Regular diving hard lures continue to fascinate me, but I find myself using them less and less

If you tied me down, tickled me with a DoLive Stick, and said Henry you can only use three diving hard lures for your bass fishing for ever more - plus soft plastics and surface lures of course - then for me it would have to be the IMA Hound 125F Glide because of how well it casts and grips in rougher seas, the IMA Komomo SF-125 because it was the first ultra-shallow diving hard lure I came across and I still trust it above all others, and then the third choice isn’t so easy but I reckon I’d plump for for the little IMA iBorn 98F because I think it’s bloody lethal (I haven’t yet found the same level of love for its bigger brother, the IMA iBorn 118F). You’ve got two of what I call ultra-shallow divers, and then a deeper diving one in the Hound Glide……………

I am not proud of the number of hard lures I have collected over the years, but many moons ago I worked out that this lure fishing thing is a vicious addiction and there’s little point in beating myself about my various weaknesses. Nope, it’s far better to simply give in and enjoy wrecking my head with all the different hard lures and actions and colours and so on, and then realising that over a lot of fishing time and learning that in fact I can pretty easily boil down what I like the most to those three hard lures mentioned above - in a wide selection of colours of course! I grant you that those three lures I have chosen might well change depending on what is obsessing me at any particular moment, but what is a given is how the whole soft plastics thing has become so vitally important to my bass fishing. I do prefer barbless treble hooks on my diving hard lures over singles, but by miles I will take a bigger weedless and barbless single hook on a soft plastic and how it goes into the mouth of a fish and holds so well when you fight your fishing on a properly tight line.

I love the way a Hound Glide goes out there and keeps on fishing in some hectic conditions (and I notice that the bad, bad people who bring IMA lures into the UK have just launched a Pearl White version, please help me!). The Komomo SF-125 casts great and just does it so well over shallow ground, and the little iBorn 98F is a modern marvel with how well it casts and how shallow it swims. Three killer hard lures which I think I would choose above all others if I had to, but if I now stop and think about it, is there anything that these specific lures do which I can’t do with various soft plastics and indeed a few non-regular sort of hard lures?

For me these days it’s often going to be one of the Savage Gear Gravity Stick soft plastics rigged on one of our 6/0 weedless hooks, but for you it might be a DoLive Stick or one of the many and killer paddletails etc. that you can rig weedless and swim so shallow and invitingly over all manner of horrible ground. Is the SF-125 or the little iBorn 98F doing any more for me than soft plastics like these, or should it actually be the other way around? A Pulsetail casts really well but it still can’t match how far the SF-125 goes for example, we know that, but is that really the point though when I can cover more ground with something like the Pulsetail or a DoLive Stick because it will literally swim through and over anything when the treble hooks which festoon the SF-125 or the iBorn 98F will get caught up in the bladderwrack or particularly shallow bits of reef? Then I’ve got these ridiculously long-casting Sandeel Pencil lures which swim incredibly shallow when you wind them in and which in my mind are a bit of a cross between a soft plastic and a hard lure with their subtle action (soft plastic) and how they cast (further than most regular hard lures).

I’m obviously going to buy a Pearl White colour Hound Glide because I’ve wanted a white version of this lure for years now, but my issues aside, is there anything that this amazing lure is doing that I can’t do with say one of the new Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless/J-hook soft plastics, or of course the killer Fiiish Black Minnow and its many different variations? As with the paragraph above, should it actually be the other way around again? Can you bump the Hound Glide along the bottom in a strong run of current at the mouth of an estuary? Can you work the Hound Glide along the bottom across a rough as rats bit of reef like you can a weedless soft plastic on a jig head?

I’m only ever carrying two of those medium size washable lure boxes in my HPA Chest Pack so for some locations I need to be able to fit as much variety in them as I can. For sure I’ve worked out how to ram as many lures in those two boxes as possible over the years, but do I carry a hard lure which can only really be fished in one way or do I carry a few more soft plastics instead which might give me a few more options? I don’t see myself going out without at least one Komomo SF-125 when I’m faced with a shallow reef for example, but in that one slot which this lures takes up in one of the two boxes I carry I know I can fit a fair few different Sandeel Pencil 90 and 125 lures and kinda cheat the system. Yep, my head ain’t remotely right with this lure fishing thing, but damn it’s a lot of fun trying to work it all out which of course I know I will never be able to do. One thing I do know is that I had no idea how important soft plastics would become to me when I first saw an Irish lad bumping an XLayer on a jig head down a bit of Wexford current………………..

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