How To Fish EVERY Soft Plastic Lure - (Best Practices To Catch MORE Bass)

so about a month ago you all asked me to make a video on how to rig every soft plastic type out there from cinco to crowd a creature made to drop shot and I did that I showed you guys how to rig every single one on camera and a blue up so with the popularity of that video a lot of people in the comments section wanted to see Tyler how do I fish all of those you showed me how to rig them but now how do I put them in the water and catch fish on himself that's we're gonna talk about in today's video how to take all of these soft plastics stick them in the water and have some bass fishing success let's talk about it [Music] well how's it going guys my name is Tyler and welcome back to the channel I'm so glad that you guys are here to become better bass anglers along with me now my gosh that video blew up I had no clue that it was going to get that many views and I'm so glad that it was an instructional video that blew up and gained a whole bunch of subscribers that are obviously very into learning about how to become better bass anglers because the comments section was filled with people with tons of video ideas and one of those was to take all the soft plastics I rigged in that video take him on the lake and actually show you how to catch fish on them how to how to work them effectively and so this is going to be pretty high-level video I'm not going to go into detail about exactly like the nuances on how to work each lure but I will link with every single technique that I have I've probably at this point made an instructional video I'm going to diving deeper into that specific one and so before we hop on the front deck I want to address one thing real quick and that is a cool shout-out that I'm doing for a buddy named Matt Looney who's giving away his Skeeter boat yes this boat right here not my boat but the almost the exact same boat a 2020 Skeeter FXR 20 he's giving it away and he's doing a raffle to raise money for muscular dystrophy research and to send kids with muscular dystrophy to a summer camp where they can be connected with kids that have muscular dystrophy like them and not feel so alone in the world and so it is an awesome charity via the raffle tickets will be down below in the description and the cool thing is they are giving away a fishing trip with me I'm partnering with what's called bass for Becker's the Miss muscular dystrophy foundation and we're giving away a trip with me so if you buy your tickets in the month of June not only do you get a chance to win a twenty twenty Skeeter bass board an eighty thousand dollar boat but you also get the chance to go fishing with me we're gonna fly you into Texas and catch some absolute hogs with me and of course I'll teach you guys everything that I can on that day so if you guys are interested please please consider buying tickets not only for the boat not only to go fishing with me I care way more about raising money for for much of the dystrophy so that'll all be linked below but with that said let's hop on the front deck and show you guys how to work all these soft plastics [Music] now again reminder if you guys have not seen the video I filmed before this one on how to rig all of these soft plastic lures with the hooks in the line all that jazz make sure you guys pause this that you're going to go watch that one real quick it is an excellent precursor to this video right here and if at any point in this video you're confused of course pause and go back and watch how I read all these so with this with the other wacky rig almost always throw it on a spinning rod I'm not going to get a whole lot in the gear I do that more in the videos where I go kind of dive deep into how to fish specifically each one for 10 to 20 minutes I make plenty of videos about that every single year so I'm not gonna go a lot in a gear but with the wacky worm you cast it out there of course around any kind of shallow cover structure grass would skip under docks any kind of thing like that and you let it sink to the bottom and as you'll notice I didn't cast it out there let me let me make a recast here this is a huge issue with a lot of people first fishing soft plastics is they cast it out there they stop their bail and they start working it that is wrong no no don't do that with with soft plastics almost always we're going to talk about two of these I think only two yeah only two of these you're going to want to work off the bottom in one of them you only want to work off the bottom half the time and so especially with a wacky rig you want to cast it out there I'm casting it right up next to a nice grass line i watch my line as it lays on the water and I watch the line kind of go out and as soon as the line stops going out I know the betta hit the bottom so then I reeled in my slack I take the rod tip like this and I go from a a I guess a three o'clock angle or a 90-degree angle and I kind of lift the bait up to a 12 o'clock angle and then I let the bait sink so I let that slack line do its work with the bait sinking down to the bottom then I reel in the slack with my reel and I repeat the process up like that let us sink down to the bottom now of course you're gonna have little nuances where you can you know give it a few like hops as you go up but the whole motion of lifting off the bottom and letting it sink back down is the same regardless of how you're working a rocky rig that main general work is is the exact same of all wacky rigs and so whether you're officially a