No
one can ever really know what makes any pike
take a lure at any particular time. There
are loads of reasons. In fact, it is highly
unlikely that a pike knows why it takes a
lure. Because it can't reason it relies entirely
on its instincts to survive. The most concise
summing up of this that I have come across
can be summed up in the saying, "Pike don't
think, they react." This is a paraphrasing
of a comment in an American walleye fishing
magazine which struck me as particularly apposite,
and one which I think every pike angler should
bear in mind at all times when lure fishing.
Instinct has served the pike well enough for
thousands of years. After all, until anglers
came along, anything moving through, or on,
the water was likely to be food for a pike.
The pike's inherent instinct has not yet evolved
to distinguish between live food and lumps
of wood, plastic or metal. Certainly it has
the ability to make this distinction through
its senses, but as far as moving objects are
concerned anything is fair game to a pike
- until it has learned the hard way that lures
are not food. How readily a pike can tell
one lure from another is difficult to ascertain.
A pike might hit one lure, for example, the
angler failing to hook the fish. This lure
might then be rejected on subsequent casts,
but a change of lure might see the fish repeating
its mistake. I have actually witnessed a pike
turn and hit the same lure three times in
three casts. Small pike seem more likely to
repeatedly have a go at an individual lure
than larger pike. This either indicates that
big pike learn more quickly, or that they
have already learned about artificials from
past experiences.
If
we accept that a pike can distinguish a lure
from a real fish, and this is undoubtedly
so, then why don't lures have to be precise
imitations of natural food items? Although
there are occasions when pike will hit static
lures, it is normal that the lure is moving
through the water, and it is certain that
it is the way a lure moves that stirs a pike's
interest. Quite what form this interest takes
will be governed by a number of factors. Hunger,
aggression (territorial or otherwise) and
curiosity all play their part at times. Most
people imagine that all pike that take lures
are simply interested in feeding, but I do
not think that this is the case. At times,
and more often than you might think, I reckon
pike strike at lures almost involuntarily.
Reacting, not thinking.
How
long it is since a pike last fed is probably
going to have a bearing on how eagerly it
will pursue or attack a lure. I think it is
safe to assume that a pike with an empty belly
is most likely to hit a lure, and one that
is replete stands every chance of ignoring
it. There will, of course, be intermediate
points too, where the pike's willingness to
take baits falls between these two extremes.
No doubt it is pike in these stages of hunger
that we are most often going to encounter.
There will be times, though, when just about
every pike in a water is switched 'on' and
feeding with a vengeance. Unfortunately for
the angler such days are rare!
Pike
that are extremely inactive will take lures,
but need provoking. We have all experienced
how the smell of a favourite food cooking
can make us feel hungry, even though we have
eaten fairly recently. Or there are times
when you have to pinch a crisp out of the
packet a friend is eating. In neither case
would you have thought of eating until a stimulus
and an opportunity were put in front of you.
In a similar way non-feeding pike can be caught
on lures by putting a bait before a fish in
such a way that its instincts overcome its
physiological state.
Lure
choice, and the way they are fished, are critical
at such times. There has to be something about
the bait and how it is worked that triggers
the pike's instincts and makes it strike out
in an involuntary way. Usually you will only
get one chance at such pike. If they miss
the lure, or you fail to set the hooks you've
blown it. The technique required to provoke
the strike might be to keep on casting your
lure to a certain spot in the hope that simple
annoyance causes the fish to hit the bait
out of sheer aggravation. I have done this
many times, and the take always comes when
I am least expecting it. I tend to use this
strategy in spots that I have caught pike
from in the past, or which look like they
should hold pike. It can be a very tedious
operation, but on slow days it can be the
tactic that works and is well worth trying
with noisy baits in particular. There is always
the possibility that a pike hasn't been in
the vicinity at all, and that the take comes
from a hunting fish that has just moved into
the spot. Such are the imponderables of fishing.
Nonetheless I am convinced that this tactic
does induce takes from inactive fish. Fish
in this state are extremely unlikely to follow
lures.
