How to Rig Plastic Squid Lures
so They'll Catch More Fish!

Plastic Squid Lures, or Plastic Muppets as we call them in the UK, are moulded lures designed to imitate a small squid, much like a miniature version of a skirted trolling lure.

They’re most frequently fished on a paternoster-style rig and jigged vertically in the water over a deep-water wreck, or broken ground where cod and pollack will attack them enthusiastically.

All boat anglers should have a selection of these in their tackle box.

Like all soft-plastic lures, they soon get beaten up after a fish or two, but they're fairly inexpensive, so having a number of them in various colours and sizes shouldn't break the bank.

Fishing with Plastic Squid Lures

Most anglers would choose to use no more than three, together with a metal jig performing both as a lure and a sinker - like a Dexter Wedge or other metal jig.

Here one is shown attached to a dropper loop, but there is a better way as you'll see a little further down on this page.

If you keep getting hooked up, replace the metal jig with a pear lead on a rotten bottom. You'll be less likely to get snagged, but even if you do - and end up having to pull for a break - it will be cheaper!

Rigging a Plastic Muppet

First make up the rig with dropper loops, as in the illustration above, tying them quite long – around 4 inches (100mm) or so.

Having done this most anglers would simply attach the hook with a cow-hitch by pushing the loop through the eye of the hook, and then passing the hook point through the loop and pulling it up tight to the eye - that’s a cow-hitch.

Then, they'd push the hook point through the nose and continue to thread the hook through the lure until the eye of the hook was concealed inside its head.

There, job done - but not very well ...

No? Why's that then? Well, it looks fine until it’s been in the water for a while, after which time the drag of the water will have pulled the plastic squid lure over the hook eye leaving it bunched up around the bend of the hook. Then, in the unlikely event of a fish taking a grab at it, it’ll pull back through the hole and it’s goodbye plastic squid lure and no fish, to the intense disappointment of all involved.

After all, if the hole in the nose was large enough to push the hook right through when rigging it, it'll come as no surprise that it’s still large enough when the hook is on its way back out.

A Better Way of Rigging a Plastic Muppet

All was well until the point at which the angler cow-hitched the hook on. What he should have done first was:~

• Made a small hole through the nose with a sewing needle - or better still a hot wire, which would seal the edge of the hole - then pushed the loop through the hole (which may not be quite as easy as it sounds), threaded on a small bead and cow-hitched the hook as before.
  
  The bead will then sit nicely inside the head preventing the hook from pulling through and leaving the hook-point about two-thirds of the way back, where it should be.

Or better still …

• After tying the dropper loop and before doing anything else, snip off one part of the loop close to the knot, leaving a short tag end.
  
  This converts the loop to a stand-off snood of around 8 inches (200mm) or so. Then carry on much as before, threading on the plastic squid lure, then the bead and finally connecting the hook with a uni-knot if it has a straight eye, or a snood knot if it hasn't.

Now you can rightfully say - ‘Job Done!’









Well almost. An alternative to the dropper loop approach to making a snood is the arrangement shown here. A swivel, a couple of beads and a circular section sleeve crimped on either side to locate it in place.

Artwork by Andrew Simpson

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