With Christmas just around the corner Martin McGowan reflects on the lures that brought his most success this year...
All I want for Christmas is Lures!
What can you say, and what cant you say, about fishing lures these day. With so many out there, on the market, it’s hard to choose isn’t it? Different colours, sizes, weights, lengths. Ones with treble hooks ones with double and single hooks. You have long casting lures short casting lures, ones with holographic finishes, even ones that rattle.Ones that pop along the surface ones that dive just under the surface from depths of 1- 4ft, you have deep divers that will go down 30-40ft. They are plastic, hard and soft lures, ones that glow in the dark, even lures with lights in them, and scented lures.
I think you can see what I am trying to get across here, is the pickings are endless. This becomes a predicament and can also be a pain in the head. I think every lure angler goes out with the intention to have the best lures in his bag to boost success (I know I do). But the question you may ask yourself time and time again “is it the right variety of lures I have”?
Over the last 100 years technology has changed a lot. Lures are now designed with computers with the help from highly skilled professionals evolving into what lures are today. I think we have the Japanese to thank for that, as it’s laid the path to where we are now in relation to lures. It was in the mid -19th century fishing lures became a commercial venture. By the early 1900s, lures were being mass produced by Heddon and Pflueger who led the way in the United States.
I am going to go through some lures that I will not leave home without when I go lure fishing. Whether it be bass, Pollock or even wrasse you have to be in the right frame of mind, like I say “think like a fish to catch a fish” so have the lures that work for catching fish and not the angler. Here I have picked 3 category’s, three different types of lures, but the selection of lures in each category is endless. This is where you can pick your favourite colour.
Popper Lures
So let’s start from the top down, and by that I mean a surface lure, the popper. One of my favourite is the Storm Rattling Saltwater Chug Bug. A popper lure is buoyant; this in turn keeps it on the water’s surface. There are designed to pop, wobble, thud, jerk, jolt or fizz across the surface of the water. It can get you fish when other lures will let you down. Poppers are a lure that will test your lure fishing skills to the full. It’s not a case of cast out, Yawn, and reel in. You got to work it, make it come alive on the surface. Put on Santa’s list
Working a Popper
First off, cast you popper out that’s the easy bit. To make a popper work you will need to work it by twitching and jerking your spinning rod this will allow the lure to pop along the surface using its concave design to splash and splatter up bubbles of water. By doing this you are giving vibrations to and sending out a signal to any bass in the area of a distressed fish which is food to bass. That’s the idea behind the popper lures is that to a predator fish this type of lure looks and acts like a distressed fish. It comes down to the rod itself and whatever motion the angler applies though if skillfully used, they can be very effective.
Feed Shallow Diving lures
A shallow diving lure dives from 1ft to 4ft. You also have the medium diving lures which will go to 2m. Shallow divers are perhaps the most generally used lure for bass, my opinion anyway!
Shallow divers have evolved increasingly well over the year with the help of technology.
Today they are fashioned in some astonishing designs that look so life like, and move so naturally that fish find hard to resist.
Lures on the market today need a higher level of input from anglers, which in return makes the whole lure world more enjoyable. Put on Santa’s List
Working a Feed Shallow
A shallow diver is designed to fish just under the surface, to one or two meters. It gives you a great chance to fish where deep divers would normally get stuck and snagged in weed.
To fish a feed shallow lure is very simple just cast and retrieve. This can be made more exciting by varied retrieve, with twitches, stopping, retrieving fast than slow. The depth you fish the lure depends on how fast you retrieve it back to you.
Twitches could range from small movements of the rod tip, what I like to do is hold out a finger and having the line bounce of the finger as you reel, will create a nice twitching movement.
Of course you can now get the lures with small metal balls built into the lure which will give a quivering vibration affect when worked very slowly.
Remember that you are giving the bass the idea that your lure is an injured bait fish so it’s not a good idea to have it passing the bass at the speed of light.
Deep Divers
Deep divers will do what it says on the tin. A deep diver will go from 5ft to 20ft, so the selection is there for the picking. If you want to take it to the extreme, you also have the Mann’s G50+. This is the deepest diving lure available on the market or so they say. The Mann’s G50+ trawled at 4 miles per hour with 200 feet of 80 Pounds test line out, it will dive to a depth of 50 feet, even deeper on lighter line or super-braid.
Like I said “this is extreme”, and something you will not be doing from shore marks, for bass.
A deep diving lure is designed to reach a working depth quickly. These lures can come in useful, and can be used when the two lures mentioned above, have been tried and failed, on any given day. Deep divers can be used when fish are feeding near the bottom. Such as Reefs, sand banks and wrecks, where other shallow diving lures will not reach. Deep diving lures may not be the easiest to cast, nevertheless with braid and modern design’s its now achievable. Put on Santa’s List
There you have it, 3 lures; I always take alone with me when I go lure fishing. That’s not to say you don’t have other great lures out there. Something else I do quite a lot, is change the hooks as a lot of fine lure come with poor quality hooks. That’s enough from me; just want to leave you with this old saying.
“If you cast the wrong lure for long enough, it will soon become the right lure”