In
my opinion, pike that follow lures are in an
intermediate feeding stage. Not hungry enough
to hit a bait straight away, but interested
enough to want to get a closer look. These fish
can be extremely frustrating at times, and there
is the possibility that they are just curious.
I have witnessed perch, often large and in groups,
trailing my pike baits on a number of waters.
The lures have been larger than the perch on
occasions so I doubt that hunger was the motive
for their behaviour. Maybe it has been a territorial
display, chasing intruders from their patch.
Or possibly they have simply been inquisitive.
Similar reasons could be explanations for pike
following lures. It is better to assume that
they are interested in eating your lure, though,
as you might eventually be able to provoke a
positive reaction if you persevere.
How
big was the one that got away? This pike
got very heavy indeed shortly after it was
hooked, and the teeth marks near its tail
tell the story why. But did the larger pike
grab the small one out of hunger or some
other instinct, and how big was it anyway?
I
remember watching Canadian underwater video
footage that showed two pike of similar size
trailing a spoon. The pike were side by side
and followed the lure for some distance until
one finally engulfed it. Almost as soon as
the bait had disappeared the second pike grabbed
its companion across the middle. The pike
was immediately ejected, and there is no doubt
in my mind that the reason for the second
pike's action was little to do with hunger.
Some form of aggression centring around competition
for food seems likely. Whatever the impulse,
it illustrated that pike could be made to
take lures for reasons other than pure hunger.
Many
times I have read that it is possible to induce
takes from following pike by a number of tricks'.
The most common is to stop the lure and allow
it to rise to the surface, or sink to the
bottom depending on the lure. Then give it
a twitch and the pike will nail it. All very
well in theory, and it does work at times.
Just as frequently it fails. The simple answer
to following pike is that there isn't one!
The momentarily paused retrieve is the easiest
to use, and I prefer not to let the lure move
too far above or below the pike before giving
it the twitch. Only a foot or so at the maximum.
There was an occasion, when fishing a clear
water river, when I had a pike of about five
pounds follow a small crankbait right to side
of the boat. The lure was hanging stationary
in the current wobbling slowly, subsurface,
with just the trace and a few inches of line
beyond the rod tip. The pike remained motionless
about two feet behind the lure. For what seemed
like an age nothing happened, then as I lowered
the rod tip downstream and the bait went with
the flow the pike simply opened its mouth
and inhaled the bait. All this seemed to happen
in slow motion - until the water erupted as
the pike realised its mistake! It goes to
show that anything is worth a try when faced
with following fish.
No
doubt you have read or heard about a tactic
called the "figure-of-eight" which catches
fish that tail lures to the rod tip. Having
seen American fishing videos where this tactic
is used to great, and exhilarating, effect
I know it works for muskellunge. Unfortunately,
Stateside opinion is that the figure-of-eight
doesn't work for pike. My limited experience,
and that of friends who have tried the technique,
leads me to believe that this is indeed the
case. We are not talking here of the waving
around of a rod tip above the surface of the
water that used to be thought of as figure-of-eighting,
but the way it is done from a boat with almost
the whole rod under the water. There is no
way that this manoeuvre can be performed from
most banks, or with rods much over seven feet
in length. Quite why it appears to be of little
use for pike while musky anglers reckon it
gives them a high percentage of their takes
(up to 40%) is hard to determine. Certainly
muskies have the reputation for following
lures far more frequently than pike. If this
is because they are more wary, intelligent
or have better eyesight, why do they fall
for a crude operation like the figure-of-eight?
Another mystery. I have had one smallish pike
follow a Mepps Lusox around in a complete
circle under the rod tip, snapping its jaws
at the lure in a lazy, half-hearted, manner.
But that's about as close as I've come so
far. I shall keep on trying though.
When
faced with a pike that follows, but refuses
to take, a lure my response is to try another
cast to the very same spot that produced the
initial follow - even if the pike has moved
off in a different direction. The chances
are it is moving back to where it came from.
