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I assume that there are plenty of people out there who, like me, have never ventured into this increasingly popular aspect of our sport. So it seemed quite a good idea to give a blow by blow account of how I made my first faltering steps into this brave new world. I will not be attempting to baffle people with clever talk – indeed, as I mentioned earlier, I wouldn’t know how too. What I will do, however, is give an honest appraisal of how I fared. So in advance, I make no apologies for my lack of knowledge on the subject. In fact I hope my total lack of understanding will be what makes the articles interesting.
Please feel free to comment……The Forum is at your disposal!
Beginning Lure fishing – Part 1
Changing my Perceptions
To me, lure fishing has never had any appeal. The thought of chucking a lump of plastic or wood over and over again in the hope that something would be daft enough to grab hold of it didn’t make any sense. Surely a nice fresh deadbait or a well presented livebait would always be more effective. This is an opinion that has stayed with me for all of my pike fishing days. Yes, occasionally I have had a few casts without much thought using one of my pitiful collection of artificials, but I have usually given up after half a dozen casts or so, bored and uninspired.
I continued to read the usual specialist magazines such as ‘Pike and Predator’ and ‘Coarse Fisherman’ but like a lot of people every time I came across an article on lure fishing I just skipped past it, rarely turning back the pages to read the content. The amount of articles extolling the virtues of lure fishing continued to increase and still the penny didn’t drop. I had made my mind up, lure fishing was dull and ineffective, I didn’t need to read all that rubbish about various colours, patters, rates of retrieve, etc. It was all just a con; my half mackerel would do the business – no problem.
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Last year I spent a weekend in Glasgow in the company of some tremendously successful pike anglers, people I had known a long time and had the utmost respect for. These guys had set me on the path of specialist angling many years ago and at the time I remember they were all out and out bait fisherman. As the drink flowed and the tales of epic battles began to increase it slowly dawned on me that they were talking with child-like enthusiasm about bits of plastic and lumps of wood. Surely these former role models hadn’t fallen into the trap of reading the glossies and believing all this rubbish about lures?
I questioned them intensely, and to a man they all said that since lures had become another part of their armoury their catches had increased. I looked at their faces as they spoke, looking for a hint of a smile (pike anglers are the biggest piss-takers I know and would think nothing of making me spend a fortune on rubbish gear), but no, they were serious. Stubbornly I refused to let it sink in, truth being I didn’t fancy it. Even as I was being told of how one particular angler had almost given up on one of his local waters before trying lures and taking the place apart I was dismissing it, probably because I didn’t want to believe it. After all, it’s much easier during inclement weather to sit under a brolly, drinking tea and reading a magazine whilst waiting for a bobbin to drop off than to be walking around the lake all day.
And so my mind was made up, I was not a lure angler and never would be. Pike are opportunist feeders that loath to use excess energy and as such a big girl would take a deadbait rather than chase a meal every time. So what about the pictures in the weeklies, big fish caught on artificials, well they were just flukes weren’t they, one-off’s that didn’t deserve scrutiny……..who was I kidding …….myself maybe ?
Anyway, one evening when sat at home something happened that would force me to change my stubborn preconceptions. Something was about to happen that would drag me screaming and kicking into one of the few aspects of this sport that I had never tried with any real conviction. The phone rang……
It was a friend of mine, Eric Edwards. Eric happened to be one of the guys I had spent the weekend in Glasgow with and unlike me had no pre-set ideas about pike fishing. He was equally at home with all aspects of the sport and would alternate between lives, deads and lures depending on what he felt would be the most productive on the day. Eric is no stranger to big fish, a former holder of the British tench record and one of the first guys to discover and catch one of the monster bream from Queenford lagoon. He has had the odd decent pike as well, culminating in a tremendous fish of 38-12 from Lough Mask in Western Ireland, truly a fish of a lifetime.
Eric explained that he had a boat booked for 8 days fishing on Blithfield Reservoir in Staffordshire, was looking for a boat partner and did I fancy joining him? Well, I didn’t need asking twice and it was after I had agreed that he dropped the bombshell. The fishing was with lures only. Now on any other water I would have probably changed my mind there and then. ‘Thanks, but no thanks mate, not my scene.’ But with an opportunity such as this, that would have been stupid of me. After all there is a genuine possibility that you could at some time during the eight days cast a lure over a British record fish. How many times can an angler from the Northwest of England say that ?
I agreed to join him and from that moment on, I knew that if I were to have any success at all, I would have to reappraise my whole outlook on lure angling. I would have to take the whole thing seriously. As well as having the right attitude I would need to buy some ‘proper’ gear. Before I could even contemplate a selection of lures I would need to acquire new rods, reels, braid, etc. I had to learn fast; the first two of my eight days fishing was only 4 weeks away.
It was time to dig out all the old articles on lure fishing that I had never read. Thankfully I don’t throw away old copies of magazines and now I had some serious reading to do. The attic was raided and a huge pile of magazines were brought downstairs, much to my wife’s annoyance. But I was on a mission now, over the next two weeks I intended to read everything I could before I bought any equipment. Suddenly it dawned on me; I was getting quite excited about the whole idea of lure fishing.
Beginning Lure Fishing – Part 2 – Getting the Right Gear.
