“Sliding” and “holding” paddletails. Is a paddletail simply a paddletail?
Please bear with me this morning because there is nothing remotely set in stone about any of this, rather it’s something a bit technical that’s been creeping up on me as an idea. If where you live dictates that you fish mainly calm conditions then I’d skip this particular post, but if any of your bass fishing revolves around a bit of bounce and fizz on the sea then there might be something here for you…………..
I went out fishing yesterday morning but I had to come up with a backup plan because where I planned to fish had coloured up overnight and I could see a hell of a lot of weed in the water. I did a quick bit of thinking and came up with a backup plan, and although I could tell that where I ended up was close to blowing out as well, I managed to fish it for a bit and about five casts in a very angry bass jumped on my lure. Which was nice.
Please note that this wasn’t yesterday, but it’s akin to how I was fishing
I found the sort of sea conditions where it was going to be hard to simply whack something out and wind it in. There was that bit too much movement around the specific areas I would want to fish on this mark, so it was very much a case of working with the waves rolling in and letting the water movement do as much of the work as possible - rather than trying to overcome it if that makes sense. I could have blasted various lures to the horizon, but it’s never really worked on this mark. Most of the fish we have caught there have come from fairly close in where the bass are obviously mooching around for whatever food a reef like this might hold. You’re working specific fishy looking areas.
As ever I would ask you to bear in mind here that I am doing more and more work with Savage Gear, so yes, I am more inclined either to (obviously) fish with the lures that I have had a direct hand in, or otherwise try different stuff from their extensive line up and see if it works for my fishing. By no means are all bases covered and I will fish with what I feel I need to fish with to try and catch fish, but ever since I stumbled across their new Slender Scoop Shad (I’m going to call it the SSS to save my typing) earlier this year I have had a bit of a growling feeling about this particular paddletail and how it is working for me.
Which I can assure you was never thought of when the grownups brought this lure to market. It obviously helped that my first ever February bass came on the SSS, but I was initially drawn to have a go with it because it looks so different to my ultimate paddletail for swimming around, the Gravity Stick Paddletail - and yes, you most likely have your own ultimate paddletail. This one happens to be mine. I was not privy to anything about the SSS before it came out, indeed it took me seeing the promo video on YouTube like anybody else would, but because I work with the company I was then able to get hold of some for a bit of a tryout.
I don’t know how much you fish like this, but with the sort of conditions I eventually found yesterday morning, I was basically “sliding” a paddletail around in all the water movement, or kinda “holding” it at the back of the wash behind the waves after they broke. For sure I’m retrieving the lure, but I am not simply winding it in at a predetermined speed when the water is really churning around - I am trying to maintain contact and then let the tail on the lure do its thing in all the turbulence when the lure gets caught in it. I hope it goes without saying that I need the added stability via a belly-weighted weedless hook to help me do this. I caught the bass yesterday morning on the 15cm SSS rigged on the 6/0 belly-weight weedless hook which is designed for the Gravity Stick lures but works perfectly on the biggest 15cm SSS and also fits rather well on the smaller 13cm SSS as well.
The new Gravity Stick Paddletail 120 size, on its 4/0 belly-weight hook
And as much as the Gravity Stick Paddletail is my go-to paddletail for a lot of my bass fishing, from the very first time I fished with the SSS paddletail and caught that chunky February bass in some lovely bouncy conditions, it was quickly apparent that here was a paddletail that really seemed to thrive when you need to “slide” or “hold” a lure. For sure it also works when you wind it in, as indeed the paddletails that you might fish with most likely do as well, but there seems to be something about the combination of the strange looking tail and narrowish, upright body design on the SSS which really promotes a lot of tail-thumping which you can really feel through your rod when you literally hold the lure in a decent bit of backwash. For sure my Gravity Stick Paddletail (new smaller 120mm size of the Gravity Sticks out in June) work like this as well, and my best bass so far this year is testament to that because the fish hit me at the back of a wave as I was “holding” the new 120mm size Gravity Stick Paddletail in the turbulence, but surely a paddletail isn’t just a paddletail and by trying stuff out you start to understand why.
It does make me chuckle when one of the fishing experts on the “resource” that is Facebook passes judgement on an item of fishing tackle they haven’t even fished with yet. I remember a lad saying that they didn’t think the angle of the tail on the Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless was going to be enough to make it work well when I posted a brief promo video of the lure before they were released, so yes, I did giggle when my friend Mark landed the biggest bass I saw last year on the Sandeel V2 Weedless - I guess the angle to the tail was just about okay! So now take a look at the lack of angle on the SSS from body to (paddle) tail. It looks like it surely isn’t going to thump away very much, but it does. There is a lot more to the combination of body and tail design than is immediately apparent. I have had a few discussions with Mads about the SSS because it’s really got me thinking with how I am tending to fish with it, and whilst as I said the SSS was never envisaged as a saltwater paddletail and how I am often using it, it continues to fascinate me how different many of these lures are, and how unless you are prepared to try different stuff you are just never going to find something which might do a particular job rather well for you………………
MY GO-TO SOFT PLASTICS
//
MY GO-TO SOFT PLASTICS //
Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.