Pike are long fish and have a large turning
circle. On your second cast try altering the
way you bring the lure back, twitch it, speed
it up, slow it down. If nothing happens try
another lure. Give the spot ten minutes or
so, then rest it. Come back later and try
again. I remember having a twenty pound fish
follow three different lures, in three patterns,
about eight times. Each time it would appear
inches behind the bait, stopping when the
lure was paused, moving forward when it was
twitched. Strangely it ignored spinnerbaits
and jerkbaits, but followed crankbaits. At
no time did it appear to be spooked and slowly
faded from view each time the lure was removed
from the water. How do I know it was a twenty
pounder? It was an easily recognisable fish,
and it later transpired that it had been caught
three or four days earlier, and was recaptured
a couple of days later, too. Both times on
natural baits. The incident with the lures
must have fallen on a day when it was beginning
to show an interest in feeding again after
its first capture. Just my luck!
Not
all pike follow lures as closely as that fish.
I have had many instances of pike appearing
in front of me after I have taken the bait
from the water. These fish can be three feet
or more behind a bait by my judgement, and
while this has usually taken place in clear
water conditions, it can also happen unnoticed
in cloudier water. You never know for sure
if there's a pike behind your lure or not.
Try and develop the habit of switching your
attention from the lure to a spot a few feet
behind it when the bait is getting close.
I don't pretend it is easy, but you will spot
those late followers while the lure is still
in the water, giving you a better chance of
inducing a take in the last few feet of the
retrieve. With followers very much in mind,
it is worth random variations in retrieve
every so often. Even when trolling lures,
vary the speed a little or work the rod if
holding it. Takes can be induced. On a large
clear water lake who knows how far a pike
might trail a lure for. When trolling you
can quite easily give a change of direction
to your lure which can induce takes, but this
is less easy to achieve when casting.
In
flowing water a lure cast across-stream will
come back to you on an arc, and takes can
come as soon as the bait starts to move directly
across or up-stream. In still water you have
to use the wind to put a belly in your line
to achieve a similar effect, and a fairly
light lure so as not to take up all the slack
as soon as you start the retrieve. This tactic
does work, but hooking the pike is not too
easy because of the bow in the line.
Path
of a lure across a flowing river showing
likely places where a change in the lure's
direction might provoke a strike.
Whether
pike take lures because they are hungry or
not, something about them must attract their
attention. There are two main factors involved;
sight and sound. Sight is easy for us to understand,
but how a pike 'hears' a lure is another matter.
Hearing is probably not quite the right word
to describe how fish sense underwater vibrations,
but is close enough to make a comparison with
human senses intelligible. In clear water,
vision is probably the sense used to make
initial contact with a lure, while in murkier
conditions, or low light, sound will be more
important.
Even
in low light, though, I consider the visual
aspect to be crucial. So long as a lure is
passing over a pike it will be visually aware
of its presence, no matter how indistinctly,
in the form of a silhouette. Some anglers
have suggested that surface lures work well
at dusk, and indeed in the dark, because they
are noisy baits. I am not doubting that the
noise or disturbance factor is important with
surface lures, but surely the silhouette is
just as critical at these times of day. I
have caught some nice pike on shallow working
minnows with wide actions in low light conditions,
just before daylight has fully broken. Quiet
baits with good silhouettes.
Lures will visually attract the attention
of pike in ways other than their silhouette
against the sky. Those with metallic finishes,
spoons, spinners and plated plugs, give off
bright flashes as they are fished. Flashing
lights are more noticeable than those which
are continuously shining. Therefore, it is
probable that there will be times when flashy
lures are going to work well, mostly when
the sun is bright and their reflectiveness
will be most marked, and maybe in clear water.
At times, though, a lure might be too flashy
and could possibly put pike off. It is commonly
recommended that spoons be regularly polished
to maintain their reflectiveness, and I endorse
this view whole-heartedly. This is only a
guideline though, for I have noticed times
when that silver-plated spoons have been more
effective than chrome-plated ones. If you
compare the two side-by-side it is apparent
that the chrome-plated ones are the shiniest.
