New Lures Old Techniques

Fishing is a unique sport. Technology plays a huge part in the overall popularity of what's in vogue, what's considered old and what is determined a must-have. Lures are probably subject to most of this hype. Now i say hype cause thats exactly what it is. In my opinion all lures catch fish, in the right hands of course, but lures are not all created equal. Lets see what i mean...

First of all most lures that are becoming the modern go-to lures, and especially so in tournaments, are really only a rehash of an old design. Add a new rattle, some holographic colours and new packaging and 'wallah' new gun lure. This is typified by the current bladed lures on the market now e.g TT Lures Switchblades and Ecogear VX-35's... These things are the must-have in the arsenal of a bream luring fisho. The fact is they have been around since adam was a boy. Bladed lures were somewhat more 'agricultural' than what they are now. But as i suggested thats the whole premise. Get an old design and tweak it a little then market it as the latest and greatest.

What extent is this hype manufactured and what is real??? Do they really catch more fish than the lures that came previous??? My theory is that a successful lure is always a successful lure. By that i mean no lure dies in potency. It's all about ratios. If three quarters of the fishing population start to use a hyped lure most of the time the reality is they are not using another lure most of the time. Remember this point, you will catch most fish on a lure that is in the water the most time. Simple. A successful lure will never be the one gathering dust in your box. But pull that lure out and fish with it most of the time and see what happens.

Same with plastics. The sp's i was using 3 years ago will still work today. Just that since then i have acquired other gun sp's and rarely dig around to the older ones. Give a lure time to work and it will work.

These ideas do come with some conditions of course. Dont pull out a lure meant for flatties and try and catch a bream. It will eventually work but not the same as a lure designed for a certain species.

Its not all marketing though. New lures do come along. The new hybrid lures that utilise both hardbody and soft body ideas are an interesting phonomenon. Still getting my head around it all. Not convinced.

So don't get caught up in the tackle industry machine...its hard to get out, trust me i know better than most. Don't try and keep up with the Jones', who cares if high profile fishing 'experts' are raving on about this lure or that. Take it with a grain of salt. Work it out for yourself. Otherwise you just end up having a great collection of redundant lures capable of catching fish yesterday!

Soft Plastics

There's no gold medal for realising i just LOVE soft plastic fishing. It has totally revolutionised my fishing. Dont get me wrong. I fish other techniques too but none quite have the possibilities and versatility of soft lures. Take for instance the ablility to work the whole water column, re-size heads to suits current, depth, species, line class and catsing distance, or perhaps change plastic to suit all of those same conditions!!!

The versatility is astounding. This can be a drawback for a novice as knowing where to start can be a little confusing. The tackle stores dont help either. Walls are lined with so many brands, colours, sizes and patterns that sometimes for a greenhorn its easier to buy that old packet of pillies than to try and de-code the soft plastic puzzle.

All that aside, why are soft plastics so successful? A million new soft plastic anglers can't be wrong about em. They really have entrenched themselves as a must-know technique to catch fish. So why are they so deadly??? What is the catalyst? Can anyone pick up a rod and be successful???

First of all soft plastic fishing, like any other form of fishing, is subject to the current conditions. You cant catch fish that simply are not there. No use trying to catch a whiting in winter for example. It can happen but the odds are stacked against you. Knowing where to fish and what fish are available will assist in applying a gameplan. Bait fishos transitioning to softies will find the transition fairly easy i would assume. All the same priciples apply to baitfishing as plastix, fish the same gutters, structure, eddies etc. Also baitfishos will have an understanding what food fish eat. These items can be replicated using softies..

But knowing fish behaviour and diet is only part of the success. The most important aspect of why softies are so successful revolves around the method or delivery of such lures. By this i mean plastix fishing is sedentary. Its an active form of angling that requires in the most part for the angler to be active and cover a heap of water. In a given session you might cover an area 20kms long. While you wont cover all that with a fine tooth comb, you will pick out the hotspots in that area and cover those more thoroughly.

A bait fishing, apart from drifting, will anchor up somewhere and wait for the fish to pass thier boat. The use of berley can assist in drawing the fish to them, but really are subject to fish picking up the berley trail for success. The effective water they are fishing is a radius of perhaps 20m around the boat. Now you cant really compare 20m to 20kms of water coverage.

The whole premise of why plastix fishing is so successful is cause the angler hunts the fish, covers a stack of water and presents an offering close to the natural food item of the fish. Sure its not a live bait, or not even a real food item, but its all about the deception. This usually takes some getting used to. Rod manipulation is very important and will develop over time. Once fish are located, stay with em.

