I'm big into making my own soft plastics and sometimes get lucky coming up with a unique design. The two pictured below are examples:
The next photo is that of Big Bite Bait's MinnR grub:
Big differences exist between the three! :
The top thin flat tailed lure flutters with no angler input, plus a softer plastic is used to insure the tail action.
The
rat-spaghetti tail lures differ in that the shapes of the body and tail are different: mine has a
flat body making it go through the water differently using certain retrieves than the BBB grub. The plastic is also softer allowing for a very reactive tail action. One last important thing: where the tail attaches to the MinnR is triangular; mine is small as it is
uniformly round making for a different action on a slow retrieve.
I gave a friend some rat tails in 2" and his twitch,twitch,twitch retrieve made that
spaghetti tail shimmy like a snake, resulting in him catching 5 baby bass in less that five minutes near a dock and weed edges. They wouldn't let the lure pass by without trying to kill it! He rigged it on a jighead less than 1/32 oz and was still able to cast it over 20', keeping it at a depth of less than 3' on a
super-slow retrieve all the way back to shore.
The BBB's
prong-tail action is still very effective
when fish are active - I proved that on a large number of shallow fish on Sunday. But when the bite requires a super slow retrieve or fishing under a stick float, the MinnR falls short and the other two come to the rescue because of a super finesse tail action.
Note: Because the MinnR is made from a harder plastic, the
prong tail needs more rod tip action to make it quiver and a harder plastic weighs more requiring a faster retrieve.
The friend I mentioned immediately saw the potential of the
rat tail, which is longer than a few other rat tail grubs (ratio of body-to-tail length) and softer texture of the
round body of the MinnR and Strike King's grub which has a tiny ball at the end of the tail (not a good idea when small sunnies are around).
Certain presentations cause certain lures to react differently and that can make all the difference in the world when fish in one location are picky when it comes to presentation and lure design. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but my friend is the best angler I know for pan fish and bass (other than myself tsk tsk
) and if he can't catch them as easily with one lure versus another, I take notice! Of course superstition and presumption may affect anyone's testing of the lures mentioned,
but time will always tell. When it comes to curl tail grubs, flat, prong or rat tails always win!!!!