weedless with a vision a an eco rig any sort of rocky rig soft plastic you are casting it out there lifting it up and letting it drop back to the bottom and any but you feel is going to be some sort of little tick or usually with a wacky rig a fish eats it and runs off with it so you're gonna see your line going this way and you just do a simple if you haven't watched the hooks that video I did I'll show you guys exactly how hard to set the hook for all of these lures so I'll link that video down below as well and so it's just a simple kind of like lift up and then you start reeling and that is the wacky rig so with that one done we're going to talk about the Texas rig sank down the Texas rig saenko is one that I talked about all year long this here is I guess the Cinco is that the name brand for them but this here's the striking Ocho I think the Ocho is one of the best soft plastics think goes out there and so as kind of the name implies it is a sink it's it's it's just think oh you know you want it to sink oh very oh very deep and no very far and so just like the wacky rig you want to cast it out there really anywhere you want it can be a open bank it can be structure or whatever and you let a sink to the bottom as I mentioned earlier it's very very important for almost all these you let them sink to the bottom now with this one I may employ a kind of a lift I may employ a faster hop like that or I mail that thing to the bottom and then drag it just like this so you're gonna have to test out different retrieves to find out which one the bass prefer but it is pretty simple you let the stick bait sink as the name is called a sink go let us sink to the bottom of course if you're in with any of these soft plastics if you're in any water deeper than six to eight feet you probably have to add a little bit of a bullet weight to the front of a soft plastic before you rig the hook on or a belly weighted hook for a lot of these works as well it's where the the the weight of the hook is actually like cemented on to the the the bend of the hook and so instead of being a a bullet way on the top and so just very simple all you do with the textfree cinco cast it out there let it sink as you can tell I never really engaged my spool until I actually see that it's fully sunk down to the bottom and then I just lift it up like this and let us and oftentimes you'll feel a very distinct thud when you're throwing one of these and you're real down and yes set the hook so with the Texas racing car delay we're going to talk about the Texas rig creature baits so this here is a striking space monkey one of my favorite soft plastic creature baits and I I think I talked about two or three different variations of this in my rigging video I'm just gonna kind of talk about the broad categories most of the time when I'm working these it is kind of generic across the whole board off as to how it goes you can fit a space monkey you can fish a beaver style bait you can fish a big you know game hog brush hog more traditional creature bait they're really all about the same and I work work this one usually with a bullet way on the front just to get it down there a little bit sometimes waitlisted mostly with a bullet weight and I'll cast it out there and guess what I'll do you guess right I'll let us sink to the bottom now with the creature bait I am mostly slowly kind of lifting to the side so it's like more of a lift drag or I'm totally dragging it there's not many times unless I'm like hopping it on a jig head that I actually take a creature bait and I hop it like this like I would with a jig or with the Texas rig cinco most the time i'm casting it out there and I'm kind of pulling it to the side like this usually one hand and just feeling the bottom just like this a drag is fully dragged down like this occasionally I'd do that if I have it on a Carolina rig or a heavier Texas rig I've deep but if I'm fishing fairly shallow it's kind of at a one-and-a-half to two o'clock you know angle of your of your rod tip and I'm kind of just slowly pulling and letting those claws down there do their work so again creature bait is pretty dang simple and as long as it's on a Texas rig it has the same power hook set as your cinco did jumping back to the spinning router we're going to talk about a few finesse soft plastic starting with the shaky head [Music] so you'll probably saw from that clip I actually included the NED rig soft plastic with the shaky head and that is because the retrieve for a nedovic and a shaky head are very very similar if not identical and so like I said I'm back on the spinning rod right now I'm going to give it a nice cast out there and especially on this one you'll want to let it hit the bottom there's there's there's no argument for working a shaky head or an EDD rig off the bottom unless of course you're giving it a huge hop but in that case you're always letting it sink down to the bottom especially in ed rig it exemplifies a crawfish perfectly and so you never hardly ever see a crawfish just kind of swimming through the water with its with its I guess they'd be more of it when your tail movement but like I said you know the shaky head sink to the bottom and almost always I'm working it very slow and I'm gonna keep my rod kind of at a kind of a one o'clock I'd say or 11 o'clock depending on which way you're looking at the clock and I'm going to use my reel to take in the line not my rod so with a Texas rig I'm going like this and I'm lifting and then reeling in my slack hit the bottom and then lifting