Kinked soft plastics don’t catch many fish, but there’s an easy way to fix them.
Soft plastics are now “standard issue” in surf bags up and down the Striper Coast. Not unlike the plugs we cast, soft plastics have gotten bigger and bigger as garage operations grow sophisticated enough to create these long and large baits with professional results. I’ve often described my surf bag as looking like I had an octopus stuffed into one of the tubes, because of the tangle of undulating tails fanned out in every direction after packing it with plastics. The issues crop up after they’ve been left in the tube for a few days or longer…
This is a problem I would guess that all fans of large soft plastics encounter, for all of their amazing attributes, soft baits have one – frustrating – shortcoming: they kink if they are not stored properly. This is a problem for manufacturers as well, if baits are allowed to ‘slouch’ in the package, then they will take on that Cro-Magnon posture when threaded onto a hook, thus killing the action and rendering them ineffective. Some manufacturers even fold long baits in the package, probably to save space on tackle shop walls, but the result ‘on the hook’ is not great for repeat sales.
Luckily, I know how to fix this problem, and with the prices of soft plastics steadily increasing, this little trick can save you a lot of money, too. From long ‘rat tail baits’ like Super Snax or those made by Zinger or BigWater, to paddletails from the musky scene, to long slender eels like Al Gag’s Twitch-It Eel, to your high-dollar swimbaits for largemouth bass, this trick will take the crimp out of your style and get your baits swimming straight again.
Heat is the secret and gentle is the key. You don’t want to use an open flame here, at best your baits will stretch and break at worst they’ll catch fire and drip flaming droplets of soft plastic napalm everywhere until you snuff out the flames. Boiling water is hot enough to soften the plastic, but the temperature of boiling water (212 degrees) is low enough to do it gently. The downside is that gentle means slow and slow means your hands will suffer if you don’t protect them, so tongs or gloves are necessary tools.
Wait for your wife or significant other to leave the house and then set a small saucepan of water on the stove and crank it up to a rolling boil. While the water heats up, set a tray out and line it with paper towels. Also get your tools laid out, tongs, gloves and a few extra paper towels. One the water is boiling, dip the kinked end of the bait into the water and hold it in there for 30 to 60 seconds and lift it out of the water and let it hang. Dip and repeat until the bait hangs straight. The next VERY IMPORTANT step is to lay each bait out – perfectly straight – on the ‘Bounty’-lined tray so it will cool and re-harden in that position.
If you think all this effort is unnecessary, the short answer is: you’re wrong. Kinked plastics swim like garbage and there is no other way to ‘fix’ them. Take the time to straighten them out and you’ll catch a lot more fish.
