SPOONMINNOW
Member
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2016
- Messages
- 257
As everyone has gathered from my posts, soft plastics have caught hundreds of fish this year and in previous years. Crankbaits, skirted jigs with trailers, blade baits (spinnerbaits, Mepps, tail spins, etc.) not so much. It's not that they don't catch fish but that my addiction-to-the-strike requires I use lures that have the highest probability of getting hit and that up the numbers on my belt counter.
Granted, most are smaller fish, but a decent percentage are brag worthy considering the average population is on the small side due to the bucket brigade that keeps everything from the various lakes I fish.
Other than lure diversity are the various fish location patterns I found throughout the year for the first time. The easiest are pre-spawn and just posts-spawn locations. Find shallow water with emerging weeds and catch fish with eyes closed. Once fish move under heavy vegetation or out to deeper water, the hunt begins. I used to fish deep large lakes (Greenwood Lake, N.J. and large upstate lakes in N.Y.), but boat traffic and high winds got annoying even fishing from a bass boat. (...one of the reasons I no longer fish bass tournaments.) Small waters still offer deep structure and cover pattern-diversity besides which, downsizing to a 12' V is easier to launch and take out on less-than-Ideal launches.
Sonar is a must and I'd be lost without it. Nothing sophisticated like those forward-facing units, but 2d color units tell me everything I need to know - including the lure types I can use to cover the most water efficiently in an area. Lures are our seek & destroy tools that find semi-active fish willing to come out and play pissing them off enough to attack creatures they've never seen or felt (via the lateral line).
Do fish remember lures they've been caught on? Do other fish avoid lures they've seen other fish caught on? Maybe one in a thousand, but generally speaking, logic is not a fish's strong suit. They are more like children throwing a temper tantrum, not realizing the possible sudden, negative consequences of their actions. Plus, as I've always maintained: fish are bullies and bullies don't have to be on the feedbag to do stupid things (i.e. a big oaf attacking a short ninja warrior, LOL).
The nicest thing about lures is the way they get inactive fish to become active. I've cast a lure to a spot 2x and gotten fish to hit on the 3rd cast. Getting many fish in an area to attack is common in the lakes I fish. example: In one case I found fish in the shallower north end and also parallel to a straight shoreline off of flats that came way out. Fish were caught in numbers in those locations, in 6 FOW for 3 days. Bet they'd still be hitting there. These fish weren't feeding to my knowledge.
But in another lake, I know fish were feeding from their splashes and wakes as they herded minnows. Again, a no-brainer when it comes to active fish. A. In the first case - slow-with-pauses of lures that could be kept in place longer; B. In the second example, noisy faster lures - including surface lures - got bit just as good as those slow finesse lures. The question I always ask myself is: what lure(s) match a fish's susceptibility for that time and place. It could be a lure's slight action parts that say: come hither if you dare! Other lures thump fish's senses and dare fish on a different stimulus level. The former may be the only lures that work; the latter allows most lures to work - within reason.
Presentation always matters and it involves many considerations that allow lures to do their thing a certain way in certain places. Most of you know what they are.
It's always a pleasure contributing ideas and suggestions on jc.com that may be useful if not at least interesting to fellow lure-o-philes.
A SD forum I used to post on got old via the few that ridiculed my ideas with sarcasm and personal insults. Open minded anglers not susceptible to advertising in the fishing media are hard to find. Consideration of new ideas is more common in fish than in many humans such as a fish thinking:
May as well slam that funky-looking. moving object that came from who knows where ?!.
Granted, most are smaller fish, but a decent percentage are brag worthy considering the average population is on the small side due to the bucket brigade that keeps everything from the various lakes I fish.
Other than lure diversity are the various fish location patterns I found throughout the year for the first time. The easiest are pre-spawn and just posts-spawn locations. Find shallow water with emerging weeds and catch fish with eyes closed. Once fish move under heavy vegetation or out to deeper water, the hunt begins. I used to fish deep large lakes (Greenwood Lake, N.J. and large upstate lakes in N.Y.), but boat traffic and high winds got annoying even fishing from a bass boat. (...one of the reasons I no longer fish bass tournaments.) Small waters still offer deep structure and cover pattern-diversity besides which, downsizing to a 12' V is easier to launch and take out on less-than-Ideal launches.
Sonar is a must and I'd be lost without it. Nothing sophisticated like those forward-facing units, but 2d color units tell me everything I need to know - including the lure types I can use to cover the most water efficiently in an area. Lures are our seek & destroy tools that find semi-active fish willing to come out and play pissing them off enough to attack creatures they've never seen or felt (via the lateral line).
Do fish remember lures they've been caught on? Do other fish avoid lures they've seen other fish caught on? Maybe one in a thousand, but generally speaking, logic is not a fish's strong suit. They are more like children throwing a temper tantrum, not realizing the possible sudden, negative consequences of their actions. Plus, as I've always maintained: fish are bullies and bullies don't have to be on the feedbag to do stupid things (i.e. a big oaf attacking a short ninja warrior, LOL).
The nicest thing about lures is the way they get inactive fish to become active. I've cast a lure to a spot 2x and gotten fish to hit on the 3rd cast. Getting many fish in an area to attack is common in the lakes I fish. example: In one case I found fish in the shallower north end and also parallel to a straight shoreline off of flats that came way out. Fish were caught in numbers in those locations, in 6 FOW for 3 days. Bet they'd still be hitting there. These fish weren't feeding to my knowledge.
But in another lake, I know fish were feeding from their splashes and wakes as they herded minnows. Again, a no-brainer when it comes to active fish. A. In the first case - slow-with-pauses of lures that could be kept in place longer; B. In the second example, noisy faster lures - including surface lures - got bit just as good as those slow finesse lures. The question I always ask myself is: what lure(s) match a fish's susceptibility for that time and place. It could be a lure's slight action parts that say: come hither if you dare! Other lures thump fish's senses and dare fish on a different stimulus level. The former may be the only lures that work; the latter allows most lures to work - within reason.
Presentation always matters and it involves many considerations that allow lures to do their thing a certain way in certain places. Most of you know what they are.
It's always a pleasure contributing ideas and suggestions on jc.com that may be useful if not at least interesting to fellow lure-o-philes.
A SD forum I used to post on got old via the few that ridiculed my ideas with sarcasm and personal insults. Open minded anglers not susceptible to advertising in the fishing media are hard to find. Consideration of new ideas is more common in fish than in many humans such as a fish thinking:
May as well slam that funky-looking. moving object that came from who knows where ?!.
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