For the novice, just drift. Use drifting as your means to cover water and eventually you come across fish. The other benefit of drifting is that your lures are continually in the strikezone unlike cast-and-retrieve where you cast, wait for the lure to touch bottom, then commence the retrieve to the boat. While i prefer cast-and-retrieve cause its more active, and if done right can actually cover more water than drifting, it does require some ability to know where your lure is and deal with the slack line that happens on a retrieve. The biggest issue i see with novices is a lack of patience, not allowing the lure to sink to the bottom. Thus the retrieve is done mid-water, and usually no fish.

Due to being active we come across alot more fish. Our catch-rates on plastics are far exceeding those on bait. Im not trying to say lures catch more fish than bait but moving your lure, or bait for that matter, past the nose of as many fish as possible can only increase your catch rates. Sitting back and waiting for fish to come past your boat is a thing of the past. You've gotta go to the fish.

So to reiterate, be active. Its the biggest factor for success. Move around, try different spots, different depths, different structure. Find the fish and then try and deliver what the fish may want to eat. Its a simple philosophy...but sometimes alot harder to put into practise.

Fishing the Right Conditions

You hear all kinds of myths in fishing. Its one of those sports where people have thier own idea just where and when is the best time to go out and catch thier fish. The variables in fishing, but more so in the conditions relevant to fishing, make putting it all together a litteral jig saw puzzle, to use a well coined cliche. Trying to make sense of it all makes your head spin.

I liken it to horse racing. You can study all the variables like distances run, wet weather galloper, favorite tracks etc and can and over think the whole issue. Then a woman who knows nothing rocks up and selects a horse based purely on the cool name and picks the winner paying 20bux. Does you head in!

So lets look at all the variables in fishing and try to put some sense into all the mystery.

Tides
Probably the most contentious topic in all of fishing. I hear agruements all the time whether a fish bites best on the rising tide or on the falling tide. Sometimes its the slack water at the bottom of the tide or the slack at the top??? What complicates things further is that the same species can bite better on different tides in different waterways...the mind really can boggle.

Time of te tide can be dependant on the food sources available too. If your targeting bream that are feeding actively on the prawn run, an outgoing tide will be better. If your chasing bream feeding on crabs, then a big high tide will give the bream access to new water anavailable at low tide. Either can be targeted to good effect. So perhaps knowing what the bait movements are can help decide what part of the tide you need to fish.

There are however some traits on fish that can give a relative idea about where fish will be and when they'll bite best. use flathead as an example, you can bank on em feeding more aggresively when the tide runs out. As an ambush predator they use the outgoing tide to thier advantage. As flats drain all baitfish HAVE to exit the flat...in comes the flathead. As i said though, its not always the case. Some of my hottest flatty bites hve been on the incoming tide. It pays to be reactive to the situation at hand.

Low Light
Some people put stock into the low light periods of the day; either sunrise or sunset. The theory being predatory fish hunt more actively on the dark than at full light. Also the baitfish seem to be less flighty at low light too, so they can be hunted better. This can be true for Jewies who's massive pink eye is suited to seeing in low light. But dont fall into the trap of thinking jews can only be caught at night. Daytime is my preferred time.On the flats or in shallow water low light can be a blessing too as fish will cease to be timid.

The drawback with low light is it doesnt hang around long enuf. If you based your fishing purely on this you would fish 3 hours in a day! Sure its beneficial to fish sunrise but its the starting point of the day. fish caught at this time can set the tone for the day.

Moon Phase
this can go hand in hand with low light at times. The moon phase is another hotly contested fishing variable. Some old salts swear by the 3 days leading into the new or full moon and the 3 days after as the prime time to chase Jew. I've heard that the actual day of the full moon is very poor though...too much light??? Who knows. Fact is the lunar cycle definately has an effect. That's about as much as i can relate. Once again i've caught fish thoughout the lunar cycle so no time for me seems to be obviously better.

It's more likey the effect the moon has on the tides than the moon itself. The moon does produce light though, so the theory of low light does have merit too.

Barometer
This one can confuse me at times. Bass fishos will swear by a rising barometer over 1015 (i think)and if it falls under 1010 they wont bother going out for a fish. Other theorys ive heard say a falling barometer is better for fishing, especially after a thunderstorm. I can certainly agree that some our best days fishing have been in the build up of a storm, which indicates a rising barometer. Some days killer days have come preceding a storm and a get a few days consistent rain. This indicates a fallen barometer then a levelling out, perhaps at, say, 1000.

