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My personal theory why fish strike lures

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jaybonnie View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jaybonnie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Jan 2016 at 2:30am
Great reading this thread  and really so many interesting theories,also alot of hours on the water to back up these theories too i bet
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senkosam View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote senkosam Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Jan 2016 at 7:31am
Originally posted by lead lure lead lure wrote:

Frank a very good post the thing i love about lure fishing is striving to learn more .But do think that having confidence in the lure you are using is half the battle
Cheers Graeme


It takes a lot of fish caught to get me to have confidence in any lure. As a lure maker of many different types of lures and user of them, I know from experience which do well most times of the year. Some I only use in spring. I catch fish on most, but not as many as on the soft plastic lures I produce or manufactured soft plastic lures.

When I say I've caught over six species on one design and in many colors and that the lure worked 11 months of the year, I'm not blowing smoke up anyone's ***. Of course, if I fished different lure types equal time during the fishing season, far less fish would be caught because a great majority are pan fish. 

None of the above takes away from the ideas presented in the first post which have been proven consistent year after year.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote senkosam Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Jan 2016 at 7:42am
Originally posted by Davent Davent wrote:

Confidence in what you are doing and with what you are using is as important as going fishing in the first place, im 100% with you Steve.

The MOST important factor is being able to find fish in the 1st place, dosnt matter what lure you are using if there are no fish there.


The problem with that statement is that most shallow water fishing is done with lures to find fish that will bite. Sonar is nice, but most times if your fishing in 7' or less and making long casts to shallow structure, the lure is what tells you what you need to know:

if fish are present which equals finding fish to the sides of the boat when caught

the type of bottom or cover fish are holding in or on (rocks, weeds, steep drops)

Lure design does matter as much as presentation and covering more water the right way with the right lure allows more hook ups from the hundreds of areas surveyed.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Davent Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Jan 2016 at 9:00am
Originally posted by senkosam senkosam wrote:

Originally posted by Davent Davent wrote:

Confidence in what you are doing and with what you are using is as important as going fishing in the first place, im 100% with you Steve.

The MOST important factor is being able to find fish in the 1st place, dosnt matter what lure you are using if there are no fish there.


The problem with that statement is that most shallow water fishing is done with lures to find fish that will bite. Sonar is nice, but most times if your fishing in 7' or less and making long casts to shallow structure, the lure is what tells you what you need to know:

if fish are present which equals finding fish to the sides of the boat when caught

the type of bottom or cover fish are holding in or on (rocks, weeds, steep drops)

Lure design does matter as much as presentation and covering more water the right way with the right lure allows more hook ups from the hundreds of areas surveyed.


dude, it was a sweeping statement, I can easily counter what you have replied, but i dont want to argue, just pointing out a simple fact, that being able to hunt and find fish is the most important factor when fishing, lure bait or whatever.

If I find a patch of barramundi in 10 inches of water, and the only lure I have is a manns stretch 20(feet deep), I can still use it and catch fish, its a floating lure. If I had a sonar, and fish were holding at depth, and I only had a shallow lure, I could change my rig, add some lead to get it down etc.

Knowing when to look on the flats is important.....find the fish 1st.

Atheism is a non prophet organisation
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote senkosam Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Jan 2016 at 12:30pm
The only fish I've caught that can live in both salt water and fresh water are striped bass, perch, largemouth and smallmouth bass. Fishing for stripers requires a much different approach than fishing for the other species, all of which are tidal river and estuary fish. You are the salt water expert and would find my freshwater lakes and rivers much easier to find and catch fish.

The fish I routinely fish for are in lakes and freshwater rivers not near salt tides coming up from the Atlantic ocean. I fish NYC reservoirs that have depths over 100' in spots, small rivers only 8' or less,  lakes that have large wetlands, quarry lakes with depth over 50'. These I know how to catch fish in and have for over 35 years.  I have photos of many fish I've caught - mostly to document what worked along with my log book.

They have provided me proof of what this post is all about. Whether anyone wants to test the theories is not my concern. I wrote this because I enjoyed writing it and reminiscing as I looked through my album of fish caught on so many lure types in so many different colors- many on the same day!

Again, salt water is not my thing and I defer to you where and how you catch them. The species you  mentioned is similar to our striped bass and as impressive in size as our stripers get.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Seaweed Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Jan 2016 at 1:24pm
Interesting what you say about surface activity and fish thinking a feeding fish is nearby Dave.
Australian blacks have often been seen smacking a lure tied to a stout handline on the water surface of billabongs. They know that barramundi will be interested in the commotion and home-in on that disturbance.
Have used the technique myself in the past, smacking the surface a few times near the boat, before casting and retrieving.
Seaweed. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote horrorhead Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Jan 2016 at 3:36pm
The old "switcheroo" of using a popper and smashing it across the water a few times in a northern billabonmg when the barra are quiet, and then switching over to a slow moving shallow running lure has worked a few times for me. Waking the fish upThumbs Up
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote senkosam Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Jan 2016 at 11:33am
" Just because you catch fish using your theory doesn't make it right/correct. Just because you don't catch fish using a theory doesn't make it wrong. [Previous traffic, no fish, fish caught recently etc."] flyonline

Let's assume the last sentence in brackets doesn't apply if you're the first angler on the water or fishing a water (lake) that sees little fishing pressure. What I'm suggesting is that the sky's the limit of the kinds of lures and colors you might use on any given day and catch fish by stimulating their senses and using them to provoke strikes.