again with this one I'm actually gonna be using my rod to kind of like slowly bump it across the bottom and then almost consistently reeling in with my reel and so shaky heads out there I'm not gonna be going from this angle to this angle like I did oh I want had a fish that was nice I was doing it right but like I was saying you want to kind of just kind of like hop it very very small hops I'm talking maybe 6-inch movements of the rod tip in your hand because it's more at the base of the rod you're only moving that like an inch or two and so it's it's tiny little hops sometimes I will you know give it very very slow drags with a few hops but you want to make sure you're maintaining contact with the bottom because the point of the shaky head is of course is a finesse presentation but that head gives you good contact and feel with what's down there on the bottom and so I'm gonna throw it out there let a thing to the bottom and if I was kind of like hopping it like this like a Texas rig honestly it wouldn't even be any different than Texas rig the advantage of a shaky head is that you have that head that can shake the worm and really entice those baths and so I have it down there kind of give it some shakes like this and you reel in my slack a little bit some more shakes gonna be a bigger hop let us sink some more shakes that's why it's called a shaky head because you're supposed to shake it shake it off Taylor Swift and then advert has the exact same situation you want to cast it out there it'll usually be a lighter presentation than a shaky head so of course you're gonna have to use a different rod shaky head I use a 7-foot medium on edrei either seven-foot medium wide or a 7-point medium but dive I usually verge on the medium light for a network just because it is a lighter lure takes more effort and insensitivity to feel what's down there and with both of these I'm usually throwing them in more than 8 to 10 feet of water usually around the 15 to 20 feet of water mark and so that is the the kind of finesse II shaky head Ned rigged now it's time we talk about the drop shot [Music] the drop shot I believe is one of the most confusing soft plastics to work because there's not a whole lot of very very simplified information a lot of people catching giant fish on them but I have not seen a whole lot of videos really showing how they work because honestly it's super simple but it looks really complicated you see it and you say well there's like a 10 inch 12 inch to a 2 foot leader and then there's a weight and there's a hook what do I do so when I was first you know bass fishing I'll kind of show you guys what I did with a drop shot that's totally wrong and maybe some of you guys think this way out there I would make sure the weight hit the bottom and I thought that in order for the drop shot to be effective I had to move the worm without moving the weight so keep the weight on the bottom and I had to move the worm just about eight inches from the floor or from the the bottom of the lake to just when the the line gets taut against the against the the weight on the bottom and that is totally wrong most of the time those fish are not even gonna notice the fact that the weight is down there the reason why I drop something so special is because it keeps the bait off the bottom and your weight is just there to weigh it down and so much like the shaky head I'm gonna cast the drop shot out there and let it sink to the bottom again never forget that tattoo it on your left cheek I let us link to the bottom and once it gets down there I'm not going to employ usually any kind of hop method it's mostly going to be kind of a shaky head where I'm kind of going to shake it a little bit and then it kind of made me give it a drag and then reel in my slack shake it a little bit you kind of give it a drag because most of the time I want that bait to be as far off the bottom as possible and having your rod tip high like this will definitely help with keeping your bait in whatever zone you want to keep it but most times I just want to keep the bait off the bottom in some way and that's what makes the drop shot so special now of course the drop shot hook set is gonna be very very light I talked about that in my hooksets video that I linked below but you just want to cast it out there and the bite on this one is gonna be pretty dang light you usually don't feel a thought on a drop shot it's almost always you're kind of hopping it and all of a sudden one of your hops gets a little bit heavy and as soon as you feel that you kind of reel down and just set the hook like this drop shot is super easy to don't be confused by the the fact that the hook and the weight are separate from each other it is a very very simple tactic that catches some awesome fish so now that we've covered all of our bases when it comes to finesse fishing soft plastics let's go to one that is not finesse and that is the punch bait so I talked about the punch bait a little bit it is definitely more of a niche application if you're a beginner bass fisherman and if specially if you don't live around any sort of lakes with grass or vegetation or lily pads I would suggest against punching because the goal of punching or flipping a heavy weight on a soft plastic is is to get those fish out of heavy cover if you don't have access to heavy cover like grass or vegetation I would say you skip this part but when you're throwing a punch rig of course it's going to be very heavy you're going to want to flip it out there right into the middle of the mat