Predator Anglers Can’t Ignore Lures

If you’re into predator fishing there’s no way you can ignorelures these days.

You’ll miss out on a lot of fish and a lot of fun if you do, it’sas simple as that. But there’s slightly more to it than forking outon a few shiny things and giving them a good dunking though. Ifyou’ve only ever bait fished, beware – steep learning curveahead.

It felt a bit weird the first time I left my beloved bait rods athome. Not to mention the rucksack, cool box, chair, bite alarms,banksticks, brolly, rig bins, tackle boxes, stove, kettle, food – andthe kitchen sink.

It felt even weirder standing by the drain with a just a 9ft lurerod and a landing net for company. For reasons I won’t go into I’ddecided I was going to learn to lure fish.

Not give it a few trips and give up like I did the year before.And the year before that. Not chuck a few Rapalas around for an hour,decide they aren’t feeding and head for the nearest pub.

This time I was going to stick at it until I got the hang of it.This time it was personal.

One of the things which had always put me off before was the cost.No way was I going to fork out hundreds of quid on the latest in rodand reel, let alone a boxfull of jerkbaits at £ 20 a throw.

Twenty quid was all the rod cost me, after a hard luck story downthe tackle shop that would have put the last few England managers toshame. I probably spent around the same on half a dozen lures, afterseveral evenings reading books and magazines, and leafing through theHarris Angling catalogue.

Apart from the fact I didn’t catch a thirty the first time I triedit out, it all went more or less to plan. I started catching almoststraight away, although by and large the fish were smaller than theaverage stamp I’d expect to pull on deadbaits.

This aside I rarely seemed to blank. On one “hard” drain where tworuns in a day is an event, I found I could reliably catch every time.It’s obvious why. You cover so much more water, you’re bound to finda fish sooner or later.

I also found I was fishing swims I wouldn’t have rated worth a trywith baits.

This is only half the story though.

Lure fishing gives you so many permutations when it comes topresentation. If they don’t want it one way, you can completely alteryour attack by clipping a different lure on. You can literally tryhalf a dozen different approaches in as many casts, or you can tweakthe way you fish a particular lure until you tune into the rightwavelength.

Take a lure like your average floating/diving Rapala. Like mostvaned lures, you can vary the depth it runs at by altering the speedof your retrieve. Speed up and it dives deeper. Slow down and itfishes nearer the top. Throw in a few stops and starts, coupled withtaps and jerks with the rod tip and it flashes and darts like aninjured fish.

Within a couple of trips, I’d graduated from casting the lure andcranking it back to trying different depths and actions. Each lurehas its repertoire of things it can do, so it’s worth exhaustingthese before you reach in the box for another one.

None of the fish we caught were big. I say we now because by thispoint I’d discovered Rick, one of my regular fishing mates wasanother closet lure angler, so we teamed up.

Just about everything that came along was between two and sixpounds, the sort of fish we’d often dismiss as a nuisance baitfishing. But I was starting to enjoy my fishing more than I had inages.

It might have been hard work but I felt like I’d earned everyfish. It’s a lot more interesting setting off after them than sittingthere waiting for them to come to you.

It’s also pretty interesting trying to master a new method whenyou’ve been stuck in a rut as long as I have, come to that.

It wasn’t all plain sailing by a long chalk, though. I was alsohitting a few problems. It sounds silly looking back, but casting wasone of the major ones.

It gets pretty windy round here in the winter and a lot of thedrains and rivers we fish are open and exposed. While a lot of takesdo come within a few yards of the bank, there are also times when youend up seriously weakening your chances if you can’t cast lures whereyou want them to go.

I hadn’t thought of this one when I bought my first few lures, soit was back to the drawing board – or rather the tackle shop.Checking the recommended casting range on my rod showed it was bestsuited to lures in the 20 – 50g range.

Most of the baits in my box weighed in at under 20g, so I madesure the next lot were a bit heavier. Obviously I’d have saved myselfa bit of time and money if I’d done this to start with as the chap inthe tackle shop helpfully pointed out.

Learning curves can be even crueller than tackle dealers. I fellin love with my first Super Shad Rap. It looked the business andbetter still it cast like a bullet. Or it did the first few times,until the trace swivel broke and I watched it take off on itsinaugural solo flight.

I’d never broken a swivel in my life before that. Not on a fish,not even on a snag, not ever. The pain from the back pocket atwatching £ 10.99 floating off down the Ouse was tempered withrelief I hadn’t hooked a pike and left two 1/0 trebles and a lump offish-shaped balsa in its mouth.

Going back to the root of the problem, it was a 40lb-rated swiveland I’d only used the trace once, a few days earlier, in a shortsession which had produced a couple of eight pounders. Think aboutit: During a few hours’ lure fishing, you can easily cast more timesthan your average deadbaiter does in a season.

Chuck an ounce or two of weight around three or four hundred timesin an afternoon and the strain starts to tell on traces, line andconnections. They have to be top notch, stepped up kit, it’s assimple as that. And they need to be changed every trip, not used forhalf a season.

