Saturday 29 July 2017

Lures for catching Anglers

As I look at my lures, I wonder are they for catching fish or anglers?!?


As you will know, as much as I love fishing, I really enjoy sorting through my tackle. I often get out my feeders, hooks and bits, and re sort them into my bags or on my shelves so they are ready for the next trip.
As I often fish for different species, I like to only take what I need. Although saying that, I always have visions of having Barbel gear on the Swale and seeing a 20lb Pike swim in front of me whilst I only have size 10 hooks and bait droppers!!
I recently heard a story where a friend was Roach fishing and had a huge Pike grab his Roach when bringing it in. He had no Pike gear on him, so had to run back to his car, gather all his Pike kit and attempt to catch the Pike. Obviously we all know how this story ends, so I will not continue..


This weekend, I am not fishing so I decided to sort my lures. I generally have two types; hard and soft. I have always had hard lures, plugs, spoons and jerkbaits but more recently soft plastics. I was introduced to soft plastics by Giles at AT Products and now tend to use them as often as hard lures.


As with everything, it is about confidence of use. I have caught Pike on Shakespeare Big S in Scotland, Fat Boy 110 on the Swale and Vibro shad on the Tees (Perch of course as I have never caught a Tees Pike).


I don't think I change lures often enough, recently when I was fishing with some lure specialists they were constantly changing lures to see what the Pike wanted. I stuck with a few lure choices, they missed 4 fish between them, I had no takes!


I also have thoughts on lure size, bigger is better will spring to mind, however I caught a lovely 8lb Pike in the canal on a tiny pin fry lure, making me think Pike will often target smaller prey too. I don't have many big lures, ones that resemble the size of fish I may try to catch! The large tailed jerk baits or the large soft plastic Roach and Trout are always lures I would like but then I see the price. I think as I develop my lure fishing I will invest in more but for now the below will suffice.


Now I have all my lures out, I will clean them and "service" them. That will entail cleaning off bits of weed and checking the hooks. You will see, most are armed with 2 or more trebles of various sizes and there has been many debates on the use of trebles verses single hooks. I will remove any old trebles and replace them with trebles on the front and single hooks at the back. It is easier to remove single hooks.



If you want to know about any lures, just ask in a comment




Oh, and of course he did not catch that huge Pike!!!



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