Fishing Victoria Forum

I made another attempt to get my head around soft plastics today.....headed to Worri Yallock with one rod and plenty of soft plastics to throw.
It was tough not to grab the second rod and some worms...just in case :oops:
After an hour working along the Yarra - I had lost more jig heads an plastics then I would like to admit too......bloody snags. And had not had a single strike or even sighting of a fish. So rather than throwing the rod and tackle bag into the river I decided I needed a change of scenery.
Jumped in the car and headed up to Millgrove, the drive gave me time to clear my head and reset.
First cast in Millgrove.....yep you guess it another SP eating snag.....ggrrrrr....arrrgghhh
OK breath and reset. Half a dozen casts later and a follow, it looked like a solid redfin, it followed the next two retrieves as well and then disappeared.
Well a few follows was the best I have done in a while so I pushed on.
After that I had two strikes from a couple of small brown trout and ....sigh.....lost a few more jig heads and SPs.......
All in all the trip could have been worse, seeing some fish at least says I am doing something right.
Next trip won't be until Easter break now, hopefully I can then do better and get a few fish landed......

Hi ChrisD,

It is frustrating to fish snaggy area with soft plastics, especially on the river and the water is running. Thank God I'm not the only one.

Now I tend to fish with floating hard body lures and use the right deep dive lures for the place. Shallow dive for trout looking water and deep dive up to 1m for deeper pools. Redfins dont mind hitting mid water or top water lures.

If you like your plastics, try to retrieve before it gets to the bottom.
Don't give up! You had some follows, means its working! They just didnt want to play.

Don’t give up mate. I remember when I first started using plastics and it was quite frustrating as well...

I just try use them in sandy areas for flathead, cost too much losing them all the time

Good report and tough going chris. Good on you sticking at it mate. Could possibly invest in the weedless weighted hooks instead of the regular jig heads and rig your SPs weedless to reduce loosing tackle.

As camper said would weedless setups work? I did a lot of American black bass fishing and using weedless setups I seldom lost lures.. you could also ‘skin’ a lure by pushing the tip of the hook tip back into the side of the SP.. just a touch so only a few mm of the hook tip is embedded.. if you feel the fish taking the lure give a firm strike and the hook will penetrate the mouth well enough

Thanks All
Sounding like next time i will give a weedless set up a try and see if that helps.

As others have said...weedless for fishing snags, and unfortunately for us fishos, the snags are where the fish are. If you're not bumping structure, you're not in the strike zone.

All my fishing is in snaggy rivers and there are a few different method of weedless rigs, but the method in the pic is the simplest and cheapest. It will get snagged occasionally, but usually will let go after a couple of flicks of the line.