Saw a US fishing video where a bloke said something like “let’s be honest, paddletails are all pretty much the same”. Is that really the case?

The YouTube algorithm knows me too well. Fishing from around the world, new black metal tracks, trailers to new films (can’t wait for 28 Years Later in June), and various camera/photography related stuff. So I clicked on some fishing video from the US the other day, all about new tackle coming on the market and onto their online store, and one of the blokes said something like “let’s be honest, paddletails are all pretty much the same”. Really?

Because I would personally argue otherwise. I obviously know what a soft plastic paddletail is at the end of the day, and yes I know some of the Savage Gear stuff better than some other gear, but when I swim something like a Gravity Stick Paddletail and then a Slender Scoop Shad with both rigged on the same belly-weight weedless hook, I am seeing a somewhat different action. I see so many bass anglers quite rightly raving about the MegaBass Spindle Worm paddletail, and whilst I haven’t fished with one for a while, I know how good they are. I am going to suggest that there is a distinct difference between a Spindle Worm on one of those Decoy Violence VJ-36 weedless jig heads (what on earth have I been missing?!) and a Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless.

I am not a lure designing expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have spent enough time with or talking with people within the fishing tackle industry who do know a lot about designing lures. I have a basic understanding of how different tail shapes and body profiles can subtly or dramatically affect how a paddletail behaves in the water (judging by some of the comments I see on something like Facebook, I am going to politely suggest that many anglers do not, but hey ho, it matters not). Then you have a multitude of different rigging methods. I have tried enough rigging methods to know that a Slender Scoop Shad on a belly-weight weedless hook swims a bit differently to the same lure rigged with the weight at the front via a cheb weight or jig head. And so on.

Tail shape, the distance from tail to main lure body, the angle of the tail, upright or upside down tail, the profile of the actual lure body, length, girth (tee hee), material, material density, salt content, retrieve speed, rigging method, you name it, there are so many factors that can go into a paddletail and how it swims. At the end of the day a paddletail is simply a soft plastic lure with a tail that thumps or kicks in the water when you retrieve it, but a combination of factors can give rise to subtly or dramatically different swimming actions.

Note that I haven’t used the word “better” yet, mainly because how on earth can you definitively say one lure is better than another one when you can only catch on what you are fishing with? For sure we have opinions, but it surely isn’t fact, not when so many factors way out of our control are involved. What you think is the best paddletail is most likely different to what I think. I reckon the best paddletail out there is the Gravity Stick Paddletail, but I know that this opinion revolves a lot around the fact my biggest bass so far came on one. Would I have caught that exact same bass at the same time and the same place if I had been using a different paddletail? Quite possibly of course, I would never say otherwise, but you can only catch a fish on what you are actually fishing with at the time - and when that bass came along, I was fishing with a (white) Gravity Stick Paddletail. Which skews me to that particular lure. If I had caught my biggest bass on a Spindle Worm or a Keitech Easy Shiner? You get my drift. You all have a good Easter weekend………………

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