Hogy Hand Poured Lures

Attractor or Imitator?
The Soft Plastic Advantage

By Gene Bourque

The best fishermen are astute observers of nature and use what they’ve learned from that observation to catch more fish. Sure, now and then you’ll see someone get lucky and just begin tossing whatever happens to be on the end of their line and catch some fish, but more often than not the angler who’s spent time thinking about what the fish are eating based on careful observation and experience is far more successful. To the savvy fisherman, the question of trying imitate as precisely as possible what baits are available versus just trying to get his quarry’s attention in the first place is always one of the biggest conundrums. If everything works out, he’ll manage to do both. This is one of the many reasons soft plastic baits are such a good choice – and so effective.

Put another way, a lure that is very splashy and highly visible may call in fish that are on the prowl, at least for a look. That lure may be a killer in a situation where fish are feeding aggressively in a school and competition is tight for any available food items. But keep in mind that most baitfish spend their lives trying not to be eaten. Calling attention to yourself is usually fatal. That may be why splashy, flashy lures tend to take smaller, more aggressive fish most of the time. There are exceptions of course – bluefish, certain offshore species, and in freshwater, fish like pike and pickerel will readily fall for lures that do not resemble anything in the natural world and are designed to fished aggressively. But what about big, mature trophy largemouth, striped bass, muskies, snook, or many other gamefish that depend on experience to determine what’s safe to eat and what isn’t? Although there are no “givens” in fishing, you can be sure that most of the time they will not fall for something radically out of the ordinary, no matter how tempting it may be to their smaller, less experienced brethren. If you care more about quality than quantity in your fishing, it’s vital to keep this in mind.

So we have to consider the value of imitation. But first that idea has to be quantified. What makes a good imitator? Is it exact replication in color? Size? Movement? Even more subtle factors like sound and scent? Probably some combination of all these things, and you can find some heated debates in the fishing world (both by anglers and manufacturers!) and the relative merits of each. Here’s my opinion and I know some who read this will disagree. However, I’ll try to back up what I’m saying.

First off, just looking like a certain bait is not enough. The lure industry is littered with examples of exact replications that were dismal failures. I believe the reason so many of these lures didn’t catch was that they just didn’t move through the water like the bait they were intended to imitate. That’s what it really comes down to: movement. Big fish don’t like surprises! This is one of the main reasons soft plastics are so productive. They move through water with a sinuous, natural motion, and the angler has the option to adapt that action with rod movement and retrieve speed depending upon water depth, current, and water temperature (which can be a huge component in the puzzle – very cold or very warm temperatures will affect the aggressiveness of all fish). Soft plastics just plain look good, no matter what the conditions. Sure, it’s up to the fisherman to experiment a bit to find the right retrieve speed and how much imparted action is called for, but the point is, you can do that easily with a soft plastic lure. With a hard bait that’s designed to swim with one particular action, that’s all but impossible.

The next most important aspect in my opinion is size, or profile of the artificial. The old fishing adage that goes something like, “big baits for big fish” is true, more often than not. I’ve caught some decent stripers on very small artificials when the fish were feeding on small sand eels or during a worm spawn but these events were by far the exception. There are far more examples of large artificials taking trophy fish, which is why we offer our Hogys in sizes ranging from 7 all the way up to 18 inches in length. The idea is to make a big, wary barging-size fish think it’s worth the energy expenditure to capture that meal.

Last on my list of important factors in imitating a bait is color, or the “look” of the bait. Lure manufacturers know that it’s just about as important to catch the fisherman as it is that their lures catch fish and often design lures with that in mind. Rather than use something that features an exact replication of every scale on a baitfish, I’d rather use something that looks enough like a wider range of baitfish because I believe that ups my chances of imitating what may be in the water at any given time. Shades and hues are much more important as they relate to time of day (or night), clarity of the water, and whether it is sunny or overcast, in my opinion. If a certain type of bait is overwhelming prevalent I will certainly select a color that is close to the natural, but that’s about as far as I’ll go with matching color. Most of the time in both fresh and salt water there are a wide range of forage items for the fish and I want to offer them something that is appropriate in a general way, taking into account as many factors as I can identify.

So there you have it. Soft plastic baits attract the attention of big fish because they swim in a natural manner, no matter how the angler chooses to work them. And that natural action is vital is you want a big, cautious fish that’s seen it all to close the deal. Attractor AND imitator – that’s what you have when you fish a big, soft plastic bait for trophies.

Fish Big. Fish a Hogy!