Why pay more for less

[Kelson]

Been looking through threads and noticed the big crave for hardbodied bream lures, $20+ a pop! Why? When you can go out and buy 2 packs of jigheads and 2 bags of plastic's at the same price as 1 hardbody lure.
What is your opinion. Does 1 hardbody overfish 2 bags of plastic's?

PS - Ignore the Avatar, used to be a hardbody fanatic. But, change of thought.

[forsterfisho]

I find hardbodies suit certain applications better. Slow rolling a hardbody along an oyster tray, walking a surface lure over an oyster rack or a sucken tree or a rock bar are all much easier and generally more effective than a soft plastic (although there are exceptions).
Leatherjackets are a real pain in the bum somedays, when they are out its far cheaper to fish hardbodies.

And nothing beats the solid crunch of a massive bream close to structure on a hardbody lure thrown deep into a snag


I do own over 100 packets of softplastics and 5 trays worth of hardbodies....so go figure

[cowancreekdave]

Reusability
Effective in the right applications
Easier and quicker to rig up than soft plastics
The surface variety (poppers, walkers) produce exciting surface action
Can troll with them
Resellability
I could go on..

[scope]

Its all about suitability for me.... Things like snaggy shallow rocks and the like often claim a heap of jigheads, where as the suspending hardbody will usually roll over them or bounce off them. In order to be a more rounded fisherman (which I'm definitely not) it would make sense to have a variety of Hbs, blades, plastics etc to suit any situation. I must admit it can be a pain paying top dollar for hb's though

[sammy]

sometimes you just nead a hard body like flicken for jacks up creeks were you dont want your lure on the bottem

[sammy]

but i am with you, hardbodys are way to over priced

[Perky]

They are both great styles of lures depending on what your doing. Pretty much agree with what most of the above posters said.

In terms of your questions does a hard body out fish two packets of plastics, i suppose sometimes they do, i have had a hardbody in my box that has seen the demise of plenty of packets of soft plastics and it is still going strong. But then again i have had other hard bodies that have seen the water first cast and decided that an underwater log was now home. I have probably had more of the latter. Any fish on a lure is a good fish, but there is just something special about a fish on a hardbody that i can't explain. So there will always be room for them in my tacklebox.

[snag]

Crankbait lures are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them.
As some people have alluded to crankbaits are better for certain area's or place or even time of the year.
Plastics are great dont get me wrong but when they dont work you need to be able to change lure types.

[Sav02]

show the fish something that appeals to them, dont care what i throw if its what the fish wants then so be it. there could be a school of bream pushing along a reef ledge chasing whitebait so why throw a little shrimp/worm etc immitation? fire out a jerk bait and fish it aggresively, fish might be sucking jelly prawns from under/behind a pontoon so fire in a unweighted prawn immitation match the hatch is the saying isnt it?

[Paps]

Both have their place.

Nothing beats a Bream belting a Hard Body

At the end of the day HBs are just so much cooler, better looking even if you're just window shopping at the tackle store

I use both and decide whats going to be most effective on the day, more often then not i'll go the HB just because I enjoy them more!

Cheers,
Michael.