read stuff - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 0:14 - 2 Comments

Rigging softies right

By Mark Williams

My good mate and fellow Fisho contributor Mark Phillips is one of the blokes at the vanguard of the soft plastic revolution that’s swept the Aussie angling community in recent years. As a Berkley Pro Team member, he’s heavily involved in the field testing of the new soft plastics being imported into the country by Pure Fishing. Take it as read that he gets to play with lots of good stuff and catch heaps of great fish while he’s doing it.

During a recent early morning session throwing soft plastics around Lake Macquarie on the NSW Central Coast I had the chance to suss him out about the SP rigging methods that he and his regular fishing mate and fellow Fisho writer Michael Guest have used to deadly effect on a wide range of species. I wasn’t overly worried in brands or styles of soft plastics as they’ve all been plugged to death a million times – I was more interested in the specifics of the rigging systems they use to get the most out of these highly effective lures. I was really impressed with the attention to detail that Mark, or the “Captain” as he’s usually called, has gone to in rigging his SPs to achieve the best possible results in terms of lure action and sink rates. When chasing snapper offshore with SPs I was really surprised to hear that his standard jigging outfit is loaded up with eight pound FireLine. As he explained, by fishing as light a leader/mainline combination as possible he can use lighter jig heads to get his SPs down to where the fish are holding. The use of the lightest possible jig heads results in improved lure action and, consequently, more strikes. However, there are times when you’re fishing rough country where you just have to upgrade to a heavier leader/mainline combination. If not, all you end up doing is spending your day donating your jig collection to the fish gods. Continue…