Vinyl Is Final!

Nothing disappoints me more than to see a beautifully made lure head that has been incorrectly skirted to the point that the skirts will significantly impede the lure’s action. By impeding the action of your lure you’re going to get less bites, simple as that. While rubber octopus skirts definitely have their place with certain lure shapes and are available in a wide range of elaborate colours, those in the know will tell you that vinyl skirts are undoubtedly the best option on larger lures. On the flip side, you can enhance a lure’s action by choosing the right skirts and applying them correctly.

With this in mind, all shapes in the TANTRUM Lures Large and XL range are custom skirted with hand-cut vinyl (with the exception of the Large Bullet). Here are our top five reasons why you shouldn’t look past vinyl skirts.

One of the major benefits of vinyl skirts on big aggressive lures is that they create a more dense bubble or “smoke” trail. This phenomenon is caused by the rough under-side of the vinyl – each time the lure comes up to the surface to pop or push water the rough texture of the vinyl grabs more air than the slick texture of most rubber skirts.

Vinyl skirts are much lighter than most rubber octopus skirts that are available to us. Rubber skirts can bog down a lure head’s action whereas vinyl can enhance it. When we skirt a lure with vinyl, we use the light-weight but durable material as the outer skirt then strategically place individual strands of rubber inner skirt resulting in a perfectly balanced lure that will run to the absolute best of its ability.

When we tie on the vinyl skirts to our lure heads it results in a perfectly streamlined transition from the lure head to the skirt. Often rubber skirts will result in an unsightly bulge where the lure head transitions to the skirt – this can have a very negative impact on the lures action and one of the main reasons we opt for vinyl.

Vinyl skirts and the strands of rubber inner skirts we use are stiffer than most octopus style skirts. Additionally, the vinyl system results in less overall skirt strands than with octopus skirts. This greatly reduces the chance of the skirts becoming tangled in themselves or in the hook rig. This is especially important for those who prefer to use double hook rigs as the leading hook is the most likely to get tangled.

Vinyl skirts are a lot more durable than most rubber skirts. While they won’t necessarily withstand an attack from toothy critters like wahoo, they will last much longer and will not shrink or curl up like a lot of octopus skirts can.