Enduring Bait - 1

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Fishing Academy

Before the appearance in our country of "overseas" unseen: artificial fish - wobblers; flies imitating fry - streamers; foam and silicone baits: vibro-tails, twisters and some others, the main bait for spinning fishing for predatory fish was, of course, the spoon. Mostly homemade.

This was primarily due not only to the constant shortage of spinners, but also to their extremely meager assortment. My relative Vadim is a fisherman, as they say, from a young age. Carried away by spinning, he endlessly made metal spoons. And since he worked at a factory, he had the opportunity to deal with these lures: he grinded, sawed, drilled …

I don't know what considerations he was guided by, I think that he himself did not really know this, but his handicraft spoons, at the very least, but still worked. When the fish was suddenly not attracted by some kind of home-made spoon, Vadim immediately changed its shape, bend, painted in different colors. In a word, I experimented and experimented, and in many cases the spoon became quite catchy.

I also tried to make spinners, but after several unsuccessful attempts I quit this trick and later used mainly Vadim's spinners. And he had a great many of them.

What can we say about the present time, when in the shops of fishing accessories, apparently invisibly a variety of baits, including spoons. And, of course, Vadim has even more lures, according to the apt expression of his wife: now he has a lot of them (see photo). I must admit that Vadim has each type of bait in a separate cell, but for clarity, I dumped them in one pile.

At the time of our youth, we naturally did not know why the predators grabbed the metal bait-spoon. What exactly attracted them to these "pieces of iron"? But this is extremely important for the manufacture of homemade catchy spoons.

And now, when manufacturers make an infinite number of artificial baits (and spoons are no exception), what are they guided by when giving one or another shape and color to their products? And, to put it simply, what does the fish see in these lures?

There are many opinions on this issue, let's try to understand some of them … The most common, and probably the most plausible point of view, I found in a book published in Finland and translated into Russian in 1984.

“The predator monitors water fluctuations with a lateral line. Fish can detect, at a fairly large distance, phenomena that differ from the norm, which portend easy prey - fry lagging behind the school or even adult fish. When, for any reason, the fish breaks away from the school, it becomes not only defenseless, but also confused. It rushes aimlessly in a small area, and the predator easily catches it. Perch is a particularly skillful "savior" of the lost. The movement of some spinners is largely based on the imitation of such confusion."

And again: “The fishing line and the vibrations of the water caused by it, the appearance of the hook and the sound made by the winding ring are noticed by the fish. If she is full, this, of course, will scare her away from the bait, but in some situations it may be the main reason why the predator rushes to the spoon and not to the nearby fish.

To be continued by

Alexander Nosov