Louisiana anglers, by and large, hate soft-plastic baits that tear up quicker than wet toilet paper.
Those lures might be great for Florida, where an angler needs every possible advantage to catch three speckled trout a day. But here in Sportsman’s Paradise, having to change a bait after each fish will make you want to snap your rods in two.
That won’t happen to anglers who fish with Z-Man’s Elaztech.
“Elaztech is a 10-times-tough plastic,” said Daniel Nussbaum of Z-Man. “You can fish the same minnow bait all day, and it’s not going to tear up.”
As the name implies, Elaztech stretches easily and snaps back to its original shape.
“It’s a completely different material,” Nussbaum said. “Regular plastics are made from PVC. This is a thermo-plastic. Chemically, it’s a completely different material.
“Unlike regular PVC baits, it’s 100-percent non-toxic. It’s also naturally buoyant, so if you fish it on a jighead, your bait’s going to float up and suspend off the bottom. It’ll look just like a small baitfish eating on the bottom.”
For speckled trout, Nussbaum — an avid angler in the waters surrounding his Charleston, S.C., home — really likes one Z-Man product in particular.
“The 4-inch Streakz curly tail has been a home run for us as a trout bait,” he said.
His favorite color is lime pearl fished on a red jighead.
One word of caution: You never want to mix Elaztech baits with other soft-plastics.
“They don’t play well with others,” Nussbaum said. “We recommend storing them in their original packaging. You don’t want to let them anywhere near the regular plastics, but if you keep them separate, they’ll last forever and outperform everything else out there.”