right on the edge of the vegetation really anywhere kind of figure out where those fish want to be and then you reel in all of your slack and just like the Texas rig you have your rod tip like this and you give it a quick hop up like this maybe even kind of two hops as you go up you work it one two on a one to four times per area then you reel it in and give it another flip out there to another piece of cover of vegetation let it sink to the bottom give it one or two three three hops one big hop let it sink again alright that area is exhausted I'm gonna go back over here flip it out again let it sink boom and this is a lot more fast action you know action action-packed type of bass fishing and usually not casting this of course never dragging it is almost always a flipping and pitching type of technique so I'm just kind of finding a piece of grass that looks good out there I flip it out there I let it sink I hop it once or twice and that bite is gonna feel like somebody just lit a fire under your lure and so you're gonna have to light a fire under that fish and set the hook like your life depends on it so punch rig is fairly simple but it's definitely one of those techniques that not everybody has access to or really wants to do but it is one of the biggest large fish producers so if you want to catch a giant punching is definitely the way to go about doing that and I showed you how to rig it in last times video now after we've talked about every lure that goes on the bottom of the water column let's talk about one that actually doesn't go on the bottom but stays on the top and that is a top water ribbit frog I think the the kind of proper term for it is either ribbit frog or buzz toad we'll call it a buzz toad for now ribbit frog is something a specific brand this here is a strike king honestly couldn't even tell you which frog this is but it's a it's a buzz toad which means it is a top water soft plastic frog not a hollow belly but as you saw me rigged it in that last video it is meant to go on top of the water and the key with rigging this one is you don't want it to sink of course any soft plastic is going to sink at some rate so of course you want to have the the frog hook or a 4 or 5 watt wide gap hook as I have here and you do not want to let it sink so I see a lot of people especially when they learn to throw a buzz bait or a buzz toad is they cast out there and let it sink and then they reel in the slack and start reeling and at that point that thing is already sank 1 to 3 feet so by the time you reel in your slack and get that bait to the top of the water you've lost four to five feet of potential you know fish catching target zone and so just like with a buzz bait of course this is a little bit less crucial cause buzzbaits eat faster I want to cast it out there switch my hands and as soon as that thing touches the water I'm starting my retrieve back to the boat there is no such thing as letting this thing sink I only have ever caught a bass maybe on accident by letting it sink but it's almost always casting it out they're switching hands and starting your retrieve as soon as it hits the water now one important thing about the retrieve itself is that you want to have your rod tip up because the the way that this bait works is that the action the sound comes from the little paddle tails here on the Frog and so if your rod tip was down it might be pulling the head of the frog into the water which causes these to have to work a lot harder to push water and end and create vibration but with your rod tip up it kind of lifts the nose of the bait and it really allows those legs to easily move and easily make vibration and noise so like I said cast it out there switch hands hits the water you engage and I keep my rod tip I and as I talked about in my hooksets video if you get a bite it's not an immediate set it is a stop reeling reel down and set like this and you'll get a lot more fish in the boat by working it that way moving on with soft plastics that you don't let hit the bottom we're going to talk about the flashy swimmer the flashiest trimmer is one of my favorite ways to catch bass and that is because it is super versatile you can work this thing in any sort of cover situation whether it's rocks grass docks lily pads anything like that this thing is a very versatile lure for that and if you missed the rating video it's pretty simple you just almost bad you screw the soft plastic swim bait into the screw lock of the hook and then of course you Texas friggin tort expose it just like I talked about and you have a little blade down here and with this one it's almost always a cast and reel retrieve so I'm not hopping it I'm not twitching and not giving any jerks I'm casting it out there letting it sink you know depending on how deep you want to sink so if you're fishing really really shallow you might want to start engaging the reel right after it hits the water that way it can't get down into any grass or cover but like you're fishing right now I'm fishing a little grass flat here it's kind of four feet deep so if I want to tick the top of the grass with this I'm gonna make a cast out there I'm gonna let it sink I don't know two three feet so one or two seconds and then I'm gonna start reeling and it is just kind of a slow steady reel you know the the bait itself of course the tail has kicking action and then the blade underneath the hook has action and an attraction and flash and so there's not really any sort of retrieve you need to do besides just casting and reeling