Sea Fishing Lures

The main sea fishing lures for UK shore and boat fishing are hard plugs (including poppers and surface lures), soft plastics and jelly lures, metals (wedges, spoons, spinners and casting jigs), feathers, squid jigs and small LRF lures. Which one you clip on depends on the species, the depth you need to reach and how rough the ground is.

Most tackle shops display lures by brand, with very little on what each type actually does. This guide sorts them by job instead, matches them to bass, pollack, mackerel, wrasse, garfish, coalfish and squid, and finishes with the bass rules that apply to every lure angler. It sits within our wider lures hub.

The Main Types of Sea Fishing Lures at a Glance

Seven lure families cover almost every situation on the UK coast, and each has one weakness worth knowing before you buy.

Lure type	How it works	Best for	Watch out for
Hard plugs and minnows	A bib makes them dive to a set depth on a steady retrieve	Bass over sand, shallow reef edges and surf	At least two sets of treble hooks, so they snag more
Poppers and surface lures	Splash and disturbance on top	Bass in rough water and surf	Little use when fish are holding deep
Soft plastics and jelly lures	Fished weighted or unweighted, hook-up or weedless	Weedy and rocky marks, pollack, wrasse, bass	Tails get bitten off, so carry spares
Metals: wedges, spoons, spinners, casting jigs	Heavy for their size, flash and wobble	Distance, wind, mackerel, garfish, vertical jigging	Sink fast, so they find the bottom quickly over snags
Feathers	A string of five or six lures cast and drawn back	Mackerel shoals in summer	Several fish at once can overload a light rod
Squid jigs	Coloured body with two rows of upward-facing crown hooks	Squid after dark	Don’t strike, or you pull the jig out
LRF lures	Small soft lures and tiny metals on very light gear	Small species around harbours and rocks	Too light for surf or bigger fish

For your first three shore fishing lures, buy a metal, a soft plastic with a couple of jig heads or weedless hooks, and a shallow-diving plug. That covers distance, snags and clean shallows.

Hard Lures: Plugs, Minnows and Poppers

The lure that needs the least skill to fish properly is also the one most likely to end up stuck on the bottom.

Shallow-diving minnows and other diving plugs do the depth control for you. The bib on the front sets the running depth, so a steady retrieve keeps the lure at the same level every cast. That makes them a good search lure for bass over sand, along shallow reef edges and in the white water around surf.

Poppers and other surface lures work on noise. A sharp twitch of the rod tip makes them spit and splash, which pulls fish up in rough water and surf. Fish them at first light, the most productive window (see Colour, Light and Timing below).

The catch is the hooks. Most hard lures carry at least two sets of trebles, and over weed and rock those points find every snag going. If you keep losing plugs, see the hooks advice in Rod, Line, Leader and Hooks for Lure Fishing below.

There’s no single right weight: match the plug to your rod’s casting rating.

Quick comparison: plugs search clean, shallow ground quickly. Soft plastics win where weed and rock would eat your trebles.

Soft Plastics and Jelly Lures

One packet of soft plastics can fish a shallow kelp bed in the morning and a deep reef edge in the afternoon, because you change the weight and rigging while the lure stays the same.

Fish a soft plastic weighted or unweighted, with the hook point exposed or tucked in weedless. Rigging it so the hook sits upward also snags less.

The main shapes each have a job:

• Paddletail shads: the tail kicks on a slow retrieve, an all-round shape for bass and pollack.
• Sandeel imitations: a slim profile that matches one of the main bait fish around the UK coast.
• Slugs and stick baits: no built-in action, so you twitch them to life near the surface.
• Jelly eels: a long-standing sea fishing lure that still catches bass.

Use a lead-head jig when you need depth, such as pollack over reef. Use a weedless hook, weighted or not, for bass in shallow kelp. A texposed rig (the hook point buried just under the skin of the lure) suits wrasse holding among weed.

