It’s not every day that you get to launch a comprehensive range of hard-bodied lures and semi-soft topwaters onto the Australian market, knowing that each lure will retail for $10 or less, yet still be an excellent fish catcher, with a classy finish and better-than-average hardware. However, that’s what I’m happy to say I’ve been able to do with my new STARLO PRO Lures range, designed and selected by me exclusively for the BCF chain of stores here in Australia. Now, I realise from past comments here and elsewhere that not every Aussie angler is necessarily a huge fan of BCF. There’s no doubt that the big chains (including BCF) have led to the demise of some small independent tackle stores, just as the competition from Coles and Woolworths has resulted in a reduction in numbers of local grocery outlets, butcher shops and so on. Nonetheless, for better or worse, I suspect there’s a certain inevitability to this sort of evolution in the world of retail. It’s also true that the better independents (in all fields, including fishing tackle) will not only survive but thrive in the face of such competition. They achieve this by providing the sort of expert advice, individualised customer service and “value adding” that most chains simply can’t or won’t offer. Meanwhile, BCF and their ilk do provide an excellent service to a great many customers, employ a heap of Aussie workers in the process, and don’t, in my experience, indulge in the sort of “crazy, crazy, crazy!” unsustainable discounting that could damage the industry. So, I’m more than happy to be involved with sourcing and designing exclusive lines of tackle for them, just as I have on occasion for other companies.         Anyway, if you’d like...

In my last two blogs in this series I’ve been exploring the exciting subject of customizing your soft plastic lures to alter their actions, colours and sink rates in order to better suit specific applications, fishing scenarios and target species. As I explained in both of those blogs, this entire subject area of customizing plastics is a branch of tackle tinkering that far too few Aussie anglers appear willing to experiment with. Many seem to believe that these lures must be used in exactly the form supplied for sale by the manufacturer. But as we’ve been discovering, that’s not the case at all! In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Unlike most hard-bodied offerings, softies lend themselves extremely well to individual input and fine tuning from the angler, allowing you to clearly stamp your own personal identity and fishing preferences on the lures you use. In the first blog on Customising Soft Plastics, I focused on tweaking colours and patterns using various dyes and marker pens to achieve specific results, whether attempting to “match the hatch”, suit the environment, stand out from the pack or simply emulate a successful hard-bodied lure finish. Last time around, in Part 2, we pulled out the scissors, razor blades and hobby knives and started playing with the actual shape, bulk and profile of these versatile lures to adjust their actions, overall sizes and sink rates. This time, I want to look at the intriguing subject of lure hardness and its impact on action, “mouth feel” and durability. So, let’s kick off by tackling the subject of relative hardness in soft lure materials: TO READ THE REST OF THIS BLOG & OTHERS IN THE SERIES, CLICK...