Moving a little bit of weight to the front with some of these smaller twitchbaits is really interesting

Okay, so let’s temper the word “interesting” to note that I am getting a little bit nerdy here and a lot of anglers will have zero interest in this! If we take a lure like the OSP DoLive Stick in its various sizes then, we are talking about a soft plastic that I have fished with a hell of a lot. More so with the 6’’ size, but over the years I have also fished a lot with the smaller 4.5’’ and 4.5’’ Fat sizes as well. I don’t know if you realise that the DoLive Stick is in fact a Japanese soft plastic designed for their freshwater bass fishing, but somehow it got picked up on over here in the UK and Ireland as a (sea) bass lure. In my opinion it’s basically the perfect soft plastic twitchbait……………

The 4’5’’ DoLive Stick with what I think might be the perfect weedless hook for a lure like this

When it came to designing the Savage Gear Gravity Sticks with Mads over in Denmark, I obviously said that the DoLive Stick was a soft plastic I fished with a lot and it had to have influenced my thinking in some way. We deliberately stayed away from trying to replicate the DoLive Stick with our Gravity Stick Pintail, but of course I was after a twitchbait style soft plastic lure and I think we did a pretty good job. I don’t get access to any sales figures, and my guess has always been that it goes Paddletail, Pulsetail, Pintail in order of popularity. I reckon that would mirror soft plastic sales in general for (sea) bass fishing here in the UK and Ireland - paddletails continue to reign supreme when it comes to soft plastics.

But I do love a twitchbait style soft plastic at certain times, indeed I will never forget it when I was messing around with different retrieves on the Gravity Stick Pintail (rigged weightless), and I discovered how you could fast-wind it to produce a sort of strong S-curve in the water. Then you stop the lure and it drops in a really good looking way, and about the first time I tried this in anger a really chunky bass smashed it. As per above. Some specific fish stick so long in the memory.

So I was out on the open coast the other day - this blog post here - and Dave got me thinking about rigging some of these smaller twitchbaits a bit differently all over again. Believe me, I have messed around with Pintails and DoLive Sticks and all manner of different rigging options, but for whatever reason I know I have spent the least amount of time messing around with a bit of weight at the front of the lure. I guess this is down to most of the belly-weight hooks I have used having their little bit of added weight towards the rear end of the hook, but with how incredibly well the little 4.5’’ size DoLive Stick cuts through a headwind when you add a bit of weight to the front like on the photo above - it flies, and it’s so stable in bouncy conditions - it’s got me thinking all over again.

If you take either of the Gravity Stick Pintails (photo above), now rig it with its respective belly-weight 6/0 or 4/0 weedless hook, then stick one of the insert weights in the precut slot just above the actual “tail” (photo below). It’s incredible how well this lure now casts and cuts into the wind, but now I am going to take these Pintails and try rigging them with the belly-weight towards the front of the hook. I don’t know if you are aware, but it’s possible to squeeze the little belly-weights with a pair of pliers and change the position of them on the actual hook. I must have tried this at some point already, but sometimes something or someone comes along and helps to get you thinking about something all over again. You know how I love messing around with stuff…………….

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