Customising Soft Plastics #2: Trimming
It’s time to continues our look at customising your soft plastic lures with an examination of easy ways in which the size, profile, sink rates and actions of these great lures can be tweaked and manipulated via some simple cutting and shaping:
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Sometimes modifying your soft plastics will boost your catches!
In my last blog about customising soft plastics I explained that this is an avenue of tackle tinkering that too few anglers seem willing to explore. Many seem to assume that these lures must be used in exactly the form they were originally purchased in. Trust me, that’s certainly not the case!
I theorized that this hands-off approach to tweaking plastics is most likely a hangover from our hard-bodied luring days. Beyond possibly upgrading some hooks and rings, very few anglers significantly modify their hard lures. But soft plastics are much easier to customise than hard lures, and doing so can produce some surprising results. The big secret is not to be afraid to give it a go!
Last time round I focused on “blinging” your plastics by using various dyes and marker pens to alter or enhance their colours and patterns. This time I want to take customising one step further and actually get into playing with the shapes, sizes, profiles, sink rates and actions of our soft plastics. To do this, all you really need is a sense of adventure and a pair of sharp scissors.
Making that first step of actually taking the scissors or craft blade to your plastic tails is perhaps the biggest leap of faith required to get into customizing soft plastics. After that, it gets much easier.
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Awesome write up Starlo! the extent that my plastic modifications was to simply cut vertically up the tail to enhance the tail action of a squidgy fish at slower speeds…. however after reading that, I now know that I can effectivley turn a squidgy fish into a slender “flick bait” style of plastic and still have the benefit of a beating paddle tail! the lizards around Newcastle are not going to know what hit em! thanks Starlo I’ll let you know how I go!
cheers James
Exactly, James! It opens up all sorts of possibilities. Definitely keep us posted on your results…
I read onece in a fishing mag that when your soft plastic has been torn and shredded you can weld the plastic back together with iether a naked flame or a butter knife heated up at the end with a match. It works realy well to fix tears along the back made by the plastic being pulled off the hook.
I have used this method to fix otherwise unusable plastics.
James Fair
Yep, hot blade workswell to “weld” torn plastics. You can use Super Glue, too.
I’ve used super glue before and found when it dries it goes very hard and can sometimes distort a tail or give it an unnatural feel and action. I’ve heard of a product called ‘Mend-it’ which is supposed to fix tails and retain their rubberyness. Have you ever tried this stuff Steve?
No I haven’t. Be interested to hear how it goes. I’ve also heard that Tarzan’s Grip works pretty well!
Been thinning squidgee wriglers for a couple of years now. Realy works a treat.
Good stuff, George!
Cheers,
Starlo