The
on/off facet of lure actions might also account
for the successfulness of lures with contrastingly
coloured sides and bellies. When a plug, for
example, rolls from side to side its belly
will alternately be exposed to fish on either
side of its path - in effect flashing on and
off. A light or bright colour is going to
be most effective against a dark background,
white, yellow or orange for example. In an
extreme case, the main body colour of the
lure might render it almost invisible to the
pike against the prevailing background. In
this instance all the pike will see is the
flashing of the belly colour. If the pike
is beneath the lure there could be a case
for using a lure with a dark belly colour
and lighter sides. This 'upside-down' type
of pattern is not new, and has been proposed
in the past to imitate a dying fish floating
belly up. Perhaps the reason for its success
is that it improves the silhouette of the
lure and the flash of the side colours at
the same time. The easiest way to demonstrate
this is to hold a standard lure against the
light in a way that a pike might view it from
below, and roll it from side to side. Then
turn it so that you are looking at its dark
back and repeat the process. The dark belly/light
sides combination seems more noticeable -
to my eyes at any rate.
The importance of lure colour is extremely
complex, and I have no hard and fast rules
to lay down. I read a convincing argument
by Tom Seward in In-Fisherman in favour of
clear crankbaits. The idea being that these
most naturally mimic the appearance of silver
sided prey-fish. Clear lures containing foil,
or prism, inserts were rated as the next best
thing. While I have no experience of using
clear lures I can confirm that clear-plus-insert
baits are very effective indeed. There are
times when pike appear to prefer certain lure
colours, but it is difficult to be certain
that this really is the case. It is quite
possible that there are other factors at work.
I can think of one session when Dave Scarff
and I were both catching on Toby spoons, one
on silver and the other zebra. If we switched
patterns neither of us caught, but reverting
to our original colours saw more pike in the
boat.
Determining
why a particular pattern is successful is
fraught with danger. Take a perch pattern,
for instance. Is it the overall coloration
of the lure, the presence of stripes, or the
flash from the metallic scaling that makes
it effective? Not all perch patterns are the
same, and those without scaling seem to work
just as well as those with scaling. Stripes
appear on many lures, and not without reason.
Quite why they work is another thing. I feel
that it probably has something to do with
breaking up the lure's appearance. In part
it might make the lure seem more natural,
concealing its hard profile in some way, or
perhaps giving an illusion of a more fluid
motion. Whatever the reason I am in favour
of stripes, but also in favour of spots and
blotches of a contrasting colour. So this
may be the key - contrast.
Do pike think perch pattern lures are perch,
or rainbow trout coloured baits are trout?
Not likely! They take them because they can
see them under the prevailing conditions governing
visibility. It might be a nice theory to try
and "match the hatch" with imitative patterns,
but I think that there is some reason to assume
that it is not a lure's colour that is critical
to the pike, rather it is its tone. It might
make little difference if a lure is yellow
or white at times, so long as it is not black.
Don't forget that suspended matter in the
water could easily distort a lure's colour
in any case. Tone is going to have as much
bearing on the visibility of a lure as its
colour, quite possibly even more. Maybe it
is the fact that most perch patterns fall
in the mid-tone range that makes them so successful,
being visible in a wide range of light and
water conditions. When it comes to choosing
lure colours I like to cover three tonal bands,
no matter what type of lure is in question.
Dark, light and something in between. So for
spinners and spoons these will be silver,
brass and copper. Painted spoons mostly cover
the mid-tone band as they are often coloured
only on one side, frequently being brass on
the concave face. A similar selection works
for bodied lures with chrome, silver and white
finishes being at the light end of the scale,
and black and brown at the dark end. In the
middle are most of the other patterns you
see in the catalogues.
