Fishing.....Fresh bait aside, I want to hear from soft plastic gurus.

How about salting a block of Mulies, then packing them into small bags? no need to refrigerate, and I think they catch more than fresh ones...
Drew

Hi Fred,
Unfortunately it is not really as simple as just tying on a soft plastic and catching fish. Ideally you really need to use braided line, with a matching graphite/composite rod, and of course that also requires the top notch reel as well with silky smooth drag, more bearings than your truck etc etc.
Like everything else though you can compromise with your rod and reel. But really do need braid for much better feel and casting.
Most soft plastics will catch fish but they must be "worked". Best go to the library or youtube and do some research into the finer points and retrieve tecniques.

Good Luck.
Peter

Not sure why you need convincing, every fishing video you watch they are using them and if they were a gimmick they would have been cleared from the tackle shop shelves by now.

I like you prefer to fish with bait but my son loves the soft plastics and he usually bags more than me.
They are a different style of fishing that you will need to adapt to but they definitely do work.

Give them a go, better to fish with a lure than not at all.

Hi Fred

I was brought up in the old days of finding fresh bait for fishing but that was some time ago. Now I rarely if ever use bait for fishing.

I have lived and fished in the northern territory and that changed me for life. Nothing like some bait in the hot humid sun up there - makes your boat stink and you want to puke at the end of the day.

I use a range of lures, soft plastics and best choice is flyfishing. All depends on what fish you are targeting. Some fish just will not touch anything but fresh bait.

In the territory the barramundi will rarely if ever take dead bait. It has to be alive or look alive like a lure. I will use a green or gold manns 10+ or bomber lure. At the end of the wet when water is running I like to use soft plastics on drift down stream with lift and drop technique. Works really well.

I find most of the bait fishing now is the bottom bouncing type of fishing which I now find a bit too tiresome. I like to hunt my fish and actively target, and cast to the fish.

What type of plastics - well big story there. Again which fish are you targeting in what type of waters with what type of fishing rod setup.

Cheers

Serendipity

G/Day Fred

I also prefer Fresh Bait to Plastics or Lures.

I have a whole range of Artificial Baits in our tackle boxes but for some reason I choose fresh bait preferably Live Bait.

Our son uses Soft Plastic and Lures and does quite well.

He fishes in our local Tallebudgera Creek just adjacent to were we live and catches a few Mangrove Jack.

I have seen him use Plastics and Live Bait at the same time and pulls in the same amount of fish.

He to carries his rods in his work vehicle and it's handy for him to rely on plastics at short notice.

I do a lot of Surf / Beach Fishing and I only use WA Pilchards as bait and get good results most times.

Yet I have had blokes fishing right next to me using Lures and they get similar results but with more effort.

Cheers

G'day Fred
I will start by saying that "I am not much of a fisherman but I do fish".
But I do know that the so called soft plastics have been around for years.
We had versions, of what are now called soft plastics, in our house in the sixties here in NQ. There were types for trolling & types for bottom fishing. The only ones I ever saw used were the trolling ones. One in particular was a large one that looked like a squid. It was regarded as being very inferior to spoons for trolling at the time.
Spoons were preferred for trolling over painted bib type lures at the time as well.
In the 60's the fishing market was very different. Fishermen were not the big consumers with the disposable incomes they now have. Remember in the 60's blokes were still using split cane rods they made themselves & hand lines were the most common rig. It was even common to see fishing line wound on a soft drink bottle for a reel.
Now we have a massive marketing campaign trying to sell products to a cashed up consumer society. All the fishing shows on TV, all the magazines & all the fishing expos are about is selling advertising that is trying to sell a product & soft plastics are the top of the list at the moment.
In the 80's & 90's it was bib lures & occasionally for pelagic it might include surface lures in the advertising campaigns.
Now it is the soft plastics turn to be the flavour of the time.
The best bait always has been & always will be live bait. But nobody sells it, so nobody advertises it.
I have heard said that the advertising industry is the largest industry in the world. It is undoubtedly what steers society & when it come to fishing there is no exception. For if soft plastics were so great why was it not that everybody was using them since the 60's. They were around that long ago.
I would say "you can catch fish with them Fred". I just doubt that they are as good as the advertising promotes.
It would also be interesting to know what the percentage of fishing gear that gets sold actually ever gets used to fish with.
I would go out on a limb & say that a majority of these fan dangle gizmos never see the water let alone catch a fish.

