Wow these lures look good in the water when rigged like this

Before I start, what the hell has happened to summer? It didn’t stop raining from the time I left my friend’s house about an hour from the ferry in Ireland on Saturday morning until later on in the evening when I was back home. When I hit the M5 around Bristol and started heading south, those were some of the worst driving conditions I can remember for a while - and it’s July! I always love my time in Ireland, but as ever it’s so good to be back home, and as I type this my youngest girl is about an hour out from Heathrow at the end of her mammoth journey back from New Zealand and we will see her this evening………..

You might have got an inkling that I am seriously in love with the Savage Gear Slender Scoop Shad, but as ever I will never be able to convince the conspiracy theorists that it’s not some kind of evil corporation’s marketing ploy! From a purely business point of view it still sort of amazes me that nobody within Savage Gear thought to alert me to the fact these new paddletails were due on the market and perhaps they might work for bass. I saw the promo video like any other angler might, then I waited patiently for them to come into stock - and then landed my first ever February bass on one the first time I fished with them. I have loved them ever since because they do something different to my Gravity Stick Paddletails which I also don’t go out bass fishing without. Sometimes this seems to make all the difference, see this blog post here for example.

I have mostly tended to fish both the 13cm and 15cm versions of the Slender Scoop Shad rigged on one of our 6/0 belly-weight weedless hooks that we did for the original Gravity Stick soft plastics (above). If there was a 5/0 version of this hook I reckon it would be the perfect fit for the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad, but the 6/0 fits fine and the tough nature of the soft plastic easily moves out of the way and exposes the hook point when a bass hits. I can’t recall any noticeable damage to any of my Slender Scoop Shads after a few fish and I rather like this because these are not exactly cheap paddletails.

I have also played around with rigging the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad on a Savage Gear Ball Jighead 5/0 as you can see above, but I am not convinced that the slightly deeper body design allows for enough hookpoint room to expose when a fish hits. Rigging them conventionally on one of these J-hook design of jig heads as per below obviously negates this potential problem, but of course you now lose the less snagability aspect.

I have also played around with rigging them as per the photo above - SG Balls Clip On weight and one of the 6/0 weedless hooks from the original Gravity Sticks - and they seem to work well like this. To be honest though I have mostly defaulted to the 6/0 belly-weight weedless hook rigging, and then gone to one of the Berkley Fusion19 Weight Swimbait Hooks when I need a heavier belly-weight for bouncier conditions etc. (as per the photo below, Berkley Fusion19 Weight Swimbait Hook 7/0 11g on a 15cm Slender Scoop Shad).

A while ago I got a call from John Quinlan who I do this guiding work with in Ireland. He had found some weedless swim-type jig heads and started using them on the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad to good effect straight away. Our lads got some bass on these setups when I was over there - see the photo below - but it has become apparent that the hook on these jig heads needs to be larger to ensure better hookup ratios. The weight of the actual jig head seems to be a good balance between castability and swimming the lures through and over very shallow, rough ground, but what had really pricked John’s interest was how good the Slender Scoop Shad looks on a straight retrieve when rigged like this.

It has always looked good to me anyway, indeed I still giggle a bit at how a few experts have told me that good “grip” and a very strong action on a soft plastic paddletail comes from a more acute angle between lure body and (paddle)tail - yet these Slender Scoop Shads have hardly any angle between body and tail and the action on them is incredibly intense AND they grip bouncy seas and the backs of dumping waves really well. I am working on the assumption here that proper lure designers know a bit more than internet fishing experts, but hey ho.

So when John was telling me about the weedless jig heads he had found, I did what I often do and asked a few questions on my Facebook page. I am always so grateful that a lot of anglers take the time to engage with me, and it led me to the excellent Mr. Fish website and these rather good looking Xorus Texas Power jig heads which you can see above. I bought a few different jig head weights and hook sizes, and I really like the 4/0 or 5/0 version on the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad and then the 5/0 version on the larger 15cm Slender Scoop Shad (as per the photo above). I have yet to play around much with the heavier 15g ones I bought, but the 7g versions get the lures out fine and I like the weight and jig head design for swimming and bumping the lures around over shallow ground.

I managed a very quick fishing session after the first group left and before the second lot arrived. I had a big swirl but no hit on the rather outstanding SG Slap Walker 125 (20g, 12.5cm) surface lure which is spending more and more time in my lure boxes, but what I really wanted to do was play around a bit with these Xorus Texas Power jig heads and the Slender Scoop Shads. The ground was properly shallow and rough and jagged and the lures swam perfectly. Without a doubt there is more of an exaggerated rolling action when these soft plastics are rigged like this. I am not about to say that it’s better than when rigged on the 6/0 belly-weight weedless hooks I have been using and will continue to use, rather that the increased roll is very noticeable and I wonder if that might help sometimes……………..

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