So no categorical evidence there to suggest you should live and die by the barometer too.

Seasons
Perhaps the only thing you can probably bank on is time of year. although global warming is having its effect. For example the annual summer whiting run, which typically started in Nov every year now commences in Feb. The transitional months of autumn and spring seem to be the best producers of fish numbers, most prob due to change over of species. The winter fish are moving in while the summer fish are moving out. The demarcation is not sudden so autumn and spring allows you to catch good mixed bags.

In a nutshell, dont bank on anything. If you live and die by any condition you may as well not go out. Any time is good time to catch a fish. Only requisite is you need to have your line in the water!

Shimano V's Daiwa

Ahhh the great debate.
The old Ford V's Holden argument. While this is purely based on personal preferences i do however think there are some facets that can either tilt the odds one way or the other...all depends how you view fishing.

With all things the margin for improvement is minimal when you consider how good fishing reels are by todays standards as compared to the ugly wobbles of 20 years ago. In the upper range of both Daiwa and Shimano the cost of reels rises significantly as extra corrosion-resistant ball bearings are added, new composite matrials are used, and new technologies are introduced. much of this is out of the league of most anglers budgets, and to a certain extent, would be pretty much lost on the average punter anyway.

take for instance a fisho whose new to lure fishing, would he recogise the benefits of having a reels with aero wrap II or a over-sized tubular bail arm which allows easier line pick up which feeds onto the roller bearing more efficiently??? Probably not. I would go so far as to say even an experienced angler will have problems determining the benefits of these features, especially in liu of the price tackle companies ask for these features.

For some paying upwards of 800bux for a spinning reel capable of catching snapper and kingfish sounds a little obscure. Some people even pay as much purely for catching bream. To non-fishos this will sound a little crazy. Sounds crazy to me too...but i still pay the bux anyway.

So which is the best reel??? The answer is not and basic as the question sounds. I will outline my observations here and hopefully steer some of you in the right direction. To preface this, i am in no way affliated to any tackle company and actively buy both Daiwa and shimano. I havent figured this out for myself yet.

1) Smoothness - Straight out the box i feel that Daiwa is a smoother reel. The Digigear technology is superb and feels quite robust. The reel handle is a one-touch design and takes next to no inertia to wind from start-up. The gears are well meshed and designed to be strong which usually has the effect of making gears cluncky.

Shimano make a smooth reel too, but only the reels manufactured out of Japan. The new designed reels out of Malaysia are not my favs.

2) Wear and Tear - an interesting point. There are a few reels i am currently running up against each other to gauge certain aspects, one of them is longevity. Early indications are Shimano have a better wear factor. I base this purely on the bearing wear and tear. Shimano have sheilded bearings in the handle as opposed to daiwa's unsheilded. If your reels are susceptible to salt spray...as mine are with a low-sided boat... the daiwa's loose thier inital smoothness quicker than shimano. things like good maintenance will prolong this but a simple baring swap will sort this straight out.

Wear and tear on gears is no issue as both rate very well here.

3) Functionality - Up until shimano re-designeed thier spool lip daiwa killed them in cast ability. Shimano were notorious for wind-knots, especially in the 1000 size. They have sorted this out somewhat now with the new FD stella's. Daiwa also seems to lay the line better, especially under minimal tension, as most retrieves do using plastix. loose loops are a downside with all light lure fishing but daiwa seem to show less hassles here.

4) Warranty - A huge factor these days. If you have to re-mortgage your haouse to afford a new reel, you want to be sure the company will fix it if something goes wrong. I have had the misfortune to send reels back to both suppliers. Here shimano rules the roost. The warranty is hassle free and completed in quick time. Daiwa on nthe other hand is a diff ball game. I sent a reel back in warranty period with worn bearings (see wear and tear)and they tried to charge an arm and a leg for repair. Now i understand bearings are a perishable part but geez, 4 months to wear out a set is a little excessive in my book.

So there you go. Just 4 quick points to consider before buying a product. Daiwa are smoother out of the box but wear quicker, whereas shimano are not as smooth out of the box but last longer. I still havent figured out what suits me yet. I just can't seem to go past that initail smoothness daiwa has, but shimano will always give value for money. That's probably why i seea need for both types.

For your reference i am testing a few reels against each other currently;

Daiwa Certate V's Shimano Sustain
Daiwa Exist V's Shimano Stella FD/ Shimano Aspire
Daiwa Luvias V's Shimano Stella FB

Next test;

Daiwa Zillion V's Shimano Chronarch