Lost Blog – Back on the lures
I was doing some tidying up, well digital tidying (I don’t get my hands dirty) and going through some old articles and I found this blog which for some reason I hadn’t uploaded at the time which would have been Octoberish 2018 – So here it is in its belated form enjoy! – Oh and I also had PB lure caught Bream!
Back on the lures
I love lure fishing, stand up lure fishing from a boat is by far my favourite method of pike fishing. You are active all day and can cover a vast amount of water, and on the right day, you can catch a lot of fish. However I know it’s not a method that everyone is comfortable with, it’s not easy and can put considerable strain on your body. A lot of people complain about bad backs or shoulders after a days casting, this is exasperated when casting the “big stuff”, Replicants, Dawgs and the like. I usually don’t suffer too much with this, it is always my feet that hurt! Which is weird because I don’t use feet for casting! I think it’s the standing around in a rocking boat that gets me, it gets worse when you have a hyperactive boat partner that can’t decide which side of the boat to stand on!
However, this year I managed two days before my shoulder started hurting! Now I have had shoulder injuries before and I could tell it was same ligament type damage as last time so I have had to ease off a bit. The fact the last time the doctor said if it happened again I would have to have an operation made that decision a bit easier, though I find it ironic that I can flat bench 160 kg but a couple of day’s casting lures injures my shoulder! How is that right!
It wasn’t too bad though as I did manage a couple of twenties before the self-imposed lay-off. One of which I won’t forget as it went bonkers in the net, nearly jumping out twice while I was trying to sort it out and getting the stinger twisted up in the net. The best thing to do in these circumstances it cut the stinger off then hooks out, so this is what I did. The unforeseen circumstance of leaning over the side of the boat with the bolt croppers in the water trying to hold on to a restless pike was that my wedding ring slipped off, not an issue though as it fell into the net, wrong, it fell into the net and kept falling though the only single hole in the bottom of the mesh! So it was quite and expensive pike that one!
I would suggest if anything similar ever happens to you and you have to explained what happened, try not to rationalise it by saying “it’s not lost I know exactly where it is” then go into great detail on how you GPS marked the spot where it went in. Other things not to say are “it’s still there I just can’t get to it as its 20ft deep” or “Well it was a twenty” as in my experience these comments don’t really calm the situation, and the latter was in hindsight the worst of all those things to say.
C’est La Vie – Some “Time-Team” analogue will dig it up in the a few thousand years and think there was some strange ring throwing ritual going on before people went recreational fishing!
What I have noticed this year is the complete lack of boat etiquette from some anglers. I suppose that because of the expense of fishing on some of the reservoirs it breeds that “need to catch” mentality which turns normal anglers into…..well … twats.
I am generally quite a tolerant person, but a couple of instances this year have made me lose my calm. One happened where there was only one other boat out in about 1000 acres, we were both out there blanking for most of the day when I found a group of fish on the sounder and on my fist drift caught an upper double. The other boat which was around 500 yards away, started up and manoeuvred behind me on to the same drift! The angler in question even went back and forward in the boat to line it up with my boat. I couldn’t believe it. So after putting the fish back motored back up to the spot where I had the fish from, with the other boat about a boat length off the area and chucked my anchor down. Which didn’t go down well. Stopping there or an hour and eating my sandwiches was what it took before the angler in question finally decided to try somewhere else.
A similar thing happened on another water the week before, and it’s really frustrating when you spend your time doing something different and actually looking for fish only to find them, catch one and then hear other engines start up and head in your direction. I would suggest rather than following other anglers around time would be better spent learning the waters and trying to find other areas.
One way I have found to combat this behaviour is simply no longer fishing on the drift. It’s a tactic that I used to use several years ago when pike fly fishing to cover the water more effectively. What you do is line up with the area you want to fish, usually a GPS point, and anchor several boat lengths away. Fan cast around to cover the water, then pull the anchor up and drift for a couple of boat lengths and reset the anchor and repeat.
By doing this you really cover the water, certainly a lot better than drifting. But, you won’t cover as much water, so it’s not a “searching” method and is only used if you really know where the fish are first. This is where your knowledge of the water comes in and being able to interpret your fish finder correctly really pays dividends.
Obviously now with GPS Bow mount motors it is a lot less fuss, as you simply push the anchor lock button as you drift, cover a spot, unlock and drift on, which is great. But unfortunately there will be a time when everyone will have the same equipment but that is something to worry about in the future.
However if you don’t want to go through all that effort, don’t care about upsetting anyone and are generally a dick – simply jump on someone’s drift after they catch a fish!
Peculiar perch! That is what I caught the other day. I nipped out after work as I needed to try a new mount for my engine, and still nursing a bad shoulder decided to take a drop shot rod rather than be tempted by pike. Hopefully I could drop-shot without too much of an issue, try my engine mount and basically fiddle with the new set up while pretending to fish.
About 30 mins at the jetty with some wood, a saw and some ratchet straps and I was quite confident in my new mount and quickly loaded the boat and headed off to one of my pre-marked spots. Rigging up a drop shot trace as I went. I find drop shot fishing far more effective when casting from a stationary boat and working the lure back, rather then effectively vertically fishing it on the drift. So that’s what I did, the spot I went to was alive with perch on the sounder, nothing big but it was clear there were loads of fish just off the weed line. First cast I had a fish around 10 inches on the drop which had another four fish following it in and attacking the drop shot weight as it got near the surface.
The next cast I had this very strange fish, which at first I thought was an albino perch, but then realised it wasn’t as it dark pigment in its eye and on its dorsal so it must just be a weird coloured variant. It’s certainly noticeable and it will be interesting to see if it survives around long enough to get bigger as it would look great at 4lb +
