A Review on Z Man Soft Plastic Baits

Last summer I was given the opportunity to try Z Man plastics.  Fishing with soft bodied baits is fairly new to me.  Many years ago I fished with the older twister tail type lures with a descent amount of success, but the durability of these was virtually non-existent.  This made me a bit skeptical about giving this item a try.

The outside of the package said that ElaZtech (a company's compound name) is 10 times stronger than conventional plastics on the market.  This was the selling point for me, so I purchased them.  My thought was that by being stronger more than one fish could be caught on each bait.

How in the world does a person rig these things in order to entice a fish?  How do you attain an action that looks life-like (at least to me anyway)?  Will they actually catch fish?  As you can see there are more questions here than answers.  This lead me to doing a little research on fishing this type of lure.

The answers that I found were astonishing.  Some of the details on rigging these were not quite clear so there was a bit of ingenuity involved to try to figure these things out for myself.  You hook them the same as you would for a plastic worm.  You can fish this weightless or add a weight.  This is where the innovation came in to play. I found that by adding a small split shot to the shank of the worm hook you could cast the lure a bit farther thus covering more water.

The action is arrived by giving your rod two or three short twitches then pausing for a few seconds.  This allows the bait to slowly sink acting as an injured minnow. Fish are opportunistic feeders so a lure that acts like a dying minnow is a good thing.  To answer the question that I had about these baits catching fish, the answer is yes!  To date I have caught 3 bluegill on the same bait as shown rigged in the photo.  This proves the durability and the claim that they are 10 times stronger than their older counterparts.  

The product line is proudly made in the USA.  The material used to make the baits is non-toxic and contains no PVC, Plastisol or Phthalates.  That makes Z Man products friendly to the environment. I would highly recommend this line of products to anyone regardless of what your abilities as a fisherman are.