If you usually use a bog standard seven stranded trace wire forbait fishing, step up to something robust like QED for lures. Fisharen’t put off by it.

I also changed from my usual snap locks to Spinlinks, which arestrong and foolproof. At least I’d been sensible and chosen braid formy reel line, or so I told myself. I found some 30lb Fireline lyingaround and spooled one of my Baitrunners up with it.

I’ve had Fireline on other reels more than two years and it’sstill as sound as a pound. Five or six months luring and it’scompletely cream crackered. Give braid its due you can do amazingthings with it. You can feel a lure hit a snag or weedbed and pauseto allow it to back up out of danger. You can tell if the bottom’smud or gravel, or whether you’ve got a fish on the end or you’vepicked up some weed or bottom debris.

And without the stretch in nylon you can feel every take and hitthem hard enough to set the hooks, or so the theory goes. So how comeI missed so many then..?

One of the best investments I made was a £ 2 hook sharpeningstone. I carry it in my pocket and touch the points up every time Ichange lures. It isn’t just that some lures have sub-standard hooks.And believe you me some do. Even sharp hooks soon get blunted andyou’ll bounce fish off unless you sharpen them regularly.

I probably missed or lost a fish for every two or three I landedwhen I started out. A couple of bumps on the rod tip and they werehistory. Sharpening the hooks cut that down dramatically. Being thefussy, fish-friendly guy I am, I didn’t like the look of the hooks onsome of my new wave bigger lures either. So I changed them forlighter-guage, finer-wired patterns and gave myself a little pat onthe back.

I learned to be a bit more realistic during an unusually good dayon the Middle Level. For the first time in my life, I caught fivefish in five casts. I couldn’t believe it. Five fish in a day was aresult on this drain, five in five casts was a bit like having halfof All Saints on your doorstep begging to marry you, ie not the sortof thing that normally happens to blokes like me.

Before the trip I’d changed the hooks on the lure, replacing themwith some sharp,fine wire trebles. I had to bend a prong of the rearhook back into shape after I clumsily hand landed fish four and five- but hey, life was good and I was on a roll. I realised this wasn’tthe most sensible thing I’d ever done when fish number six came alongin a great big swirl the size of your dining room table that screamedI’m A Twenty.

Ping went something and the line went slack. The air went bluerthan the top shelf of the newsagents. The lure was still attached buta point had broken clean off the rear treble. Guess which one…

I’m still smarting over that one so let’s change the subject. Howabout landing nets..? I started out lure fishing with my good oldfaithful 42″ micromesh. D’oh… Time and again I ended up cuttinghooks out of it. It happens to all of us from time to timedeadbaiting, but you’re using barbless hooks then.

No way was I ruining a net, so I dug out an old 36″ net anddecided I’d press on with that. Cutting a couple of trebles out issmall beer compared to what happened next. I managed my firstlure-caught double on Boxing Day, despite a hangover the size ofWales. As I bent down a steep bank to net it, a flying hook snaggedthe mesh, the fish spun up and literally smashed the net to bits as Ilifted it clear of the water.

Rick ended up helping me cut an angry twelve pounder out of aslimy rolled up mass of netting. Not big, not clever. To the rescuecome Harris Angling, who sell special lure nets made of wider meshyou can’t snag hooks in. They sound just the job. They’re also adifferent shape to your bog-standard triangular/bow net and you can’ttake the handles off, so buying the biggest size (like you do…) Iended up with a net so big it takes half the car up.

Unhooking gear is also worth a mention. Forget your forceps, theydon’t give a good enough grip to turn bigger trebles out of fish.Needle-nosed pliers are the answer and you can pick them up for acouple of quid in most DIY shops.

Reliable heavy-duty wire cutters are also worth their weight ingold when you get an awkwardly hooked fish. They’ll go through a hookor split ring, so you can get the lure out of the way and get thefish unhooked and back in the water faster.

Spare trebles and split rings are also a must, so you can makerunning repairs to lures.

I started off with a £ 20 rod. I’ve now realised a £ 20rod generally fishes, well, like a £ 20 rod. Being composite(glass/carbon…) it’s got a softish action. That means it’s fine forsmaller lures and waters, but lacks the backbone you need to workbigger lures or reliably hook fish on them.

Stick on a jointed Rapala and the rod top rattles as it wiggles.Stick on a Shad Rap and you have to play it in. Stiffer was theobvious word which sprang to mind, so I’ve just forked out £ 40on a classy little graphite number, which will probably do just fineuntil I get fed up with it and buy something else.

If you haven’t already tried lure fishing yet, you’ve got to. It’sa lot of fun and it can be as cheap and cheerful or as costly andcomplicated as you want it to be.

While it’s turned us into confirmed jack bashers, there’s nodenying some very big fish get caught on lures (although not usuallyby us…).

Whether you end up with a single or a thirty I guarantee one thing- you’ll have a good crack learning it.