Few anglers use all the families of soft lures available on the market or limit themselves to only one or two animation and presentation techniques. The main reason is often the lack of knowledge of these lures and their actions. Some of them need a specific animation to reveal their full potential.
Various animations and presentations
When we talk about fishing with soft lures, depending on the environment and the species we are looking for, some people imagine fishing with a scraper, others with a pull or even with a line and a fly. If these 4 animations are the most common, it is also possible to present its lure differently. The drop shot rig is the most common, but we could also mention the wacky, the carolina...
The shads
Shads are the most used soft lures on the market for one main reason, it is that their swimming action is immediately identifiable. Its paddle immediately starts to work at the slightest request and this is particularly reassuring for the angler.
Moreover, shads can be used with all animations!
The finness
The finness are very disconcerting soft lures, because they are equipped with a V-shaped tail and the fishermen often observe it with a circumspect eye before leaving it in their box... Indeed, if you bring it back in a linear way to the reel, nothing much happens and this lure is then inoperative, but on the fly, to scratch or in drop shot it is an excellent lure to decide bass and percids.
The slugs
The slugs are flexible lures in the shape of a stick. Like the previous ones, without a tail, they do not show any swimming action when brought back in a continuous and linear way. But animated with a series of twitches on the fly, in drop shot or gently scraping on the bottom, they are able to unblock complicated situations.
On the other hand, the longest and most flexible models also prove to be excellent in traction. On livebaits, they undulate with their whole body and imitate perfectly a sand lance.
The craws
Craws are among the truly imitative lures. While there are different designs and vibrations of craws, these lures are very similar to crayfish which are a favorite for many predators. Craws are used a lot by black bass anglers and much less (wrongly) for other predators.
If it is possible to use them in drop shot, it is by fishing with scratch to imitate perfectly the swimming of a crayfish that these lures take all their sense.
The frogs
Like the previous ones, the frogs are also imitative decoys. Thus they must be animated in the same way as the animal they represent.
Often floating, the basic animation consists in making small pulls to imitate a displacement during a breaststroke movement or simply in linear with pauses, in particular for the models provided with legs offering a resistance to water like the famous Basiriky of Deps.
Swimbaits
Finally, swimbaits are like swimfish of the same name, lures designed in several segments and that undulate along their entire length on the retrieve. A linear animation on the reel with breaks and at different speeds is the best way to exploit them.
