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The marriage of kayak fishing and soft plastic lures

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Tuesday, 01 May 2007

Why soft plastic lures are a kayak fisherman's best friend

A few of my favourite things

When I was first introduced to soft plastic lures, I laughed at what I perceived to my friend’s foolish and compulsive spending. At the time I figured that not only would this be the first I’d see of them, it would probably also be the last. How wrong I turned out to be.

It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I started going on hiking / fishing trips regularly that my attention was again drawn to these simple little soft plastic lures. Because I was walking so far (up to 25km, usually in fairly challenging environments) with a heavy pack on my back, it was always in my best interests to reduce size and weight wherever possible. Carrying bait was never really an option – especially in the warmer months of the year.

Weighing up my options (literally) I figured that carrying a small packet of plastics and just a few jig heads, I should be good to go for at least a couple of days. All of the other alternatives were either heavier or more awkward, so it just made sense to give them a chance. Under the advice of a friend who was working for The Compleat Angler at the time, I picked up some 2” Finn-S minnow shads, some small jig heads to match and away I went.

The destination was Wilson’s Prom – Refuge Cove to be exact. It was at the rocks close by to Refuge (coming from Sealers Cove) that I decided to stop walking and wet a line. I found a nice safe perch on the edge of a rock, put my pack rod together, tied on a placcy and proceeded to cast.

I fumbled the bail arm, which opened unexpectedly, allowing the line to spool free and the lure to drop into the waters edge below. Imagine my surprise when a mere nano-second later the lure was swiftly gulped by a great big Blue-throat wrasse. The fish must have been hiding under the rock and when that little soft plastic lure plopped in front of him, he simply couldn’t resist. That poor little placcy was gobbled without hesitation. It was a moment I’ll never forget. It was the moment I changed as a fisherman forever.

For several reasons, my plastic-fantastic love affair only strengthened when I discovered the sport of kayak fishing a year or so later. For one, my first “fishing kayak” was actually an inflatable, and for that reason I wanted to avoid treble hooks. And the convenience factor advantages of soft plastics compared to bait was a no-brainer from the start. They’re easy to carry, rig and use – all good attributes for kayak fishing tackle.

10 fish, 1 single solitary soft plastic

Setting aside the inevitable debate about whether soft plastics can out fish bait for a moment, the points I just raised aren’t minor ones. The more one does it, the more a kayak fisherman will appreciate the benefits of convenience. There isn’t a whole lot of storage space on most yaks after all, nor is there much deck space to play with. The less small and fiddly bits of tackle you have lying around, the better. Depending on the durability of the placcy used (they vary a lot), sometimes only one or two lures are needed. I caught all the fish in the photo above with a single soft plastic!

That said, it can pay to have a good assortment of placcys on hand and fortunately it’s not much of a stretch to carry a nice variety. By having a collection of various lures on hand you can fish by trial and error, experimenting with different types until you find out what they’re biting on. Just because they’re not biting on one thing doesn’t mean they’re not interested in something else. But there’s a lot more effort and (in the end) expense in arming yourself with a variety of flesh baits than there is in using soft plastics instead. And you just might be surprised at how many, and what types of fish they can catch.

Indeed, contrary to my first impressions, soft plastics really are surprisingly effective – especially from a drifting kayak. Do they out fish flesh baits? In my experience, not always, no. Oftentimes they do, however and in some situations will catch fish when baits otherwise go untouched. I’ve seen that happen many times.

I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim that soft plastics are a more effective means of catching fish, but I will go on record for saying that not only are they highly effective, they’re also very easy to use and a cinch to manage. That very quality is the main reason they lend themselves to kayak fishing so much.

As simple as soft plastics are, however, there are a few tricks and techniques worth knowing. I’ll go into some of these in a follow up article in the near future.