Over the last few seasons my use of soft plastics on golden perch has increased tenfold. They take shape in a number of forms, from the ever reliable Jackall Mask Vibe and its subsequent imitations, right through to your standard jig head mounted shad or wriggler.
We have found them to be at their most potent when the fish are just mouthing or swiping at the lure. When yellowbelly are in a particularly finicky mood they can be very quick to throw any lure that doesn’t feel right.
When we start to regularly miss these fish, a simple change to a slow fished, soft presentation has, on a number of occasions, bolstered our hook up rate. The realistic composition of the lure allows the wary perch to get a longer feel of the lure, without sensing the alien nature of hard plastic.
We usually use any repeated missed strikes, poor hook ups or prolonged fishless stretches as catalysts to switch over to a softer presentation. On one such occasion, whilst attempting to arrest the slide of a slow day’s fishing at the local impoundment, Hilly blitzed the boat when he switched to a Jackall HD Shad.
Amazingly, after a few searching retrieves the softy was torn to shreds three times in as many casts. Unfortunately it was the only lure of its type in his box, and subsequently the boat, as it was left over from a trout fishing trip. In the end we resorted to stripping our cod spinnerbaits bare, rigging a series of oversized Squidgy plastics, on 20 gram jig heads. While the action wasn’t as frenetic as on the original yellow HD Shad, the Squidgy still managed to out fish all hard presentations for the rest of the session.
Since that eye-opening trip we have armed ourselves with an arsenal of different soft plastic options, for when the action begins to wane or the fish aren’t fully committing to the hard shelled lures. This softer, almost finesse approach, is especially productive towards the end of Spring when the resident perch populations become ‘rattle shy’, after being bombarded by an army of rattling bullets all season long.