and lethally effective Black Minnow “system”.

From day one with my working with Savage Gear we were talking about making what you will see next month as the (J-hook) Savage Minnow, and of course we couldn’t contemplate doing a lure like this and not doing a weedless version. Paddletail bodies, jig heads and weedless hooks have been around for many years now, but I am not going to ignore how Fiiish ran a step further with it to create their “system”. I would hope though that anglers see what we have done differently to create our own Savage Minnow and Savage Minnow weedless. You will always hear me giving the Black Minnow the credit it deserves, but after a lot of time now I do believe that things can be done a bit differently and perhaps even a little better for certain applications? The design of our jig heads for example was the result of a lot of talking and sampling and testing to get a head which works just as well on a straight retrieve as it does being bumped/swum along the bottom.

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