So are you tired of reading, seeing and hearing about soft plastic baits yet? For the most part it seems that you are not because the retailers are selling loads of plastic baits, and the rods, braid and hooks required for this ‘new' form of fishing.
I confess I'd become a little tired of all the hype, and our show is in part to blame having first caught snapper with a plastic on film back in 2004. We've enjoyed lots of success of catching all sorts of fish with plastics, there is no denying they work and the enjoyment factor of being successful with plastics is a big part of their popularity. So it's not plastics fishing I've got a beef with, I think they're great! - it's the hype, that I think is over the top.
Look at all the photos that have been run in the fishing magazines of fish (mainly snapper and kingfish) that have a soft bait in their mouth when the photo has been taken. Sure when taken for advertising or promotional purposes this is fine as it draws a direct link between the big fish and the product. So if you are going to leave a soft bait in the mouth for a photo to show what you caught it on, why don't you leave the hooks and crushed bait in for the photo too? If every big snapper ever caught on a mullet head had the mullet head in the photo hanging from the big snapper jaws - every one would be out there using mullet heads! Writers are quick to document the days when they used soft baits and out fished their mates using conventional bait, but we don't hear about the days when things go the other way.
Then there are the claims that some of the soft bait manufacturers make, like "out fishes live bait". This is laughable, sure on occasion I have seen plastics out fish live baits, but certainly not all the time and certainly not on all species, and you certainly can't make an absolute statement like ‘soft baits out fish livebaits".
Despite my dislike of all the hype, I do really like plastics, and I do use them equally as much as I use bait. I think the hype that works so well in America is an advertising strategy we have just inherited, but I think that the popularity with Kiwi anglers is more to do with the fact that they work and it's a lot of fun. But the hype and ‘techo' aspect has turned away a good number of Kiwi fisho's so we're on a mission to demystify it all minus the hype.
The first thing we can do, and have done, is show the action - you can actually see on our underwater footage the plastic lure going into a snapper or kingfish's mouth. So if you weren't convinced before there is no denying it now. But there is one thing we can't always put on the show and that is all of the ‘how-to' steps; we always film it but it doesn't always make the final cut but you can get all that info on our website or by picking up our hype-free DVD ‘Fishing for Snapper with Plastic'.
Keep em tight
Matt Watson