So
for most plug type baits I like to have a
chrome, silver prism or other reflective patterned
one, a perch pattern and the darkest finish
I can find. Because there is a reluctance
by lure dealers in the U.K. to stock black,
or nearly black, lures you may have to paint
these up yourself. As with lighter patterns,
I like to add stripes to my all black lures,
but this time in white. In addition to this
three tone attack I will add a fourth lure
almost invariably in Fire Tiger. It has to
be said that some manufacturers Fire Tigers
are too dark, being little more than a perch
pattern in effect. The best Fire Tigers, to
my eyes, are those that have a lot of fluo
yellow in them. Some people are convinced
that it is the orange of the belly that makes
the pattern so successful, but I beg to differ.
I catch a lot of pike on lures that are predominantly
chartreuse or fluo yellow. Bagley's run a
number of natural patterns (Baby Bass and
Lil' Muskie are two that have scored for me)
printed over chartreuse and these are really
effective. What these lures all share is a
highly visible yellow belly and sides. I love
it, and the pike do too! I am not so sure
an orange belly increases catches because
it is orange. More likely it works because
it provides a contrast to the sides of the
lure. Orange also looks sort of natural to
us, maybe a representation of fins on a roach
or perch. That said, bright orange jerkbaits
are good pike catchers, as are Day-Glo green
ones - but these often come with chartreuse
bellies!
The efficacy of hot colours is a relatively
new phenomenon. That they work is not in question,
and as with all patterns they have their days.
Day-Glo colours have been used by fly tiers
for many years, so why it has taken pike anglers
so long to cotton on to these colours is a
bit of a mystery. Part of the reason for their
success is high visibility. At times they
seem to glow, almost as if they have an aurora
around them as they come through the water.
You are certainly aware of them long before
you would have noticed any but an all white
lure. I heard recently that fluorescent colours
remain visible, as colours, deeper in the
water than do normal colours. By the depth
that all other colours have become grey, fluos
are still detectable as a particular colour.
Apparently this has something to do with the
way they reflect UV light. Only black and
white remain discernable as long - this is
because black absorbs all wavelengths of light,
and white reflects them all. I had always
thought that I could see Day-Glo painted lures
deeper down than ordinary ones. Maybe it wasn't
an illusion. It seems possible, to me at least,
that this might explain why fluorescent colours
work well in cloudy water.
I
am not disputing that certain colours may
be attractive to certain species of fish.
I am told that rainbow trout are suckers for
flies with lime green in them. I have also
heard it mentioned that pike like hot pink
flies. When it comes to light and dark patterns
these are often pastiches of naturalistic
colour schemes, or completely abstract creations.
The famous Fire Tiger is, as already mentioned,
essentially a perch pattern in fluorescent
colours - green back, dark stripes on yellow
flanks and an orange belly that is an extension
of a perch's fin colour. There is a variation
on this pattern that I use to good effect
which is even more simplified. My 'cartoon'
perch has a fluorescent yellow body with black
bands and a hot orange head. This is a high
contrast, high visibility pattern which works
on crankbaits and jerkbaits, and will quite
probably be effective on spoons too, when
I get round to trying it.
The key to lure colour choice is almost certainly
picking the one that is going to be most visible
to the pike. Under certain lighting conditions
then, complete opposites may be equally easily
seen. Against a grey background white and black
might stand out very well, while green could
merge in. Fluo colours will stand out well against
most backgrounds, which could be a very simple
explanation for their success. Something worth
mentioning here is the addition of a Day-Glo,
or white, stripe down the back, or on the head
of very dark lures. This is not for the pike's
benefit, but yours. In low light conditions
this will help you pinpoint the position of
your lure, helping you guide it around weedbeds
for example. It can stop you winding the trace
through your tip ring too!
Another
success for the 'cartoon perch' pattern.
This time it is a Swim Whizz that has done
the business.
Let's
now look at eyes. There has been quite a school
of thought proposing that prominent eyes on
a lure improve its performance as a pike catcher.
