Soft plastics made softer

[Oldfart9999]

We all know, "the softer the soft plastic the more action". There are several ways to add action to your soft plastic baits;
1. The night before you head out dip the baits in boiling water for a few seconds, a few seconds only or you have plastic tea, then lay them out straight and flat to cool, bag them up and they'll stay soft for a couple days. Just do what you think you'll need. By the way, it's a good way to straighten those baits like worms or lizards or lon creatures that became bent in their packaging.
2. Take the baits you are using and and lay them on the deck in the sun, the sun's heat will soften them for you. You may want to put them in a ziplock bag of their own and put some scent in it to marinade them for a tsaty meal for the bass.
Rodney   

[Bassinkorea]

Some nice ideas Rodney   

[SteveTX]

I use the boiling water to straighten some soft plastics also. I usually use a pair of tongs like you pick hot dogs up with to hold them in the water. And for me it sometimes takes 20 to 30 seconds to get thicker badly bent baits to straighten out. I just lay them on a paper towel the way I want them to dry and they are good as new.

[SteelHorseCowboy]

Good tip!
I want to point out though, that some bait marinades, specifically Berkley's "GULP! ALIVE", may be completely incompatible with some brands of soft baits and some brands of ziploc bags.
It will melt some of them like acid, as quickly as within a few hours to overnight, and leave others completely unharmed.
I haven't gone into detailed experimenting to figure out which are safe and which are not, my experimenting was accidental with two different brands of bag and two different brands of bait.
Great Value bags (Walmart store brand), and Ziploc brand bags. One melted, the other didn't, can't remember which.
The baits were two brands of similar craws. I can't remember which brand either of them were, but I do remember it was a curious circumstance that neither one was Berkley.

Edited to add:
I DO remember the unharmed craws were watermelon seed christie craws.
The others were a slightly lighter green with chartreuse tips on the claws.

[bassmedic46]

I did put some plastics on my deck yesterday and they became a lot softer. Have them marinating now. Great tip.

[big g]

Too soft and they don't stay on the hook very well.  I'd like to soften the tail and harden the head.

[SteveTX]

Too soft and they don't stay on the hook very well.  I'd like to soften the tail and harden the head.

Use screw lock hooks and the bait will stay on just fine.

[Bud Kennedy]

Use screw lock hooks and the bait will stay on just fine.

Yep +1

[basss]

Use screw lock hooks and the bait will stay on just fine.

Ditto, all of my soft baits get keepers.