A mate of mine was at Motiti Is on Thursday & decided to chuck a soft plastic in the water.
The berley trail was only about 3 mins old & his first cast was about 50mtrs behind the boat. Obviously the berley had no influence.
Well, the upshot was a good pannie on the first cast!
He was using lightweight trout spinning gear with 14lb braid so the fight was quite prolonged.
He thought it was bluddy good fun so continued with the plastics.
His mate was using a standard strayline outfit & was soon 8 fish in arrears!
The turning point was as darkness fell, then the whole squid outfit started to perform.
This little episode made me stop & think---plastics-yeah--I want to try them!
C2C mag ran a story in issue 25. I've now read it 3 times!
I'm keen to know if anyone has tried the new "GULP" models that were mentioned in the mag story & if they are available in local stores.
Hello Uncle Stranger, I currently have some of the Gulp crabs out being tested. I hope they will crack the flounder problem. They look like the real thing. Smell like sh.t though...
Much more to follow on the subject. Pure Fishing have some experts over from Aussie next month and they will be talking at the OBC in Auckland I believe. I will be fishing with them to learn more and will report back what we find.
Gac, gurnard are a sucker for them. One of my writers absolutely swears by it. I've seen his results...
The GULP soft baits are indeed very effective, not just as whole soft baits, but even as cut baits! Chop them up into smaller pieces like you would with a big pilchard and they work just as well I have found.
The guys at Purefishing let me use some up in the tropics, I had them when we were fishing for "Mu" or sweetlip, in the lagoon at aitutaki, and the GULP baits worked just as well as the real thing. In fact, I was catching more than everyone else, but whether that was due to baits or luck, who can say, but all the time while Billy Ho was filming, I was pulling in one fish after the next on my fake baits, it was cool.
And yes, GULP is biodegradable. I have always been a little concerned about this with soft plastics, wondering if it was gonna poison fish or whatever, but apparently GULP is made outa some thing like tofu or somethnig (I dunno, something wierd like that anyhow)
I haven't had a chance to use the stuff here in NZ yet, but hopefully in the middle of the month I'll be at the ranfurly, and I'll give it a go there too.
But anyhow, GULP does work! And as a cut bait no less. I was impressed.
cheers, Stu.
I can't recall where I've read about it but it also pays to store your GULP plastics away from your other plastic lures as they will cause the latter to degrade as well.
I have caught a gurnard from shore using a red twin tail soft plastic with a white 7.5gm jig head. I wasn't sure if it was a fluke but it was caught on a slow lift and drop retrieve.
I have also used soft plastics in kahawai workups too. One would have thought the kahawai would nail them on whatever retrieve rate you do but I found that a slow to medium retrieve worked best in that situation. My theory is that with a quicker retrieve, the fish would be hitting the tail of the lure and not have a chance to get a hook up.
I also found that when using a spinning reel, I would get seriously twisted line. I now connect a small swivel from mainline to lure. I think this may degrade the bite rate somewhat so am looking for a baitcast reel for this style of fishing to reduce the line twist and therefore avoid using swivels.
Gac, do you use a baitcast reel with soft plastics?
Mmm, interesting ideas there.
Wonder how the GULP stuff would go as cut baits on Tarakihi rigs.
Any thoughts c2c, Capt.As?
Get back to me on that one
Any idea when the GULP models will be available to us mere mortals?
I'm dead keen to try them out.
Following on from the discussion on this topic, I decided to have a tutu to see if I could make something that would look more like whitebait & be tougher than the commercial ones available.
These are my first attempts.
The photo is a bit misleading as the tails are much whiter than shown.
The two tails at the top have a thin nylon "strengthener" built in.
I think it wouldn't be too difficult to incorporate eyes & holographic paper,but that will have to wait for another day
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