REVIEW: Strike Tiger 1″ Nymph – Creature Soft Plastic

A 100% Tasmanian owned company is providing us fishermen with a great little creature bait which has been tried and tested on their local population of trout and is now expanding onto the mainland.

IMPRESSIONS

Straight out of the packet the 1″ Nymph  has a very realistic appearance. Designed to imitate small insects such as mudeyes, nymphs and grass hoppers, the plastic has a good amount of small legs and dangly bits that give of some nice lifelike movement in the water. The subtle use of sparkly bits within the plastic also give off enough flash to gain attention from surrounding fish.

The plastic itself is firm but flexible and makes for threading onto jigheads quite easy, and hold well onto jigheads with keepers, giving a very realistic insect imitation.

In a direct line up with their competition the strike tiger 1″ nymph looks right at home. Other creature baits like the Damiki Air Craw, Ecogear Bug Ants, and Berkley Power Hawg are all very similar but none come in the smaller 1″ size which seems to suit our stream trout to a tee.

APPLICATION

Designed primarily for targeting trout the 1″ Nymph imitate a small “creature” (hence the name creature bait) –  such as a mudeye, grass hopper, nymph or small yabbie.

Being such a small lure the 1″ Nymph offers a very compact bite size meal, which is great for picky, wary or heavily pressured fish which may spook easily from larger lures.

We have found the most natural presentation when rigging these baits are on small lightweight jig heads, particularly hidden weight style heads which allow a more level flutter as the weight is distributed evenly across the body of the plastic.

Due to its small profile this bait doesn’t give off the same presence in the water that a larger bait does. As such this bait is best fished slowly and thoroughly in high percentage fish holding areas as opposed to blind searching open water. Back eddies, current breaks, snags and undercut banks are all prime targets for these little baits. Another area we have found theses particularly effective is sight fishing. When you can get a well placed cast at a sighted fish, their natural appearance & presentation doesn’t often get rejected and we have experienced this first hand whilst sight casting to cruising carp in the clear waters of Lake Eildon.

 Strike tiger 1″ nymph and the 2″ hawg

CONSTRUCTION & FINISH

Soft plastics and their manufactures are always balancing a fine line between having the plastic compound being soft enough to give action to the lure yet, hard enough to be durable and stay on the hook. Strike Tiger seem to have found the perfect mix and the 1″ Nymphs along with their other plastics excel with both characteristics.

Taking a closer look at the nymph, it has a segmented tail which has a number of small legs (8 in total), it then joins to a slightly larger body section which contains more appendages, this time in the form of some larger “claws” and some very thin feelers which come alive in the water. It seems the guys at Strike Tiger managed to squeeze as much detail as you can into 1″ of molded plastic!

The plastics come packed neatly in a zip-lock style packet which is handy for those that prefer to keep their plastics in the original packaging for storage.

From the packets we have used, we have found all baits to be prefect out of the packet, not kinking or misshaping like some other types.

IN THE FIELD

We have given the 1″ nymph and its larger brother the 2″ hawg some good fishing time over the last 12 months and are happy with the results. Using creature baits is great in streams and more finesse applications in lakes, and casting very lightly weighted 1″ nymphs at surface feeding carp was great fun and a testament of how realistic these plastics look in the water.

CONCLUSION

While there is a huge choice of creature baits on the market today, the Strike Tiger 1″ Nymph is definitely up there in terms of quality, design and functionality. Its unique design has been tailored to suit our species and our catch rates seem to reflect this.

One thing that sets them apart from the competition is that Strike Tiger is a 100% Australian owned business that helps support our fishing community, definitely something to consider next time your in the tackle store.

PROS & CONS

WHERE TO BUY

The Strike Tiger 1″ Nymphs can be purchased online via the  Strike Tiger website or alternatively through most good tackle stores a list of stockists can be found here.