A quick glance at your bank account will remind you that the price of everything is on the rise, fishing gear included. With a tighter budget, it’s a good idea to make the most of every dollar you put into fishing.
When it comes to soft plastics, many of these baits are now a dollar apiece — or more. Figuring out some ways to stretch the lifespan of your plastics will help you get more bites per dollar. Here are some tips we’ve found helpful, often requiring nothing more than ordinary household items.
Super Glue
A drop of super glue is a great way to secure your soft plastic bait to a hook or bait keeper, ensuring it lasts longer. This works great with trailers on spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, vibrating jigs, swim jigs, football jigs, and other baits.
Just start your trailer up onto the hook, then add a drop of super glue to the bait keeper just before sliding the bait into position. You’ll want to do all of this quickly, as super glue dries super fast. And be careful not to get it on your fingers, as it will glue them together fast, too.
Toothpicks
You can also use toothpicks to secure your bait. After you slide the head of a worm up over the eye of a hook, carefully poke the tip of the toothpick through the soft plastic and the hook’s eye, then trim off the excess.
I’ve found that some Nichols Lures baits also have holes in their bait keepers, allowing you to push a toothpick through and cut it off to better secure trailers.
Different Material
It’s worth considering a different type of material entirely. Companies like Z-Man, Rapala, and Strike King make some bait using extremely stretchy and durable materials, like Z-Man’s ElaZtech. These baits are nearly indestructible and can outlast traditional soft plastics 10 to 1.
But they don’t work for everything. Their stretchy nature means you can’t use these baits with screwlocks. And you have to be careful when rigging them weedless, as the hook can have a hard time breaking out of the material. For exposed hook techniques like Ned rigs and jighead swimbaits, however, these baits are great. And they make really good trailers, too.
Wire
I’ve used a small wire to secure soft plastics made of this stretchier material. With the Nichols baits, I can run a Z-Man swimbait up on the bait keeper and then run the wire through the plastic and the hole, the same way I would a toothpick. But this way, I can bring the wire all the way through and back around to tie it together.
Where the toothpick might fall out, the wire definitely won’t. It’s worth noting here, though, that you’ll need a super durable bait to do this, as the wire will tear through most traditional soft plastics during a bite or a fight.
Screw Locks
Using hooks with screw locks is another great way to stretch the life of your soft plastics. The head of the bait is often the first part to tear up. With a screw lock, you have a better connection to the bait. This results in the bait typically lasting a lot longer.
You can also use screw locks to attach blades, weights, and other things to your soft plastics more securely. But these screw locks will only work with traditional soft plastics, not the stretchy ones.
Bobber Stoppers, Pegs, and Bait Keepers
You can also use bobber stoppers, pegs, and bait keepers to get more longevity from your soft plastics. Try putting a bobber stopper between your weight and the hook of a Texas-rigged worm. This will keep the weight from beating on the worm.
The same can be done with a rubber peg. You can secure your weight slightly apart from a flipping or punching bait, drastically increasing its life expectancy. There are little bait stoppers available now, too, that can be slid up onto the shaft of a jig hook to hold a soft plastic trailer in place.
Final Thoughts
If you’re a savvy shopper, you’ll find that the bass bait market is a pretty tough spot to be in these days. Using these tips, you can stretch your dollar a little further and pick up a few more bass per buck. Wires, toothpicks, screw locks, super glue, bobber stoppers, pegs, and bait keepers can all be used to secure your baits better, making them last longer.
You might want to check out some of the new stuff, too. There’s a whole genre of baits now made with super-stretchy and extremely durable materials. These baits don’t work well for all techniques, but when they can be used, they last a whole lot longer than traditional soft plastics.
