Gummy's and beads?

[bassmaster84]

Hi guys

As Soft plastics is my least successful way to fish, I was wondering if I should spice thing up with some beads and gummy's? I.e taking the bullet sinker slightly further away from the nose and putting on some gummys, and maybe even some beads (on both side of the gummys, with the bullet weight klapping it all the time, producing a sound for the fish) Has anyone had (more) success with a similar setup? :roll:

[August]

Howzit.
I used to fish glass beads between my tungstan and my hook. The thing is the tungstan keeps breaking my glassbeads and then the glass bead cuts my line. So about 2 years ago I stopped using glass beads all together, and to be honest I have not seen any less bites on plastics. Before the change to not using beads I used to fish beads in dirtier water and in clean water go beadless anyway.
The benifit of a bead is the sound it makes. I have however found it not to always be a benifit. When fish get finiky, they somehow relate a rattle or the knocking sound of a bead to being caught and you get less bites that without.
I now use only rubber stoppers, and only black ones. I dont actually want it part of my presentation. One infront of the weight and one behind protecting the knot against the tungstan in a strike.
With lead weights the glass beads dont break as easily, but the sound it makes is also way less. I tried a variety of beads and all of them seemed to break on me so opted out in the end. Maybe you have better luck.
Hope it helps.

[bassmaster84]

Thanks August! That helps quite a lot! I found some hard crystal beads that seems like it should not cut the line or break, but only time will tell... How much of a gap do you usually opt for between hook and weight with the stops? And do you use this on all your soft plastics or only on specific ones? I will run 2 setups, one with and one without beads chance my luck, and let you know how it went!

[August]

Depends on the rig
On a texas I leave no space

[Gary Myburgh]

I sometimes use beads and sometimes not.
Mostly I only use them with carolina/mini carolina rig, but occasionally with Texas.
Personally I think that the idea of clicking and clacking is very overrated.
In fact I even use jigs without rattles and silent crancks - both to good effect.
I also catch a lot on shakey heads - which are "silent"
Basically vibrations are way more important to bass than sound in our audible frequencies.
If you are not catching well on soft plastics then its most likely got nothing to do with beads.
Most likely you are either not using the right plastics or you are missing some other trick.