This always seemed reasonable to me, and I
have painted large eyes on some of my lures
over the years. I have also fished with lures
that have no eyes painted on them at all,
and others where they are not visible to the
pike (here I am thinking of surface lures
in the main). These 'blind' lures also catch
pike. Recent U.S. research has hinted that
eyes on lures might be counter productive.
The opinion is that predatory fish are most
likely to attack prey that are distracted,
i.e. not looking at the predator. An eye on
an artificial might give the impression that
it is aware of the pike. Supposition I admit.
No
need for a net. This one jumped into the
boat! The photo not only demonstrates that
a nine inch lure is not too big for a ten
pound pike, but also clearly shows that
the lure had been grabbed crosswise at its
mid point - the pike's preferred method
of attack.
There
is a strong possibility, though, that eyes
are used not as precise targets for a striking
pike, but as an indication of the prey's direction
of movement, and a guide to where the mid-point
of its body is. The mid-point of a fish's
body being the best place for a pike to grab
it to give minimum chance of escape. Watch
a pike take hold of a fish, and unless it
can engulf it, the pike usually goes for the
middle with head and tail hanging outside
its mouth. This is borne out by the way in
which pike attack lures. Even when approaching
from behind they will swing out to catch up
with the lure and hit it from the side if
they can. Only with fast moving baits have
I found pike to regularly attack from behind.
Not every time, but more often than not I
would suggest. Of course they don't judge
the line of attack right every time, which
accounts for lures being missed, and some
of the odd hookholds that occur now and then.
I have also had lures taken, apparently, from
the front. Being opportunist feeders pike
won't refuse to take a food item just because
it is moving in the wrong direction!
While
lure colour is important quite what influence
lure shape has I do not feel qualified to
comment on in detail. To come up with theories
on this subject makes nice reading. Pike that
feed predominantly on bream should, by these
arguments, prefer deep bodied lures over slimmer
profiled baits. My thinking is somewhat different.
I always aim to use a lure that will fish
the area of water I am interested in covering
most effectively. This approach ensures that
my baits are where the fish are most of the
time. If this means using a bait that doesn't
"match the hatch" then so be it. Pike in any
one water are not 'programmed' to feed on
specific species, this is most likely a learned
response. The inherent instinct is to feed
on things that move. In any case, it is not
always best to imitate a pike's food, differences
will be all too obvious to the pike. Giving
it something that it doesn't immediately recognise
as food, but which has some attributes of
its prey might be just enough to trigger the
pike's curiosity enough to make it strike.
Similarly
there has been much written about a pike's
preferred meal size. Another pleasing theory
that ignores the fact that no wild creature
will pass up an easy meal. Pike don't think,
they react. Remember? On the whole I would
always go for lures that are larger rather
than smaller, but not just because they offer
a larger mouthful. Large lures score with
pike of all sizes. The bigger a lure is, the
more visible it is going to be. This much
is obvious. It is also going to displace more
water as it moves. As pike are designed to
detect changes in water pressure, as we are
to detect changes in air pressure (our sense
of hearing), so it is likely that a large
lure will be more readily detected than a
small one. Displacing more water and therefore
creating a 'louder' sound. This is more so
if it is true, as I have read, that pike are
'tuned in' to low frequency vibrations. Apparently,
small pike are keyed to high frequency sounds.
Small food items will give out high frequency
noise/vibrations, which is what small pike
should be trying to eat. However, there is
a rider to this in that even small pike have
an inbuilt instinct to respond to low frequency
sounds. The tuning to high frequency vibrations
being lost as the pike grows. It is this that
I believe supports my faith in the attractiveness
of larger lures to pike of all sizes. The
number of small pike that I catch on big lures
lends further weight to my case, as they are
not isolated examples. Plenty of fish under
five pounds in weight regularly fall to lures
in the six to nine inch size range. That I
find these larger lures more effective at
attracting bigger pike also leads me to consider
that small (therefore high frequency) lures
are less useful in this respect. This is,
of course, a generalisation and I do not intend
to dismiss small lures out of hand. I know
of too many big pike - some extremely large
- that have been caught on tiny baits. The
reason for any particular small lure's success
is most often the fact that it was the lure
that passed in front of that individual pike.
