Crab Crunchers, easy "how to's"

One of the fastest growing aspects our modern lure which i feel this season will get a good going over is Wrassing on the soft plastics, with a good season of showing what can be done on mine and Jim Odonnells facebooks last year and Henry Gilbeys sea angler article as well as the feature done for Total sea fishing by Jimbo this season pretty much every lure angler around has had a bit of wrassing bouncing around there brains!! This deadly simple and fun fishing is really going to kick off a storm and will be the downfall of some HUGE Ballans this summer and i couldnt think of any better way to spend my time on the rocks!! in this post im going to show the simplest method to get you into the Wrasse.

Above is a picture of the basics, i like standard worm hooks rather than the EWG style as they have a slimmer profile when rigged (gets chomped easier) these above are Gamakatsu 54413's round bend other hooks i like are the Owner ultra point worm hooks again not EWG as well as the Lunker City Texposers or the Decoy smaller rockfish styles for smaller texas rigging. Cone leads from BassPro in 10g 7g and 5g these are bulk packs 25 pieces in a tub rather than the rip off 3's sold in the UK for more than we payed for these BassPro's (which me and James stocked up on!!) There is literally endless amounts of soft plastics which are all cracking wrasse lures, i LOVE Megabass Xlayers.

Above is a closer look at the cone leads we will use all this season, these are plain no thrills bullet/cone leads with a concave back end allowing you to butt them up to your soft plastics nice and snug for a clean and affective Texas rigged lure, like i said above the weights i favour are 10-7-5 grams this gives me good control in pretty much most conditions from slightly lumpy sea's to the 5g in the really lush flat sea's we all hope for! rigging these couldnt get any simpler thread your fluro through and tie on your hook! (making sure the lead is pointing forward!) some guys like to put a small bead between the lead and the hook to act as a buffer for the knot but the way i rig the hook so the eye is inside the soft plasic i tend to leave the bead out. the key is to rig the lead and lure so they match, no point in having a tiny lead when its swelled sea's as your not getting that contact you want but also you dont want a wompa stompa of a lead which makes the lure crash dive to the bottom! but your get all that tweaked the more you fish and you get familular with the gear your chucking.

Xlayers :-)......... these little bundles of rubbery Wrasse biscuits are my best friends through the summer in the standard and giant Xlayer and have caught me some proper beautys over the last couple seasons and my biggest UK wrasse from last year. these are my personal fav's and especially in the Ayu colour above, i like the silvers and even blues which have caught more than the standard greens browns and reds. other soft plastics which i liked and caught on are senkos from Jacks LRF, as well as hawg craws, slug-go's MB spindle worms and MB it-shrimps! at the end of the day there is soooooo amny different types of soft plastics from tons of brands out there its down to your personal choice, through my work it allows me to smash these Xlayers left right and centre but to most of you guys they are a expensive wrasse SP.

Heres the final master piece..... once you have tied your hook on, i use a bog standard Uni knot but to be honest any of the knots you prefer and what you feel confident using, i use Seaguar fluro in 20-25lb and i use that higher breaking strain simply its what i like to use over the rougher ground and my no holes barred style of yank the fish from there gully! i saw on facebook on Luke Fox a cornish angler a discussion on a photo regarding super light lines against heavier and the pros and cons, again this is your choice. have that attached to your braided mainline and your ready to fish the Texas rig. simple as it gets and deadly effective, there are a few other methods i like to use for wrassing such as the hitch-hiked jigs and drop shotting, they all have there good points and ill go into detail more some other time. well i hope this sheds a little light on a method which will allow you to hit those Pigs on the rocks this summer

tight lines