Lure Fishing Today – Part 2

He is President of the Lure Angling Society, and President of the National Association of Specialist Anglers.

You may feel that it is getting a bit late in the season for lure fishing, but you couldn’t be more wrong. My own best-ever catch (on anything, not just lures) came in December, all on one spoon (or, nearly all on one spoon).

In Lure Fishing Today – Part 1 I tried to lay the foundations – what you need to have if just taking up lure fishing or if you are a relative beginner and struggling a bit. In this article I want to chuck you in the deep end!

I want, first, to make a very small digression. Since my last article I have been contacted by several anglers who question my advice on joining the Lure Angler’s Society or the Pike Angler’s Club, saying “Is it really necessary? Surely we can just do our own thing. We’re not clubby types.”

Well, of course you can do you own thing, but believe me, joining the LAS or PAC or both will forward your lure fishing so much more quickly that you’ll wonder why on earth you hesitated. It’s not a great cost – the price of two or three big lures – but it repays tenfold in results. And, in the same vein, do contact the Harris Angling Company because Sue and Chris Harris really do know their stuff: they’ll help you as well as sell you gear. That off my chest let’s move on…

Okay, so we want some results. Step number one is to get some spinnerbaits! These are not expensive, and if I recommend to you Masterline’s ‘Barrie’s Buzzer’ I want you to realise that I do not get a kick-back from this! Although they bear my name and, along with Bruce Vaughan, I was instrumental in getting spinnerbaits launched in the UK, I have to buy ‘Barrie’s Buzzers’ just as you do.

Spinnerbaits work on almost all waters. I find them superb on drains, canals and small rivers, and on shallow, weedy gravel pits. You can fish them using only the single hook provided (in weeds, lilies and snags for example) or you can add a stinger treble. The latter are easy to add. Push the eye of the treble over the point and barb and round the bend of the single. Then force on a piece of tough rubber round the bend as well. This will prevent the treble hook coming adrift.

Those people who advocate using only single hooks in piking could do well to try spinnerbaits using single and then trebles. They will find that three to four times as many fish come adrift quickly, on singles.

We are at that time of year now when lily beds have all but disappeared. If you are just into spinnerbaits, or haven’t tried them yet, then take a ‘Barrie’s Buzzer’ or two, single hook only, down to your lily patches and try them out. Don’t cast around the edges of the lily beds, cast into them.

The ideal situation is where the lily leaves have a few inches of water between them – and I do mean a few inches, not a few feet. Let the lure sink amongst the pads and then begin an unhurried retrieve, sink and draw style. Of course, it will snag up regularly, but a little jerk will free it, and these very movements pull pike. Should you come to patch of solid lily leaves, with no free water, slide the spinner bait over the top of them – the pike will follow along underneath, and will hit the lure the moment it sinks again. Heady stuff. Sometimes they’ll come up through the solid mass of lily leaves, heaving them to one side. They know where the lure is, make no mistake.

Another way of spinnerbaiting lily pads is to find a gap, close to the bank, and simply lower the spinnerbait in, and then jiggle it up and down slowly, making it throb. I showed this on my video ‘Success with the Lure’ and people were rather surprised! You can also fish spinnerbaits off bridges in exactly the same way of course.

The waters where spinnerbaits are not quite so spectacularly successful, at least for me, are very large, deep gravel or clay pits, reservoirs and big rivers. On those waters they seem no better than other lures – or worse, either.

The next successful lure to consider is the jerkbait. This works on all waters, small or large. As with all lure fishing there is no substitute for having enough lures. Let’s face it, the basic rod and reel don’t cost much so you might as well buy a good fistful of jerkbaits. I wouldn’t go jerkbaiting without at least half a dozen of my favourites – mostly made by Loz Harrup in fact.

After a few trips you do realise that the rod I recommend for lure fishing in general is not quite man enough for the job, and ditto the line. If you get really hooked on jerkbaiting I’d opt for braid around 60lbs, a robust trace of similar B.S. and a stiffer, tougher rod. You can use 3lb TC pike rods – I often have myself – but a custom-built jerkbait rod (by Harris Angling Co or Dave Lumb) is better. And you might start to think, then, about you first multiplier reel. I’ll deal with these in a future article.

But for the moment I just want to say that if you set out as outlined to spinnerbait and jerkbait, you may well surprise yourself with a whopper or two.

If I can end on a personal note. After two absolutely cracking seasons, I’ve just gone through a very slow summer with only two good lure fish to show, of 10 1/2 lbs and 20 1/2 lbs. Plenty of smaller ones though, so perhaps the best is yet to come…..