Match size and profile to what the fish are eating that week: sandeel, joey mackerel or fry.

Best for: weedy and rocky ground. Skip if: you need distance into a headwind. That’s the metal’s job.

Metal Lures: Wedges, Spoons, Spinners and Casting Jigs

The cheapest lures in your box are often the ones that reach the fish. Metals are inexpensive, tough enough to bounce over rocks, and heavy enough to punch out into an onshore wind that would stop a plug dead.

Wedges and casting jigs are built for distance and speed. Wind them back fast near the surface for mackerel and garfish, or let them sink and lift them in short sweeps for deeper fish.

Spoons and spinners rely on flash and vibration. A cheap mackerel spinner isn’t just for mackerel, either: bass take them too.

Metals are also the one family that works straight down. You can jig them vertically in deep water from a boat or a high pier wall, which is covered in Using Lures From a Boat below.

The verdict: keep a few metals of different weights in every sea lure box. They’re what you clip on when the wind gets up, the fish are out of range or the ground is too rough to risk a plug.

Feathers and Squid Jigs

Two specialist lures, two classic mistakes: overloading a light rod with mackerel, and striking at squid.

Mackerel feathers

Cast a string of five or six feathers and draw them back towards you. Change depth with retrieve speed or by counting the feathers down. Several fish at once can overload a light spinning rod, so use one rated for the weight. Our guide to the best mackerel feathers covers what to look for in a set.

Take only the mackerel you’ll eat, and check your local IFCA byelaws or our page on sea fish minimum sizes before you keep any.

Squid jigs

A squid jig has a coloured body and two rows of upward-facing crown hooks, usually barbless. Squid are caught after dark, typically on rods casting about 1oz (28g). Fish one in any of three ways:

1. Cast and retrieve it like a spinner.
2. Sink and draw: let it sink, then lift it with a few quick turns of the handle.
3. Suspend it under an adjustable float.

Don’t strike. Lift and reel smoothly so the crown hooks stay in.

LRF Lures: Small Soft Baits for Small Species

Some of the fish around a harbour wall are simply too small to take a standard sea lure, and LRF lures are scaled down to suit them.

Light rock fishing (LRF) means very light rods and line with small lures, fished for small fish around harbours, piers and rocks. Our LRF fishing guide covers the method in full.

LRF lures are mostly tiny soft plastics (worms, grubs and small shads) on light jig heads, plus small metals. Jig head weight depends on the depth, the tide and your rod’s rating. Use the lightest one that still reaches the bottom, because a lighter lure falls more slowly.

Wrasse, pollack, mackerel and garfish all feed around harbour walls and rocks, and the small ones are what LRF gear is built for.

Best for: small harbours and calm evenings. Skip if: you’re targeting bass in surf.

Which Lure for Which Species

Pick the species first and the lure choice narrows to two or three types. Conditions on the day still have the final say.

Species	Lures to try first	Where and when
Bass	Shallow plugs, surface lures, soft plastics, jelly eels, spinners	Surf, reef edges and estuaries, especially at dawn and dusk
Pollack	Soft plastics on jig heads, metals	Over reef and along kelp edges, or jigged vertically from a boat
Mackerel	Feathers, spinners, metals	Summer shoals from piers, rocks and beaches
Wrasse	Weedless or texposed soft plastics	Among rock and weed, close in
Garfish	Small metals and spinners	Worked high in the water
Coalfish	Soft plastics and metals	Similar ground to pollack
Squid	Squid jigs	After dark, around harbours and piers

For bass, see our bass lure fishing guide and our pick of the best bass lures. For pollack, our pollack fishing guide goes deeper on reef tactics.

Lures aren’t the whole story with bass: the biggest are almost always caught on bait. If a specimen is your goal, read our guide to sea fishing bait as well.

Colour, Light and Timing

When you fish matters more than the colour you choose.