Fatso

There is nothing worse than being out somewhere and finding a perfect spot to fish and not having something to fish with.
When we travelled I carried soft plastics, lures, salted baits and instant bait. The were all good at some point, all depends what the fish are eating. I fished quobba with plastics and had fish after fish after fish follow the plastic in but not touch it. I changed to a blue back and white belly and got hit cast after cast. You need to match the plastic with the bait.
Other times the salted bait was what got hit and other times lures were the go.
I'm gunna give away some secrets but don't tell anyone ok....Image Could Not Be Found
The first plastic is called hollow glitter from DOA, great for salmon, atlantic salmon, trout, flathead.
The second is Nuclear chicken, good for snapper, flathead.
The third is good for trout, can't remeber the name.
The instant bait you buy at Big W and is handy as an emergency bait. It does work well, but when mixed must be used.
I don't agree with previous poster that you need top dollar gear. Plenty good fish get caught on cheap gear. My favourite rod and reel combo is one of my cheaper units. I catch plenty of fish on it and some big fish to. You do have to work a plastic though to make them swim properly.
I liked carrying salted pillies as I could sit and soak a bait if I wanted to.
Hope that helps

Hello fred G.
like you i spent the first 50 years fishing with bait, then went bass fishing in a canoe with my son he only used lures, well what an eye opener that was, Him about 30 me nil he was using surface poppers i was using worms, So i tried a lure and it didn't take long to get the hang of it, and i must say it is a more energetic way of fishing, in a good way, so now i carry a box of lures with me,and remember fred all those shiny lures on the fishing shop wall most are to catch fishermen not fish, and one last thing as always you have to be where the fish are as Rex would say and yous the lure that's right for the targeted species cheers bill.

I prefer bait; however, I wouldn't write the soft plastics off as "marketing ploy". Up until 15 years ago it was considered that Bream in the Swan river would not take any artificial. You needed fresh prawn or bloodworms. Nowdays many bream are caught in the Swan with soft and hard lures.

Fred

What type of fishing you like to do is up to you.

I have fished bait, lures (including soft plastics) and fly. Each has its strong points and weaknesses. Now days it is fly first and the odd lure session and bait about once every 2 years. On any given occasion one can out do the other.

Fishing is about enjoying so do what you want to do. I would suggest carrying a range of gear (and it doesn't have to be the top end stuff - I've proved that over the years with mid range gear as I can't afford what many of my mates can). When you don't have any bait or the fish are not biting on bait give the lures a go. It will take time to get the basics sorted (like learning any new technique) but take the time.

The other issue with lures and fly is that it is more active. You are constantly casting and retrieving (unless trolling with lures). With bait you can sit back and watch the world go by.

Just go fishing any way you want and enjoy :)

Darren

Thanks for all your informative replies fellas.

I guess our old late and great mate Slim Dusty sums it up well with this song.






Tight lines all.

Fred.

An old fisherman (83) on the Gold Coast put me onto a method for fishing for bream and flathead (and a few other species) which transcends bait, lures, plastics. He cuts fresh bread (minus crusts) into fingers which he then wraps around the hook as a dough. He gets five fingers from a slice, cuts one across the top, then four from top to bottom) The crusts, cut up are also a good burley.

IT ACTUALLY WORKS WELL AND I HAVE HAD SUCCESS FROM LAND AND BOAT ON THE GOLD COAST - NOT SURE ABOUT ANYWHERE ELSE.

My father, an equally old (and experienced) fisherman, (84) didn't believe it worked, until he got bite after bite on it. The other advantage is that if the fish aren't biting, take marg and vegemite and at least you get a feed whilst you are out there. Good for bank or boats in relatively shallow waters. . Very cheap at $2 - $3 a loaf, but it must be FRESH to be able to work into a dough. The price is why you will never hear of it at a tackle shop.

Fred, also remember the old Chinese proverb. "Time spent fishing is not deducted from one's lifespan."

Ihave been fishing soft plastics a lot in the past 10 years. But if you are inland make sure you also take hard body lures and spinner baits. I fish the dams in SE Qld a fair bit. Hard body and spinner baits are more effective on bass in my opinion. Soft and hard both work well on dam barra. For cod I use mainly spinner baits or hard body.

In the salt water estuaries you will find the softies very good for all species but particularly effective for flathead.

