Over the course of a year, I get to talk to a lot of soft plastics fishers from around the country. Some I meet at seminars and shows. Others I chat with via the various pages on Facebook that I run or help to administer (especially the StarloFishing, Fishingscool and Squidgy Soft Plastics pages), or through my blogs here at www.starlofishing.me Still others send their letters or emails to me via the magazines I write for. However, no matter what the source of the enquiry, one question (or variations of it) dominates the calls for advice that I receive. Typically, that query begins with the words: “What’s the best soft plastic for…?” The rest of that sentence almost always contains a species of fish and a precise location: What’s the best soft plastic for bream in the Patterson Lakes? What’s the best soft plastic for trout in the Murrumbidgee River? What’s the best soft plastic for flathead on the Gold Coast? What’s the best soft plastic for yellowbelly in the Murray? What’s the best soft plastic for redfin in Lake Eildon? What’s the best for barra in the Daly? And so on… I can’t help but smile at the geographic specificity of these well-meaning questions. Anglers clearly have their favourite fishing spots and they seem to expect that the fish they chase in these beloved haunts will behave just a little differently to those living down the road, around the bend or across the border. Generally speaking, this is not the case. I’ve caught redfin perch in the New England rivers of north western NSW, and also in the very “old England” rivers around the historical university city of Cambridge, in Great Britain (where they’re simply known as perch). Rather unsurprisingly, these fish looked...