Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass Amazing the variety of soft plastic fish attack

The only thing where color matters IMO is contrast to a background, whether sky, sideways in the water column or bottom.
I could show you many pictures of many fish caught on many colors in different waters - many on the same day and in the same water.

Today I poured clear mini-sticks and I guarantee they will catch fish especially now that the water is cooling and getting clearer. That's pretty much the minimum visual contrast needed for a fish to take interest and the lure's action does its stuff.

Each lure I make will work in just a few colors or one color and I don't need to carry more, but lure action and shape are priorities ; color may enhance both.

mini-stick? clear?

Clear lures in clear water makes good sense to me. The fish can sense movement via lateral line, but have a harder time seeing it. Thus, they are probably slower to identify it as a fake. Even if caught, they will likely not condition as rapidly to avoid a lure they never see clearly.

When it comes to clear plastic lures, whether a clear plastic crankbait or soft plastic lure, there is no such thing as no color in water. It's not like looking through a pane of glass which is totally transparent, flat and thin.

Lures are thick, bent and curved resulting in whatever light passing through clear plastic to outline whatever background color is behind, beneath or above them resulting in a three-dimensional colored object fish easily see regardless water clarity. Here are two examples:



As regards that statement, I have an opinion many may disagree with. I've caught fish casting pretty much ever lure design ever made and find more every year when I make lures of varied designs. Based on thousands of observations, here is my simple explanation of why fish strike lures:

Fish sense prey and lures. Both must be of a certain size for them to attack. The action of prey is natural and defined for that species; the action nor the appearance of lures need be natural or realistic copies of anything in nature.

But lures must meet certain requirements live prey don't (except size) in order to provoke a fish to strike.Convincing fish that a lure is a real animal is a human assumption why fish strike lures but with many glaring exceptions. Just the variety of lures presented above is enough proof fish don't think but simply react when certain lure parameters are in place.

Coincidental life imitations may happen, but fish simply react because lure size and action, as well as presentation are precise and within a range. When choosing lures, they are my only considerations.
This is a theory anyone can prove for themselves.

See my above reply for examples of a wacky rig stick, curl tails, thin straight tails and front-rigged mini-sticks/

There is a simple way to prevent soft plastics from sliding down jig hooks after fish have been caught. I call it a wire grub-grip . Believe me, once you attach the wire in less than 2 minutes per jig, you'll prefer collarless jigs which damage the lure when changing it. BTW super glue is just a bad to prevent plastics from sliding down.

Very few have used the idea posted on many forums. When in place it, looks like the L-shaped wire stuck in the clear plastic. And NO, the wire never spooks fish and can be used on any size jig.
Step-by-step photos of the process.

The Senko - a salted soft plastic - was the first lure wacky rigged because of the softness of the plastic and the weight of the lure. A bare hook is inserted halfway into the body and when cast, allowed to sink to the bottom. The tapered ends of the stick-worm wobble all the way. The Senko is not Texas rigged which would defeat the purpose of the design.

A few years ago I came up with the idea of making micro-stick hybrid shapes and attach them to very light ball-head jigs inserted in the middle.

IMGUR should NOT be the source for photo links. When I add photos to it, it moves all photos down and the links are no longer valid.

I've never had that happen. Lets see if they changed something.

This one was put on imgur about 2 weeks ago.


I pasted the above image link in this reply from imgur then went and added the following picture to imgur, grabbed a link and put it here. If what you are saying is correct, then the above picture shouldn't show up?

I've lost more IMGUR photos in forum posts than I care to remember. Nice when I can drag jpeg images into posts like on Pondboss. Other forums let you open photos stored on your PC and include them in the post wherever you want them - like in between paragraphs.

The only thing I use IMGUR for is to go to the pages of photos I want to use, save as on my desktop and then transfer them into the post. Saves looking through hundreds of photos on my PC for what I need.

I like the wire idea!!! What's the smallest size jig head that it will work with (weight wise)?

senkosam, can you explain how you drag and drop photos into your posts? I can't do that and we face issues with having to resize photos if we are using the photo upload tool which is very difficult. Are you talking about dragging somehow on a desktop when creating a post? Love to know your tips. I too dislike using photo hosting forums for many reasons, mainly because they have your pictures hostage and also because nothing is truly free, or at least free for very long.

CC: When I use IMGUR's BBC code (copy & paste), the image is full size on PB like this one.


I pre-size, add text, auto enhancement and other stuff via Arc Soft Canon Photo Studio 5 Photo Editing. I always check the size of a photo because many times it needs to be reduced by 30 - 60 % to avoid posting too large a picture.

Because of IMGUR storage problem and posting on forums, I'm forced to use the Attachment Manager under post options link.

You drag the photo from your desk top to the box with the down arrow and can add up to ten photos in total at one time. Of course the reader of the post has to tap the photo for visual enlargement and no photo can be inserted just anywhere. All photos are one the bottom of the post.

(BTW, no mold was used to create the lures shown. A shiny floor tile, box cutter blade, microwave, pyrex cup, hot plastisol and Spike-It dye pen produced them - along with a bit of imagination. No fish is immune from their charms.)

I'd like to see that process. Any chance you would make a video of making your plastics for us to see?

A lighter is difficult to use while trying to slightly melt the two ends to be joined. A candle used to melt one side and then the other allows the ends to be joined and the joined end to cool in less than 4 seconds.

If I don't have a soldering iron handy, I can still use the mod minus smoothing the seam. For large diameters, I roll the seam over the flame to smooth it.

Some of my best memories as a kid are of pouring worms with my father and brother!

A bass fishing friend in Texas bequeathed my father all of his gear.

There was a melting pot for the plastic base and then we added softener and color. It had a lever type handle on the side, and even 7 y.o. boys could perform a perfect pour. He gave us lots of slightly flexible plastic molds of worms of various lengths and configurations, twin-tailed beetle spin bodies, crayfish, etc. After the plastic cooled, you just flexed the mold and everything came out perfectly!

We would pour the plastic a little tougher in the spring when the bass would attack anything. For summer fishing, we would use very soft pours that might tear after one strong hook set. However, they kept the bass on the lure long enough for youngsters to feel the fish and set the hook.

Great times!

(Actually, typing this up now makes me realize that we were given several hundreds of dollars worth of gear!)

The hybrid method was explained, but I'm not sure if you need a video of how to make the spoonminnow. Anyway:
1. you need plastisol (one qt. will make 1,000 lures)
2. pyrex cup
3. microwave to get the plastic hot - around 200 degrees or liquid enough to pour
4. if you don't have dye colors, Spike It liquid or pens will add color to clear plastic
5. shiny floor tile or other glass surface

1.Heat the plastic (old lures won't cuto it).
2.Tip the glassy surface at a small angle so the pour leaves a thin film
3.Use a blade to cut any shape you want
4.Hold the shape by the tail and dip the part that will be the body and let cool a few seconds.Repeat as many times needed until the body thickness is what you want..
5. dip the lure in Spike-It or other soft plastic lure dye; use the pen to create patterns

Now you have the most fish-catching lure ever made - bar none!!!!! All fish species will strike it and hard! Straight thin-tails have an incredible subtle action that drives fish nuts!

As you can see, with just a little imagination the process can be used to make other shapes that can be added to the bodies of lures you own using the candle to join them.

Interesting! Thanks for the description. I might or might not fully understand the process, but I think I've got it!