This agrees with your last statement because it means never  having to limit yourself because of  conventional ideas of how to catch fish on any one day or in any season :
"It gives me great pleasure to bunk traditional myths/beliefs and catch fish consistently in ways that aren't supposed to work. I now fish with confidence many lures and retrieves that a few years ago I wouldn't have considered and I suspect that many traditional fishers would laugh at."


"ALL above comments are most likely correct on any given day.,but they are subject to change." Nicho
and "

"Most theories will work well occasionally, a few will work most of the time but none will work all of the time".  flyonline

 Granted, some days are far better than others (only had one bad one last year), but for the most part, after finding fish and maybe an existing pattern (of-the-day, or week or season), one who knows the water (depth, cover, structure, etc.) will catch fish more often than not. By not limiting oneself to some doctrine some professional fishing writer wrote over a half century ago, leaves you free to experiment and then limit your choices to what works by what worked that hour, that day, that week. No point in casting every lure in the tackle box if a few will do (though it's always fun to catch fish on many different lure types on the same day!)

I know the landlocked waters that I fish differ a great deal from the waters you fish where you're from, but the principles are the same. Fish have amazing senses and taking that into consideration is the first step in knowing specific lure characteristics that do well for different species - matching a particular forage species ain't one of them !

I've been gang banged by those on a few American forums that refuse to understand the simple fact of a fish's physiology that account for the fact that fish aren't convinced to hit a lure but are instead provoked into hitting it. Sure, you may use the colors and shape of the local forage you think fish are feeding on, but another angler may come along and catch fish on something totally different in the same water, area and in the same hour.

Realism is in the eye of the beholder  - the human eye that is. But I do have a superstitious hunch that though lures do not have to look or act like anything in nature, it can't hurt and may in fact be the thing helpful to up the total number of fish caught! Let me expand on this thought.

Take a silver X Rap by Rapala for example - a suspending plug that can be used as a jerk bait. It flashes like a silvery fish,  it's elongated like one and shimmies like one on the retrieve (to a degree). Why not consider the perception of it to be that of a generic fish that fish are apt to respond to because a few of the lure's natural qualities are present in a predator fish's DNA? Here's another:

A Fin S Fish (Lunker City brand) is a soft jerk bait that is similar to the X Rap in its flash and darting motion with rod tip jerks. Same thing applies - the lure looks and acts somewhat like a generic fish.

Many diehards who fly fish insist that the fly pattern be exact. Maybe it does, but for the sake of the above idea, why not entertain the fact that the fly is basically perceived by a fish looking up simply as a generic bug on the surface.

Not that anyone has to use a generic anything, but it's nice to think it was the reason for so many fish caught that day. But again let me emphasize this:
all the above is food for thought - not bible or any insistence you must believe any of it to catch fish. I and many others get the overall idea and accept it as bible.

 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Raffey Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Jan 2016 at 2:55pm
While not overly relevant to why fish hit lures, I think a lot of the time it comes down to what we enjoy using and for some on top of that - building them ourselves. Say I found an amazing new lure that could catch 5 times the amount of fish that I would have caught on any given day using my own hand carved timber lures then I still wouldn't use it. A very large % of my fishing enjoyment these days starts with a blank piece of timber and I go from there. While I'm out fishing I am thinking of new lure actions that I can create using timber and I'm often keener to go home and start carving than to stay fishing, especially if I've already caught and released a few fish on my lures and taken some nice photos. I paint patterns on my lures that sometimes look like prey species purely because it gives me ideas, it's challenging and it's fun to do.

Cheers,

Danny.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote senkosam Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30 Jan 2016 at 5:51am
Excellent Raffey!

 Using the same ol' stuff year after year gets boring. Nice to think outside the box and have a slue of new idea/concept baits to try out besides knowing your apt to discovery something that will work better than most of the stuff on the market or stored in you house. Right now I'm checking out the hundreds of plastics I've accumulated over the years to see which parts of each may be enhanced by parts of other lures. Amazing what a candle flame can accomplish!

Pan fish are nice to try new lures on because 1. they are aggressive, 2. easier to catch than larger fish species and 3. many of the designs can be used for larger fish species when increased in size.
Fish are fish.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote senkosam Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Apr 2016 at 11:48am
My reply is a little late, but after rereading the following reply, thought of question and suggestions.

"Confidence in what you are doing and with what you are using is as important as going fishing in the first place, im 100% with you Steve."

In the past I've watched partners catch fish on lures I never tried, but seeing is believing. After I tried those lures on different lakes and caught fish, I was a believer and included it in my box. But more important, I experimented, casting them to different locations/ depths and under different conditions to see their limitations and versatility. This brings me to Davent's second statement:

"The MOST important factor is being able to find fish in the 1st place, dosnt matter what lure you are using if there are no fish there."

I agree in part - it could be the best lure in the world, but if used in fish-less areas, casting practice is the only thing one gets.
But beyond that, it's like saying which comes first the chicken or the egg? Without the proper lure(s) and presentations to search water, fish that are in the area of your lure may ignore it.  I've fished with others that needed to switch to what I was using the way I was using it before they could keep up or even catch their first fish. It helped having prior knowledge of the bottom and depth we fished - (they didn't) - as well as the very important - seasonality factor- of what to use, where and how to use it. Once fish were caught, we would try other location types, maybe using different lures better suited to those locations, never spending too much time when there were no strikes.

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