Take a seat on the bench and listen to Grand Isle fisherman Curtis Gisclair. His offshore tactics will assure you of victory.
The days of ripped, sliced, amputated, beheaded soft plastics are over if you take a liking to a new artificial lure hitting the market as you read this.
SnapBack Super Plastics are changing the game with nearly indestructible lizards, tubes, soft jerkbaits and creature baits, the latter named after one of the most successful bass fishing pros in the country. It’s being marketed by the same people who brought you Terminator spinnerbaits made with nickel titanium frames.
“We’ve opened a new can of worms” is the slogan used by Outdoor Innovations of Tulsa, Okla. And indeed the artificial lure manufacturer has with a durable, tear-resistant, elastomeric material.
Get your hands on one and pull. You’ll be surprised at the elasticity. I’ll admit stretching a white soft jerkback at least five times its normal size without it breaking. (No, I didn’t stretch it past the breaking point, if there is one, because I couldn’t bear to break even a sample product.)
Alan McGuckin, Outdoor Innovations marketing manager, said the space-age soft plastic solves the age-old problem of tearing so that it lasts infinitely longer than ordinary soft plastics. Growing piles of discarded old soft plastics on the deck of the boat (or, worse, left behind on the water) should be a thing of the past for those who get hooked on SnapBack Super Plastics.
And it even feels softer than others on the market, too, which makes for a fish-friendly morsel in the strike zone.
The prerelease feedback has been giddily positive, the company’s marketing manager said.
“Absolutely incredible. There’s already an immeasurable amount of consumer demand out there, and the product hasn’t even begun to ship. Anglers and retail dealers are surprised by its resiliency. It’s so durable but it’s soft, very supple and very lifelike,” McGuckin said the last week of June.
“I think this is, in many instances, 1997 all over again,” he said, noting the year the Terminator line of spinnerbaits was born leading to the creation of Outdoor Innovations. He was in on that beginning, and is proud to be on board as this one launches two years into the 2000s.
“We’re ready to revolutionize an entire product category because we were fortunate to discover a genuine advance in technology,” he said.
Initial designs are a 4-inch pitchin’ tube, a 10-inch worm, a 7-inch worm, a 6-inch lizard, a soft jerk bait, and Skeet’s Creature Bait. A total of 16 proven and well-known colors ranging from red shad to smoke/red flake, blue glimmer and bubble gum are available.
McGuckin said the SnapBack Super Plastics are tooled and molded in the same process as ordinary soft plastics. The difference is Z-Man’s CyberFlexxx, a revolutionary product of modern technology.
McGuckin, product manager Kyle Thorsen and BASS pro Skeet Reese of Auburn, Calif., put their heads together to develop four basic bass enticers out of CbyerFlexx. They had a number of concerns as they brought it along, McGuckin said, such as was it functional, was it acting like other soft plastics in the water, how was the hook penetration?
SnapBack Super Plastics passed all tests. Then they added more, such as superior flotation that especially appeals to Carolina-riggers, as well as a powerful scent that the company said uses scientifically proven appetite- and bite-inducing hormones and aromas.
“Our initial reaction was that it was an incredible new fit for our brand,” McGuckin said.
Reese — whose father, Ron, lives in Slidell, where he fishes for redfish and speckled trout (bass occasionally) whenever he gets the chance — said he has been around the new soft plastic for about seven months.
“It’s pretty amazing stuff. It’s not indestructible. You pull hard enough on it, it’ll break. You can break it, but you’ve got to pull pretty damn hard. (But) I don’t think there’s a bass alive that could tear one of these baits apart,” Reese said the first week of July.
The Super Plastics’ longevity is unbelievable, he said, noting that he went to a small lake near his home a week earlier and caught 14 bass on one SnapBack Super Plastic.
“And it can catch some more,” he said.
Reese, 33-year-old bass fishing pro who has qualified for three BASSMasters Classics and twice won the points title in the B.A.S.S. Western Division, said he really likes the fact that it floats, which gives him more confidence when he’s Carolina- or Texas-rigging.
Also, he said, “My hook and land ratio on the bait has been pretty incredible for me.”
McGuckin said the company’s SnapBack Super Plastics will be priced comparably to ordinary plastics with “five or six to a package for approximately $4.”
He also said a patent will protect the SnapBack Super Plastics from copycats. Also, he said, there is a patent pending on the injected-in rattle pocket that is strategically placed to avoid interfering with hooksets or adversely affecting the action of the soft plastic.
For more information on SnapBack Super Plastics or other Outdoor Innovations products, call (800) 944-4766, or log on to www.terminatorlures.com.
