Madly Effective Spinning Lure

My local bait and tackle expert, Captain Morgan, can be held responsible for my straying into spinning tackle rather than fly fishing exclusively. He's quite convincing--not to switch, but rather to learn to use all techniques--including bait (the latter has been the most difficult skill of all for me to acquire).

Because I can't cast straight--I mean, really--I can't!--it took some time--as in months--for him to convince me to spend the $10 it cost on one single small freshwater sinking lure. How could it be any better than the $5 Rapala--which he has also pointed out can be very effective?

Well it all came down to conversation. I found that the grey ghost fly--with the orange body and silver tinsel segmentation--was deadly effective on yellow perch. In fact they have yet to take anything else from me on my home waters. I also caught some fallfish on them. He pointed out that in fact it probably looks like a dace to the fish. "Try this lure." (It looks like a dace, complete with orange fins and scales drawn on).

OK, fine. So I bought one, and proceeded to lose it. In the garage. Got stuck while moving the rod! Yet to find that. Of course that put me off the whole affair for another couple months.




Then along came my overuse injury. And my decision some days back (I fish way too much!) to spin fish the Shetucket (see previous entry) and my rather hasty Walmart purchase of one more Rapala on the way, to supplement the multiple Rapalas I have already acquired while flyfishing. (I've made more money in finding other people's lures than I've spent in lures this year! Well almost anyway, if I pretend small trout flies aren't lures...).

After that trip, I was keen to see what else I could do. And curious about the stocked trout from the 1st week of Oct. So I stopped in and plunked down a 10 spot, and proceeded to catch all those trout in just minutes on Tuesday in the rain. So I knew the lure worked.

Oh, wait--I never wrote about that! Yet...(Sunday catching a striped bass on the sound and seeing little tunnies 40 yards away ,Monday on the Shetucket, Tuesday crazy stocked trout bonanza, Wed and Thursday in a pond in 'chusetts, what the heck, I'm fishing every day!)


Today, I went to a pond in Massachusetts that was stocked with rainbows a week ago. Reportedly they were "killing it" there all weekend. And considering the numbers of unlicensed undocumented foreigners who poach these lakes around here, I wasn't too sure what to expect. And it turns out I was half right. I didn't connect with a single trout (and I worked the whole pond perimeter especially the deep).
But on the other hand, Holy Cow, this lure was extremely effective shortly before dusk, finding everything else.

1st a yellow perch, so that goes to that theory! As with the trout on Tuesday, it took only a few casts. That was at 5:30 P.M.

Next came a really fat sunfish. As in well over thrice the weight of the perch and a hell of a fighter.  This was at 5:36.

And then, along comes a Chain Pickerel--goodly sized--hammered the lure as it was almost back to shore, in the shallows. Nice fight! Only my third ever Esox family fish.

 

4th on the hit list was a young largemouth bass. And in true bass fashion, this one hit the lure--first cast to yet another spot--as it landed. At 5:47. 

But that wasn't enough. I move to yet another spot (each fish was from it's own location--I only took a few insurance proof casts after each catch before moving). The first cast brought a strike and a fight--I saw the flash of a perch--its distinctive coloring--and lost it in the shallows.  Then just moments later, at 17:55, I hooked up a big handsome calico bass.

 

So that  was that, and the bite was off. Actually, I almost lost that lure. I made a stupid cast -- it went 95 degrees off target up into some trees. It is a miracle of acrobatics that I managed to crawl out and get it back! By that time it was getting dark; I tied on a twirly worm and kept at it--for another hour as usual. But with only half a dozen touches.

No trout, and 15 miles of driving. Again. (I went last night too--and caught 2 bluegill and 2 bass--half on flies half on lures--including a rainbow trout Rapala, with its duckbill missing, and a bluegill on a read worm fly pattern--another one of Cap'n's suggestions).

So that's 30 miles total driving & nine fish, and I didn't keep a single one. They didn't smell as good as the crappie I caught on my Connecticut pond, and I had a bad experience frying up one of these crappie a couple months ago, it reeked of acrid gooseshit. And when the 2 dozen geese landed last night as I was casting that little bass fly popper, I decided that was not going to happen again.