As is often the case, no matter what the lure
may be. There is also a logical case for using
smaller lures where small pike are what you
expect to catch, for the simple reason that
these are larger in comparison to the fish
that is trying to eat them! I used to think
that big lures would scare pike in confined
spaces, narrow drains and so on. However,
I no longer hold this view having caught plenty
of pike on big lures from such waters. The
biggest lure I have used to catch a canal
pike on was an eight inch Swim Whizz, and
seven inch minnows are probably my all-round
top canal lure these days.
Quite
what is meant by a 'big' lure is not self
evident. Simply going by length is not a good
guide. You can have two lures of identical
length, but one will be much 'bigger' than
the other. In simple terms small lures will
be slim, and big ones fatter or deeper. As
an example the seven inch original Rapala
is a slim minnow bait while the Super Shad
Rap is a five inch shad shaped lure that looks
much larger. Similarly any seven inch minnow
bait looks a lot bigger than a five inch version
from the same manufacturer simply because
they increase in depth as they do in length.
Spinners manage to look bigger in action than
they do hanging from the rod end. This is
because they rotate and create the illusion
that the lure is fatter than it really is.
Many surface lures also make a disproportionately
large silhouette with their wake. It is lures
with a big 'presence' that you should be looking
at using more often.
A
recent incident pointed out clearly to me
that pike do respond to noise. Or at least
certain sounds. A fish of around six pounds
had followed a spoon right in to the rod end,
and hung there after I lifted the lure out
of the water. I recast some eight feet behind
the pike which immediately turned, and shot
round to lie directly below where the spoon
had landed. I know it was directly below the
bait, because the spoon actually hit the pike
on the way down! The braking distance of a
pike is phenomenally short. One second this
one was moving quickly, later the same moment
it was motionless. While I didn't catch that
fish, it made me wonder if pike that hit surface
poppers, and so on, on the very first twitch
of the lure have come some distance to investigate
the sound of the splash. Rather than having
had a lure land directly above them. What
we might have thought to have been lucky casts
that have "dropped lures on a pike's nose",
could well have been way off the unseen target.
Talking
of noise, there are many fans of rattling
lures around. Their confidence is boosted
by their belief that lures with in-built rattles
are noisier and will more readily attract
the attention of pike. However, research in
America has shown that their bass wise-up
to rattling baits far more quickly than they
do to lures that don't rattle. Pike aren't
bass, I know, but it is food for thought nonetheless.
Returning to the frequency aspect, it seems
probable to me that rattles will create high
frequency vibrations, the rattles being small
and hard as a rule. This should then make
these lures more attractive to small pike.
Larger rattles made of softer materials (hard-wood
spheres for example) might make for better
rattling baits than those containing the more
usual ball bearings or shot.
On
the whole, though, I am not a great fan of lures
that rattle. I have been known to stifle my
rattling lures, either by injecting hot epoxy
to gum up the works, or by removing the shot
altogether. Rattles have not proved themselves
to have any noticeable effect for me. Lures
that caught pike when they rattled have continued
to do so after my de-rattling operations. It
is far more important that the inbuilt action
of a bait is good. Like a lot of things concerned
with lure design, I feel that rattles are there
as much to catch the angler, as they are to
catch the fish - just like fancy paint finishes!
I am not discounting the importance of noise
in lure design, the frequency and violence of
a crankbaits wiggle is extremely important,
but whether it rattles or not is incidental.
While I share the view that sound makes a difference
in coloured water, I don't pick out rattling
baits. Rather I go for ones that I can feel
really thumping the rod top as I retrieve them.
Things like large-bladed spinnerbaits and crankbaits
that have a strong wiggling action. After all,
bait-fish wriggle, but I have yet to come across
one that rattles. Having said that, if rattles
give you confidence - stick with them.
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