5 Tips for Catching Redfish on Soft Plastics

Many anglers – myself included – absolutely love catching redfish on light tackle and soft plastics. When a red hits a soft plastic jig it often slams it like a freight train, jigs are effective in a number of water conditions and depths, and there’s a level of light tackle finesse involved that’s outrageously fun to master. Ready to take on this challenge? These five tips will help make your jigging endeavors a success.

Jigging soft plastics on light gear is a ton of fun.

1. Use the lightest jighead which still has enough weight for you to detect bottom. Light heads give the jig a seductive sink that the reds just can’t resist.
2. The above notwithstanding, make darn sure you can detect bottom at all times (excepting when you’re fishing weeds). Quite often redfish will be feeding right at bottom and bouncing your jig along, allowing it to tap down for a fraction of a second, is what will generate strikes.
3. Try paddle-tails. Yes, you’ll catch redfish on curly tails and straight tails. But the paddles seem to evoke more strikes much of the time. Some claim it’s the vibrations created by the tail wobbling back and forth; we don’t have any evidence to back the assertion up, but maybe that’s one of the reasons why they work so well.
4. If you don’t already have a bow-mount electric trolling motor with Spot-Lock, consider getting one. Being able to hover in position allows you to work jigs around structure far more thoroughly than you can when on the drift.
5. If you don’t already have braid line on your reel, give it a shot. Yes, we know anglers tend to hate change, and some of you never made the transition. But with mono the sensitivity levels just aren’t even close – you’ll never even realize it when you get subtle bites, have a harder time detecting bottom, and miss more hook-sets.