How to choose hard and soft baits?

Are you still having trouble deciding between hard or soft bait?

Choosing hard or soft bait when fishing is considered by some anglers to be as difficult as giving a child a choice between a bag of candy or a toy. But fortunately, after years of research and practice, we have learned some fish preferences so that we can choose baits based on what kind of fish we want to catch.

Many times when we go to buy Road Runners we favor hard baits because they are easier to use, work with different sets for almost all fish, and are simple to start with.

Soft lures are the opposite and only some anglers will choose them. There are many different types of soft baits with complicated handling techniques, scented and unscented, assembling different weights of interchangeable lead heads, how to store them, and much more to pay attention to in practice, but what you get in return for all this tedious work is that when soft baits start moving, they swim like real fish!

Before we start talking about which lure is better, we need to at least set up an environment where we can more accurately compare the two lures under the same operating conditions.

Price

In terms of price, the soft lure is cheaper, but each time it is used it causes some damage and needs to be replaced frequently, while the hard lure is more expensive but can be used again and again, so in this respect the two lures are a tie.

Applicability

When using soft lures, we need to install a lead and sometimes a small hook at the end of the lure to ensure that the fish will hit the hook. Hard baits are much easier to use and more flexible than soft baits.

Effectiveness

Because of the realistic action of soft baits underwater, the bite rate is very high with soft baits. However, as we mentioned above, it is sometimes necessary to add a hook to the end of the soft bait to increase the hooking rate, and sometimes the fish bite the soft bait but do not hit it, which gives them a chance to escape. Hard baits have a lower bite rate, but there is no chance of a fish biting the bait and not being hooked.

Appearance

In terms of appearance, both hard and soft lures have their differences. The hard bait has perfect lines and extremely realistic visual effects that the soft bait cannot achieve, while the soft bait has a very natural, non-rigid shape and a perfect underwater swimming posture.

Baiting

Although we can add lead to the soft bait according to our needs to increase the weight of the soft bait, so that it can run farther, but purely from the casting point of view, the soft bait still loses a chip of hard bait, especially in windy weather, even if the soft bait plus the lead casting effect will not be very good. So when our target water is deep or the weather is bad, hard bait is our best choice, but this is only from the long casting distance and depth. If we look at the actual results, when the target layer is shallow water, more specifically at 20m or shallower, soft lures are invincible.

How to use and where to use accordingly

For some spinning enthusiasts, what they like most is to walk the fish or hit the water to make it look good, but how to walk the fish well depends on the species we are looking for, and how to hit the water has different techniques depending on where we are. But if we choose a soft bait, it always requires more effort to study how to use it, but once we learn it, we can achieve the desired effect.

On beaches, estuaries, etc., where the draft is generally not deep, we can choose hard baits. Minnow, for example, with a short pause between twitches, can be very effective in the early morning or late evening, especially when facing European perch and flat jacks, which will just leave quietly if we use soft baits in this case.

But if we are also casting on the beach, but with a deeper draught, we can choose soft baits, which can give us great surprises, and all kinds of snapper will be our target.

If we are launching from a cliff area, we need to pick the lure according to the weather conditions of the day. If the wind is very light and there is a small wave, it is possible to use a soft bait with a lead on it. There is no requirement for long casting distance in this area, so a more active soft bait is the best choice.

If the wind and waves are strong, you should choose a bigger minnow so that we can explore the different conditions of each water level, and best of all, there is no better place to look for European perch and sometimes even to catch fine point toothfish. So the weather and the water conditions are also very important factors for us to choose what kind of lure.

Suitable fish

As any angler with sea fishing experience will know, there are many fish that have their own preferred lures, and this is a complex situation.

The small snapper, red snapper, fine point tooth snapper, European perch, etc. can be fished with inchiku, or soft lures with lead head can have better results.

If we want to catch sand heavy tooth snapper, we need to use hard bait. If we use soft bait, it is very likely that they will bite but not hit the hook, which will make us waste a lot of time.

Therefore, often we can't just choose soft or hard bait, because the weather conditions and our target species are always changing and it is impossible to use only one type of bait forever. The only way to achieve the best results is to learn both and to pick according to the actual situation.