One thing is for sure, you have to look past the hype and the marketing surrounding soft plastics, and to a certain extent the outward appearance and your own preconceptions.

The moulded jig head with the lead on the hook predates soft plastics, it is therefor neither esential to use jigheads with soft plastics nor consider the jig heads for exclusive use with soft plastics.

There is no necessity to use, braid, spinnreels or stiff rods with soft plastics.
The braid, the stiff rod and the spin reel have been combined with soft plastics to make a certain style of fishing.......you don't have to do it that way.

You can stick a soft plastic blood worm approximation, on the standard whiting rig with ya old 4 inch alvey, with 6 LB mono and a floppy rod, and do just as well as you would with real dead worms, fishing the same style as they have for decades.......the soft plastic worms will probaly last longer.

Dont be put off by the "plastic" word..some are plastic as we understand them, but these days the majority are more related to fish flavoured TOFU than your garden hose.

All the tackle and methods marketed with soft plastics work with dead baits and some of the hard lures, and lots of the old methods and tackle will work just fine with soft plastics of some sort.

One thing is for certain, soft plastics are definitely convienient and portable.

There is even an account of one blokes MRS sticking on a lolly snake on a jig head as a joke, and doing better than her man that was fishing with conventional soft plastics.

Fish will bite on the darndest things......if it looks like something a fish would bite on and it smells fishy...its prably as good as anything.

cheers

I can't guarantee soft plastics, but hard bodied lures definitely work, it's just a matter of trying different lures in different locations.

In the estuary I troll small lures maybe 25mm long, 20metres behind the boat at walking pace for whiting, bream, flathead, taylor, trevally ect. I use cheap rods with 6 lb line.

I have used larger lures for barramundi and steel type lures for tailor and flathead in the surf.

Regards
Geoff

Thanks for all your contributions to this discussion fellas. Enjoyed them immensely just like Alan mentions above.

Josh, thanks for the videos. The look on your daughters face pulling in that flattie is priceless.

I think we need more fishing yarns on here.

Cheerio.

Fred.

Fred, there is no doubt that soft plastics fishing can be very effective. My wife and I have caught hundreds of fish over the years on plastics and nowadays almost exclusively fish with them all over the country. In terms of what you said about expensive lures verses a 2 bob pack of pillies I would have to disagree. The price of pillies is about $3 to $8 pack depending where you are. Most people would soak a few baits and at the end of the session throw the rest of the pack in the water after they are defrosted they are not much good to refreeze and use again unless you are fishing for toadfish and crabs. A pack of 8 plastics costs about $8 and jigheads about $1 each. One pack of plastics will last me anywhere from a day if the fish are toothy, like tailor/pike/mackerel etc to many months if I am using them in muddy and sandy bottomed rivers/estuaries/beaches for bream and flathead etc. It is not uncommon to catch up to 20 fish on 1 lure before you need to change it if the fish are not toothy. If you catch nothing you pop it back in the juice in the bag and use it tomorrow. I have no doubt some of our packets of plastics have caught over a hundred fish as on some beaches you can get 40 salmon in a morning on 2 or 3 plastics. Not bad for $8. I could never catch so many fish on a pack of pillies and it would cost me a fortune. I realise I do a lot of fishing and you maybe not so much, but the plastics will not go off if you buy the right brands and you can use them again and again. It really is addictive once you start having sucess, but it does require practise and more practise. The better you get at your retrieves and picking the correct weight jighead for the conditions, the more sucess you will have. A general rule to pick jighead weights is to sink about 1m/second. In 5m of water it should hit the bottom in 5 secs. Sometimes you want lighter than that for example Bream like a very slow sink, but rarely heavier. A fast action graphite rod and light braid line will DEFINATELY make it easier for 90% of plastics fishing as you need to "feel" the lure as you hop it along. I have taught many people to fish plastics and they have all found it much easier with this type of rod. As said earlier there are a few plastics that don't require much or any action (like worms) that can be worked on your standard floppy fibreglass rod and mono but you will not have sucess with most plastics with this type of rod. If fishing with braid always run a rod length of mono line or leader material from the end of the braid to the lure for abrasion resistance and so the fish can't see the line. The standard flick,flick,pause........flick,flick,pause....retrieve is the easiest one to start out with and works with a lot of different fish and a lot of different plastics. Good Luck. Luke.