Savage Gear 4Play Opinions

[willt]

I'm slowly starting to fall in love with the swimbait world - they're not huge here in the NE like they are in California and other parts of the US. Trying to save a few bucks, I'm debating between the Savage Gear 4play and the Soft4Play. My take on the two (and swimbaits in general) is I would like the hard one for reusability mainly. I love the look and detail in the soft ones, but they will eventually get torn up. If not by bass, they will by pike for sure. Also in the past I've found that if some paddle tail or soft swimbaits aren't rigged 100% perfect they just swim plain bad. If you guys have any opinions on which route to go that would be awesome

[HookdUP]

The line thrus kinda have THEYRE own way they're rigged and can't really be messed up in my experience ... But fish will mess them up surely

[bigturtle]

I only use the hardbait version because the softbaits are pain to rig. The hardbaits also wake nicer than the softbaits, which is what im using them for.

[willt]

Yeah I have the line thru and think it's excellent. I meant if swimbaits such as money minnows or basstrix aren't rigged perfect they swim abnormally

[willt]

I only use the hardbait version because the softbaits are pain to rig. The hardbaits also wake nicer than the softbaits, which is what im using them for.

Thank you! Another thing I forgot to mention is my lakes are full of weeds, and it doesn't help that I don't prefer to fish deep. Does the hard catch a lot of weeds in your experience? The texas rig feature of the soft ones was a big plus for me

[bigturtle]

I dont know because I dont fish it deep, only in the top 2 feet. I would imagine it will catch as much weed as any other treble hook lure, because i dont see any reason why it wouldnt.

What you can do, to reduce the amount of weed being caught, is to switch the hooks with wacky hooks with a weedguard. Hookup is going to suffer, but you do get less weed.

 

How big are the fish there? The softbait arent good for smaller fish, because theres a lot of plastic for the fish to chomp down to expose the hook

[willt]

A generous range for this lure here would probably be 2-5lbs. Cant imagine anything smaller or bigger on a regular basis

[bigturtle]

are you fishing this beside weeds, on top of weeds, or through weeds? if you fish on top or along weedlines, theres no reason to use a texas rig softbait, unless the weeds come right up to the surface. Trebles give better hookup.

 

If you fish through weeds, then you dont have an option but to use the softbait.

Iv caught 3lb fish on the softbait, and I personally dont like it very much. The hook leaves 0 free gap, so the fish have to compress the plastic bait itself, instead of just pushing the hook up, to expose it. The fish in my area simply dont bite down that hard most of the time, and I dont hook them.

[willt]

Besides early and late season, the weeds usually break the surface or reach about an inch below. I was going to change my approach depending on what you thought was better - which sounds like the hard bait. With that I'd have to throw it along weed lines 80% of the time. With the soft I could swim it through as well as over which I'd prefer. But I did watch a review and I agree that there's no free gap on the soft

[bigturtle]

In that kind of situation, I dont use either of them. I turn to my smaller, thinner soft swimbaits with paddle tails.

I did try fishing the hardbait with weedless wacky hooks instead of trebles, and it sort of worked. I caught much less weed, but also less fish. Now my softbaits are rigged with an open hook jighead for dragging on the bottom, and my hardbaits are for waking and twitching near the surface.

[Hogsticker]

I bought a bunch of the soft 4 play baits with the head skulls when they 1st hit the market. I thought they were going to be outstanding. Unfortunately they didn't produce, even when all others did. Cool concept though, just not a lot of action.

[willt]

They didn't produce without the head skulls either?

[Hogsticker]

I rigged them a few different ways without the skull and all the presentations looked kinda blah, no action. The jointed hard bodies look pretty nice, but I'll stick with my River2sea with lips on them. I forget what they're called.

[willt]

If you happen to remember it shoot me a post. Never opposed to trying new lures