Rod tip up and slow right down with certain hard lures - do you fish like this at all?

I was having a chat with one of the really good guys in the fishing tackle trade the other day (there are many good people working in fishing and I am lucky enough to know a lot of them). He was talking me through the newish MRD casting system (Magnetic Rebound Driving) in some of the IMA hard lures. I believe you can find this in the Sasuke 120 Rekku and now a new version of the classic Komomo SF-125 (check the Chesil Bait’n’Tackle website for these lures if you can’t find them), and when the subject of the IMA Sasuke 120 came up this bloke laughed when I said that I know a bloke who, and I quote, “is a fu$%£&g ninja with the Sasuke 120” (check this blog post from earlier in the year).............

Without a doubt the whole soft plastics thing and having to slow my retrieve speeds down to get some of them working properly has helped with my self-control in bass fishing. I am very inclined to crank hard lures pretty quickly which I know works at times, but these days I like to think that I am more confident with different retrieve speeds. If you went way back through this blog I am sure you would have found me banging on about that killer little MegaBass X120SW hard lure (not sure if they still make it?) which I used to fish mainly with my rod tip up because I was convinced this improved the action of the lure and got it swimming a bit shallower which tended to suit where I was fishing with it.

I caught plenty of bass on the lure with rod tip and a pretty fast retrieve, but I don’t remember properly playing around with keeping the angle of the rod tip up AND really, really slowing down my retrieve. I am not sure back then if I had the control and confidence to fish like this to be honest, but soft plastics really came along for me and I discovered that sometimes bass would really switch onto lures fished somewhat slower. Of course I have played around a bit with fishing various hard lures at a somewhat slower speed, but to be honest I have most likely changed over to soft plastics like “my” Gravity Sticks or these lethal Slender Scoop Shads if I want to fish something a bit slower and more deliberate.

I always find it fascinating to fish and spend time with really good anglers, and it’s often noticeable how people like this have by process of time on the water and thinking about stuff sometimes arrived at some similar methods to each other without realising. I remember a lad a few years back over in Ireland who isn’t one of those social media heroes but is a scary-good bass angler. I always remember a particular session one afternoon where a couple of us blanked but this lad smashed a few bass in pretty bouncy conditions by fishing the IMA Sasuke 120 with his rod tip up and a retrieve speed which I couldn’t quite work out how he was keeping in touch with it. Bloody hell it worked though. And then I get to spend a bit of time with this “fu$%£&g ninja” earlier in the year and I find out that through water time and experience and trying stuff out, he’s fishing the Sasuke 120 in a similar way because it works so well for him.

Various Savage Gear samples have been in my hands a lot this year, and recently a parcel arrived with some changes to a couple of sample hard lures that I had requested. The wizard that is Markos over in Greece had managed to effect these changes which isn’t always as easy as it sounds, and his instructions to me were to check the action on these lures with my rod tip up and a slow retrieve. Wow! And then because I have issues - really Henry? - I recently sort of found myself with the smaller IMA Hound 100F Sonic in that lethal “Sexy Mackerel” colour. Whack it out and wind it in and it’s pretty amazing how far a small hard lure like this can go, but now slow right and down and fish rod tip up - and everything looks like it’s on steroids.

I have been trying the same with the shallow-diving, very long-casting SG Gravity Shallow lures, and to me they look pretty good like this, but in general it does seem that if you are going to fish hard lures in this way that a good bit of “grip” like you find on a Sasuke 120 or Hound 100F Sonic or these samples I have here does help. Look at how the Sasuke 120 moves in the water at a slow speed and you can see how that lip design literally holds the lure in the water as it rolls so strongly.

I am not exactly talking about anything new here and you might well be fishing most of your hard lures like this already. A lot will always depend on the sort of ground and conditions you tend to fish for bass, but from my point of view it’s so interesting to take both lures you already know and stuff which isn’t even on the market yet - and have a bloody good play around with them. Roll on an epic weekend of sport! England v Sri Lanka in the T20 World Cup at 8am tomorrow morning, and then a whole heap of fascinating autumn international rugby matches. Anybody else feeling pretty good about northern v southern hemispheres at the moment? Give it a few weeks and we shall know more. You all have a good weekend.

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