Fishing World

Posts Tagged ‘Important’

For those out there that make your own wooden fishing lures, the question is this:

“Does painting or glueing eyes on my wooden lures improve their fish catching ability?”

Everyone has their own opinion, but many seriously good lure makers argue that having prominent eyes on your wooden fishing lures will always improve catch rates. After all, fish strike at the head of baitfish, right? Fish home in on the eye, don’t they?

There are definitely times when having eyes painted on your lures doesn’t matter a bit…..

I consider myself a thinking angler, so I like to analyse my fishing situation and adapt. So, take the case of throwing high speed chrome lures at longtail tuna or other pelagic speedsters. Usually this style of fishing involves casting your offering in front of fast moving schools of fish that compete in packs. They don’t look closely at a lure because there simply isn’t time, they just smash it before the opportunity passes. Under these conditions a barrel sinker and hook cranked at full speed can be as effective as any lure and the size, shape, color or exact location of the eyes on a lure aren’t important.

But, there are other times when a wooden lure with prominently painted eyes is critical to your catch rates!

Our local bass love to munch on glassfish, which are small local fish that is translucent olive in color but has prominent, silver eyes and gill covers. The eyes are often the most visible thing when these baitfish are schooling in numbers, and I custom make wooden lures that are small and olive green with big, silver eyes and gill covers. Well designed custom lures like this can work a treat when all bought lures fail to turn a scale.

Or another example: Trout and salmon feed can feed aggressively on glass eels at certain times of year. These are the transparent juvenile eels that are making their way back into fresh water after having hatched in the ocean and they can look like a big school of eyes swimming upstream! For these, I make wooden lures that are long, slender, drab colored and with prominent, oversized, eyes.

Or yet another example, this time from our estuaries. At certain times of the year black bream and sea trout feed exclusively on whitebait moving upstream from their marine nursery areas. These are slender, translucent silver fish with prominent silver eyes that are quite large for the size of the fish. Can you see a pattern emerging?

So is having large eyes on your wooden lures only important when the local baitfish have large eyes?

Good question! In my opinion it’s about three things:

the hunting habits of the fish species you are targeting,

how much time they have to observe your wooden lure before deciding whether to take it

whether eyes are one of the more prominent features of the local baitfish

What does all of this mean for those who make wooden lures? Well, to wrap all of this up, I can’t think of a single instance when having eyes painted on your wooden lures will result in you catching less fish. But, I can think of instances where not having an eye could definitely hurt your chances of catching trophy fish. So, I’d advise putting eyes on all of your lures, and make them as big as you like!

Fishing has to be the ultimate accessory sport, doesn’t it? I mean, look around at any major tackle outlet or read any popular fishing magazine and just look at the range of gadgets, gizmos and thingummybobs on the market, all vying for your limited fishing budget. It’s crazy! But the thing that always amazes me is how few anglers stop to think about THE most important pieces of tackle in those big, cluttered, jam packed stores – FISHING LURES!

Your fishing lures are THE most important tackle you own.

Why? Lets imagine for a moment that you’ve just purchase the best lure fishing rod on the market and you’ve coupled it with a state of the art, high end reel loaded with expensive gel spun line. Now let’s imagine you are standing on the bow of your late model, fully rigged boat wearing your expensive Polaroid sunglasses and nudging the boat into some likely water using the remote control on your electric trolling motor. Perfect, right? Now, what’s tied to the end of your line? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen similar scenarios, and the lure at the end of the line is a $5 bargain basement special that was picked up from the clearance bin at the local department store. What a waste! Think about this:

It doesn’t matter how good your rod is, how sensitive the tip, how well it casts or how much grunt it has during the fight. If you are casting rubbish lures you’ll be catching less fish than you should be.

You can have the best reel with the silkiest drag and the strongest, thinnest line on the market. If you’re casting lures that aren’t effective you’re missing out on lots of fish, simple as that

You can have a state of the art boat and use it to get yourself into some outstanding fishing locations. But all of that is a waste of money if the fish are going to reject your lure, or worse, if the lure is made of cheap materials and won’t stand up to tough fish.

Get the picture? The lure is what the fish sees. The lure is the critical link between all of your high tech gear and the fish. If the lure doesn’t work properly then you’ve wasted your money on all that other stuff. Cheap lures are the most expensive…… What do I mean by this? Put simply, poor quality fishing lures cost you money and fish and leave you disappointed. If you’re a serious fisherman you have probably not only bought great rods, reels and other tackle, but you use them regularly. This means you’re also spending money on some of the following: fuel, accommodation, fishing licences, food, fishing clothing etc. You may also be paying for boat hire or a guide, or you have your own boat and pay for registration, maintenance and repairs. Fishing is an expensive exercise! If you are paying for all of this already, how much sense does it make to tie any old cheapie lure onto your line when that lure will cost you fish? Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you’ll find some really good lures in those specials bins – but you need to learn to recognise good lures and/or stick to brands you can trust that may be on special.

Don’t make this mistake! We tend to fish for some pretty tough fish in some pretty formidable, snaggy habitat. I often hear people say “I’ll grab a few of these cheapies to toss in the snags. That way I won’t cry when I lose one”. Of course, those cheapies tend to be ineffective and just don’t hook fish. Or, more commonly, they are poorly built with cheap, lightweight hooks and rings. By the time you fit them with new hooks and rings they are not cheap lures anymore! It’s ironic, but you really need to throw your best, toughest lures into really tough snags to have any real chance of extracting tough fish from heavy cover.

What’s the answer? In my view, there are 3 options:

Buy good quality lures. Good brands made with solid components. Learn to recognise quality lures – if you start by buying good brands and then purchase a few cheapies you’ll soon start to see the differences. If you need to keep the costs down, I’d recommend looking at online options for buying your lures. I love to support tackle shop owners, I do. But if you lose a lot of lures you need to be able to afford to keep fishing and you can buy some really good stuff online for much less.

Buy custom fishing lures. These are not cheap and there’s no real avoiding that. But think back to how much your cheap lures are actually costing you. You are better to have a dozen really good quality, functional lures in your box than a hundred poor quality ones.

Make your own wooden lures. This is my favourite option, of course. It enables me to control the quality of the lures I use and to design lures specifically to catch fish under particular conditions. It also makes it very cheap to own a whole lot of very high quality lures – less than $1 each for most freshwater lures.

So there you have it. I hope you this article helped you to clarify your thinking and that you now see the value in having really good quality lures. Leave the cheap, nasty lures for the masses and start being selective about what you tie on your line. You’ll find that quality lures are much better value!