The common rule of thumb is natural patterns in clear water, and brighter colours or lures with more vibration in coloured water. Treat it as a starting point, not proven science.

Timing has firmer backing. Dawn and dusk are the most productive times for sea lure fishing, and dawn tends to beat dusk. Stay mobile: changing lures and marks often catches more than flogging one spot.

In clear water, start with a natural-coloured soft plastic or sandeel-shaped plug. In coloured water, switch to a bright or noisy lure such as a popper or paddletail. If neither works, the fish have usually moved, not gone colour-blind.

Rod, Line, Leader and Hooks for Lure Fishing

A rod that can’t cast the lures you own, or line that frays on the first barnacle, costs more fish than any lure choice. Spec the outfit to the lures, not the brand.

• Rod: most shore spinning rods run 8 to 10ft. As examples, a 9ft rod might be rated 20 to 60g and a 10ft rod 40 to 80g. Choose a rating that covers the lures you use most.
• Reel: a fixed-spool reel in the 3000 to 4000 size bracket suits most UK shore lure fishing. Sizes aren’t standard between brands.
• Line: braid is thinner, casts further and has no stretch, but it handles rock and barnacles badly. Add a leader, usually fluorocarbon, matched in strength to the ground. Our shock leader knot guide shows how to join them.
• Hooks: trebles snag more. Many anglers swap them for single hooks or flatten the barbs, which makes unhooking and release quicker.

Over the worst ground, fish weedless soft plastics and cheap metals, and save plugs for cleaner water. For the trade-offs between line types, see braid vs mono.

Using Lures From a Boat

From a boat, depth replaces distance as the problem to solve, and the lure choice follows from that.

Metals jigged vertically work well in deep water. Feathers dropped down and worked up and down find mackerel shoals. Soft plastics on heavier jig heads, drifted over reef, are a standard approach for pollack and coalfish.

Weights vary a lot with depth and tide, so ask the skipper what the boat usually uses on that ground before you buy anything.

For a first boat trip, take a few metals and a pack of soft plastics with heavier jig heads, and let the skipper’s advice on the day decide the rest.

Bass Rules Every Lure Angler Needs to Know

Most UK sea lure fishing targets bass, and the bass rules are specific. Under the current GOV.UK bass fishing guidance, recreational anglers in ICES areas 4b, 4c, 6a, 7a and 7d to 7j must follow these limits:

Period	What you can do
1 February to 31 March	Catch and release only, by rod and handline, including from the shore
Rest of the year	Keep up to three bass per day
All year	Release any bass under 42cm (the minimum conservation reference size)

Bass nursery areas carry extra catch-and-release rules on top of these. In England, check your local IFCA byelaws. In Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, check with the relevant fisheries authority. The rules can change from year to year, so check GOV.UK before you fish. See also bass fishing regulations and fishing seasons.

Single or barbless hooks make releasing bass far quicker, which is one more reason for the hook swap above.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best sea fishing lures for beginners?

Start with three types: a metal for distance and wind, a soft plastic on jig heads or weedless hooks for snaggy ground, and a shallow-diving plug for clean, shallow water. Buy by type and casting rating, not brand.

What are the best shore fishing lures for bass?

Shallow-diving plugs, surface lures and soft plastics are the main shore fishing lures for bass, and jelly eels and spinners catch too. Fish them at dawn and dusk over surf and reef edges.

Can I keep a bass caught on a lure?

Only at certain times. From 1 February to 31 March, bass are catch and release only in ICES areas 4b, 4c, 6a, 7a and 7d to 7j, including from the shore. Outside that period you can keep three per day at 42cm or over. Check GOV.UK and your local IFCA byelaws first.

What size lure should I use for LRF?

Use small LRF lures: tiny soft plastics such as worms, grubs and small shads, or small metals. Fish them on the lightest jig head that still reaches the bottom in the depth and tide you're fishing, within your rod's casting rating.

Sources

• GOV.UK bass fishing guidance