The more ways I can fish with the one way of rigging, the better it has to be in my book

You can of course take a lure like the Fiiish Black Minnow or “our” Savage Gear Savage Minnow Weedless or Sandeel V2 Weedless and very effectively swim them like conventional hard lures, put a killer sink and draw on them, bump them along the bottom over broken ground, bump them along in fast runs of current, etc. Some of you here might well prefer various (exposed) J-hook versions of these types of jig heads + soft plastic lure combinations, but whatever the case they tend to have an inherent versatility beyond how simple they might look at first glance……………..

Then with how my brain works, I naturally want to try and add that sort of versatility to other lures I trust. With the Gravity Sticks I got to be completely involved in the process of making a selection of soft plastics which I actually wanted for my fishing. There are of course any number of other types of soft plastics which you might fish in similar ways, but with what I have caught on “my” Gravity Sticks I naturally trust them implicitly. We based them around 6/0 and then 4/0 weedless hooks for the smaller size, either with or without belly-weights depending on what you need to do with them or lures which can do similar things. The 6/0 hooks also work well in the smaller sizes of Gravity Stick if that is any help - put the hook point into the front of the rattle slot which sits on the belly of the lure, it’s exactly the right place for it to come through the body of the lure.

I know I have been banging on about these cheb heads or cheb weights or whatever you want to call them, but for me they are becoming another easy to carry, use and understand string to my bow. I know these things are nothing remotely new in the freshwater fishing world especially, and I do actually think that the way they work suits some types and designs of soft plastics better than others, but as an addition to what I already tend to carry I think that a few different cheb weights and how they help me fish are an increasingly handy alternative.

Okay, so a lot of my growing love for these simple little weights is based around my obsession with the Savage Gear Slender Scoop Shad and how it seems to nail bass in all manner of different locations and conditions, but for example I really like how easy it is to unscrew the Slender Scoop Shad off the corkscrew, screw say a creature bait on, and bump it around. My heart attack got in the way of me giving these creature baits a proper go over some specific ground I envisage them having serious potential, but the season ain’t remotely over and I am going to keep playing around with them when they make sense.

I was messaging back and forth with an old fishing friend of mine who is without doubt the most switched on, thinking angler I have ever come across. Goddam he has taught me so much about saltwater fishing over the years. I would suggest that if this bloke ever got into lure fishing for bass then he would end up doing stuff none of us ever thought of doing and he’d catch a lot of serious bass. What he bangs home to me is just how many big bass he keeps seeing when he is out chasing other species, and mostly in the sort of areas I know that most bass anglers would walk straight past and/or not even think about fishing. With what he is seeing these bass feeding on, I know that some sort of creature bait based rigging is going to be important if I am ever going to get to grips with this side of bass fishing. One for the future for sure.

The other day I was messing around with swimming the Gravity Stick Paddletails lures rigged with some cheb weights, but I don’t actually think this way of rigging suits the lures that well. My feeling is that the design of certain soft plastics lend themselves to being almost “led” from the front when you are swimming them - or bumping, sink and draw etc. - whereas something like the Gravity Sticks I believe work better with added weight in the belly area. Saying that, I do sometimes load the two slots up with weight spikes and then use those SG Balls Clip On weights at the front.

Whatever the case, welcome to the rabbit hole I am currently going down! I am not sure how much more I can take of the “kick the ball away all the bloody time” style of rugby that England are currently playing, but I can’t wait for the monster game that is going to be Ireland v South Africa on Saturday night. I have told my youngest girl who will be working at a local pub on Saturday evening that I won’t be able to pick her up until after the rugby has finished! Our eldest girl is off to university tomorrow which I can’t quite believe. Where do the years actually go? You all have a good weekend.

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