Prawn imitation lures?
I wonder how many times I have used the two words “creature bait” in the last couple of years on here? I may well feel very confident when I fish with what I still see as crab imitation lures these days, but I also recognise that there is so much more for me to keep learning about how to better fish them, and also where better to fish them. It has always been my standout question if you like within bass fishing that we collectively don’t know nearly enough about what bass actually feed on in specific areas and times of the year etc., so whilst crabs are obviously a hugely important food source for bass in estuaries and also on the open coast, what about prawns?
I am aware of good bass being caught by some anglers on prawn imitation lures, and whilst I have tried a few out myself, in truth I have not given them nearly enough time. A mate was out fishing not long before Xmas and went through all the right motions with the creature bait stuff, but nothing was doing. He thought what the hell and clipped on a prawn imitation lure I think he had found on something like AliExpress, cast it out into the same ground he had been fishing with the crab imitation stuff - and bang, a good bass on straight away. It got me thinking at the time, and it gets me thinking even more at the moment with how the weather is throwing such a hissy fit. You know how I do like having options.
It will not surprise you that I have shown moments of weakness in the past and purchased various prawn imitation lures, both pre-rigged and not. If something looks nice and interesting then “from time to time” I have been known to give in and abuse the bank account! The two lures that I think look really good are the pre-rigged Z-Man Prawn StarZ above, and the un-rigged Z-Man EZ ShrimpZ below which I rigged onto a Z-Man ZWG Weighted Swimbait Hook 3/0. I have played around with both these lures a bit and to me they look nice in the water, but with the sort of ground I would be tending to think about I can’t help gravitating towards the un-rigged lure because I can then rig it weedless.
Z-Man EZ ShrimpZ rigged on a Z-Man ZWG Weighted Swimbait Hook 3/0
Does this really matter though when you can of course fish perfectly effectively around the bladderwrack and so on? As I said, I haven’t given these lures nearly enough time and with how much time I have now put into the creature baits, I do favour the hookpoint being tucked away as much as possible. Please note though that better anglers than me have caught some fantastic bass on pre-rigged J-hook prawn lures, so as ever take what I say within the context I am providing.
One specific soft plastic which ended up producing a number of good bass for me during the last few months of last year especially was the Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug - as per this blog post here when I first put one into bass related action (they are lethal for wrasse!). Now for location related reasons mainly, I ended up fishing this Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug soft plastic much like I used to fish the deadly MegaBass XLayer in fast runs of estuary based current over in Ireland especially. When something works for you I guess you tend to stick with it a bit. I have had a bass or two when I have used these Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slugs as I would a creature bait, but one thing on my endless list of bass fishing stuff to do is to fish them way more in those situations.
Which then gets me thinking about the whole prawn lure thing. We will never really know what various fish are seeing when they hit our lures, but we have to at least believe that they are not quite seeing what we might see when they smash something like a cotton candy coloured IMA Komomo SF-125 hard lure in bright sunshine over shallow reefy ground! So in turn I wonder if my urge to give the Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug a lot more time when I would more usually be turning to a creature bait/crab imitation isn’t in fact offering a rather good prawn imitation. I don’t know how a bass sees a specific lure as some specific food source, but with my human eyes and human brain I can’t help but think that twitching a Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug around when it’s rigged on something like the Seadra weedless jig head 2/0 (above) or the Z-Man ZWG Weighted Swimbait Hook 3/0 (below) is actually a damn good prawn imitation. Or simply cheb-rig it as I would a creature bait. Or prawn. So much fun stuff to keep on with this year, roll on an end to this endlessly shite weather, you all have a good weekend…………..
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