sometimes I'll do a stop and go so I'll be reeling and then I'll stop let it sink a foot or two and then continue again maybe when I continue I'll speed it up for a second to kind of get any fish that may have been following it it stopped they kept looking at it and it speeds up and they just have to eat it and catch up to it but it is a very very simple cast reel and any kind of bite you feel is going to be very similar to a bladed jig or a ChatterBait and that's going to be your line is kind of slack and you feel a thud and that's when you reel your line in fast and set the hook just like that sticking with the the baitfish imitation we're going to talk about one that's kind of a hybrid between working very very fast and top of the water column and working slowly on the bottom and that is your soft plastic jerkbait [Music] if you had to ask me what my favorite pond lure is I'd probably say either a lipless crankbait or a soft plastic jerk bait this here is a strike King caffeine shad I love this thing because it imitates both bluegill and any sort of clear translucent white bait fish and what makes this lure special is that there's actually a lot more ways to work it than there is a normal Texas rig so I do have it on a three OTT wide gap hook right here but I'm gonna cast it out there and depending on the mood of the fish is gonna be how I work it so if those fish are schooling on bait fish say a shad spawn situation and they're really ravaging a baitfish population you're not gonna want to let it sink to the bottom because you don't have to you can make way more casts a lot more presentations into more areas and probably catch more fish the faster you work it so if I'm going to cast it out there for a shad spawn type deal cast it let us think of a second and then I'm going like this I'm going twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch almost like walking the dog with a top water and I'm twitching this thing very fast while keeping it six inches to a foot under the surface sometimes breaking the surface with it and oftentimes a fish will come up and and just slam it so like you saw they're very very fast retrieved let a sink a foot let's retrieve for the soft plastic jerk bait is very popular when you have very aggressive fish like schooling fish any fish that are eating a herring population so herring shad like Lake Hartwell like Kiwi any of those herring lakes or really anytime you have bass that are just gorging themselves very very much on shad but the other way that I like to work it is similar in a sense to the Texas free well let's say vastra eating a bluegill so I throw a green pumpkin or watermelon red colored fluke I'm gonna cast it out they're usually weightless if it's shallow and if it's any deeper than five feet I'll throw it on a belly weighted hook I love the way it shimmies down with a belly weighted hook really looks like an injured bluegill and then any deeper than 10 feet you don't throw a soft plastic jerkbait usually you know opting for some other kind of technique and so cast it out they let us sink to the bottom and I'm gonna instead of lifting it up I'm gonna kind of give it two or three jerks up so we kind of imagine looking down at the bait and you see the the soft plastic jerk but kind of go boom boom boom and then float back to the bottom so it imitates what you would see as a bluegill kind of dying as it falls down and kind of gives a few last little spurts of energy and then dies back down again and almost all of your bites if not all of them will come after you've popped it three times and it's starting to sink back down to the bottom the bass will grab it and you'll kind of you know pick up and feel your line or on your next hop up you'll feel the pressure on there and then you'll sit your you'll lower your rod tip down and set the hook so soft plastic fluke very very versatile in one of my favorites to catch bass all around the country is that it I think that's it have we done all of them there's no way well la-dee-da I think we did all of them folks that was a a blast to show you guys exactly how to work all those now like I said this is high level I have different videos on my channel of explaining kind of more intricacies when it comes to each one of these lures as well as catching fish on all of these so I will link of course all the lures that I talked about the videos I talked about and everything else down in the description below as always and thank you guys for watching it is awesome to see the channel blowing up right now I love the direction we're taking it and I'm having a ton of fun I hope you guys are as well as part of Team prf now if y'all are interested in going fishing with me and possibly winning an $80,000 bass boat it is an awesome charity for muscular dystrophy make sure you guys purchase your tickets before the month of June ends that way you guys are entered into the fishing trip raffle with me and we'll see y'all next time on TR F

Channel: TylersReelFishing

Views: 259,181

Keywords: Fishing, bass fishing, reel, Texas fishing, Fishing Review, Fishing Tips, Tylers Reel Fishing, Tyler Reels Fishing, Big Bass, Largemouth Bass, Crazy Fishing, Pond Fishing, Pond Bass Fishing, Vlog, Bank Fishing, Fishing Video, fishing challenge, bass fishing challenge, how to fish, how to catch fish, how to catch bass, bass fishing 101, how to work a lure, soft plastic fishing, soft plastic lures tips, fishing with soft plastics, soft plastics for bass

Id: 3lshMzf8HFQ

Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 04 2020