Soft Plastics HRF and LRF

As much as my friends and I love fishing the Fly, and we will fish it as often as humanly possible, sometimes the weather conditions are just not conducive to persisting with the method, and so we look to alternative methods or other types of fishing in order to continue catching. For a while now I have been keeping in touch with the latest developments in fishing soft plastics, particularly those that are finding their way here via Japan and America, I am talking of course about HRF and LRF, ( Hard rock Fishing and Light Rock Fishing ). Both these methods facilitate fishing for many Saltwater species with light tackle using soft plastic lures and jig heads. At first glance both methods seem to indicate a fairly specific way of fishing, particularly as they both specify Rock Fishing in their title. The casual enquirer might take it as read that these methods are suitable solely for, Rock Fishing, but look beyond this, and with a little imagination the same methods can be used just about anywhere. This is the conclusion that Myself and my friends have come to and we have looked at ways we can adapt the tactic to suit our own fishing and available types of venue. Utilising this way of fishing will not only allow us to continue fishing for our favourite species when Fly fishing is not possible but also opens up a whole new world of possibilities regarding targetable species, whilst still maintaining the light sporting element that we have come to appreciate from the Fly fishing. We have much to learn and I forsee a new and steep learning curve ahead, a challenge that we relish. There is much more to say about the method, and there will be much more to report in the coming months, but this evening we took our first steps towards getting to grips with this new and exciting method.

With one last small window in the tide and conditions being really not Fly fishing friendly, a last minute decision was made to have a dabble with the soft plastics. The venue would be the same one that was the scene of our success yesterday evening on the Fly, as it is a reliable testing ground due to the numbers of fish that are normally present. Not really knowing what to expect we began fishing, and to our relative surprise the fish immediately showed an interest in our offerings. We had many seemingly tentative bites on our lures but nothing positive that we could connect with, so we began to chop and change and experiment with different patterns in an effort to find exactly what they wanted. Eventually we settled on a worm imitation and immediately found success as we began connecting with some more postitive bites. By this time the light was fading fast, but we continued on in to dark to test the 'into darkness' capabilities of the method. I am pleased to say that the fish continued to show interest in the baits until well into dark, and seemingly had no trouble in detecting and attacking out lures despite the apparent, ( to us ), darkness. All very interesting and exciting and a great result for a first outing on a new method. I have to say we are really buzzing about the potential of the soft palstics after this and we cannot wait to see exactly where we go from here. In the meantime heres a pic of the proof of the pudding....

Only a little chap, but we did have fish to around a pound as well to the same lure setup, and in almost complete darkness.