The soft plastic worm has primarily stayed the same for decades. Sure, plenty of new styles and color options exist, but soft plastics have been staples for bass anglers for many years. One new twist, however, is the addition of heavily weighted baits with massive amounts of salt packed inside them, helping them fall much faster.
One angler who’s had success using this style of soft plastics is Bass Pro Tour angler Matt Lee, who’s found them to be highly effective in many situations. Two of his favorites are the Deps Cover Scat and Sakamata Shad, a fluke-style bait.
Fishing the Cover Scat
One of the hottest styles of soft plastics is the Deps Cover Scat and similar-looking baits. They are small and compact baits that fall quickly and can be fished without additional weight because they weigh so much.
“The great thing about the Scat is that it’s completely weedless, but you can fish them any deeper depths,” he said. “They were designed for places like Lake Biwa in Japan with a lot of gnarly rock. You can throw the baits and fish them without getting hung up because there is nothing to get hung up on. It’s almost impossible to snag anything without a jighead of bullet weight. That’s how the evolution of the baits was explained to me.”
The Cover Scat comes in several sizes, but Lee generally uses the 3.5-inch version. “That’s the perfect size for me, and I fish it with a 5/O Owner extra-wide gap hook.
“The wide gap gives you more of a gap, so the bait pushes it off the point,” he said. “This allows you to hook them better because it’s a thick bait.”
Fishing the Sakamata Shad
At first glance, the Deps Sakamata Shad looks like any other soft plastic fluke-style bait. It does have some unique keeled fins, but the general appearance is the same. While it comes in a standard version with the same plastic material as others on the market, the Heavy Weight version is one that Lee likes to fish in deeper water.
“It casts very well and you can fish it in 20, 25 feet of water with no problem and without adding a weight to it,” he said. “I like to fish it on a 5/O extra-wide gap hook and use the regular version, and I don’t like hooks with a screw lock. I’d rather have the line slide up on my line when I get one instead of getting torn up with the screw. They are soft baits and doing that will let you get more fish from each bait.”
The bait comes in four sizes, from 5 to 8 inches long, and generally, Lee likes the 5 and 6-inch versions. “Those are the ones that I use the most, but I’m not afraid to throw the giant 8-inch bait on lakes with big bass and big gizzard shad, like Lake Guntersville,” he said. “Most of the time, you need to fish them slowly in deeper water, but you can also work them pretty fast in deeper grass and fish quickly as you search for fish.”
Slowing it down
These two baits can be fished as deep as you’d like, but Lee says one thing that helps them be more effective is to use them when you know fish are there.
“A good rule of thumb is to only fish them in places where you know fish are there,” he said. “Even when out fun fishing, it’s a very slow technique when fishing these baits in deeper water. It takes time for the baits to sink and you are not covering water with them; they are there to get fish you know are there to bite.”
Each cast takes time to wait for the bait to sink into the zone, which many American anglers are not used to. “In Japan, some guys will take five minutes for each cast as the bait sinks way down and then they fish it very slowly,” he shared. “Most Americans aren’t going that far, but sometimes you must take time to get one to bite. If you think about it, if you know fish are in the area, either because you see them on your electronics or caught them with other baits, ten seconds or so isn’t that long to wait for the bait to fall.”
He says the fall rate is helpful for both baits, but the fall helps trigger bites. “The Sakamata shad falls and shimmies just like a Senko and it’s something they haven’t seen,” he said. “The Cover Scat sinks like a rock and looks great as it falls; you can fish it at any depth.”
Lee says these baits are so effective because you can fish them deep without snagging, but also because they are so unique.
“Every year, the fish seem to get more pressured and educated,” he said. “That’s why you see glide baits do so well; they are things they haven’t seen before. Heavily weighted soft baits are the new thing. A natural bait like this will get more bites and it’s something that fish are not seeing all the time.”
As bass fishing continues to evolve, anglers find new ways to fool bass with twists on popular lures. The addition of heavily salted soft plastics allows anglers to fish deeper and maintain the natural action that gets fish to bite.
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