Fishing tips with Rob Paxevanos
I recently penned an article on how a well-presented bait could out fish a lure in 'certain' scenarios.
I looked at the example of bream fishing, and how if you fished a bait on a jig head with the same finesse that you used with a lure you would on average catch much more bream.
I also noted that you would need the right bait eg prawns when the bream are locked in on prawns.
The column got a particularly big response, including those who were struggling with soft plastics but tried a prawn on a jig head and were absolutely delighted with the results.
But some folks also highlighted how lures and flies could beat baits at times.
Fact is you cannot really say what's better bait, lure or fly until you know the target species and scenario they are in.
However sometimes fresh or even live bait can be out fished by lures or fly.
Let's look at a few examples.
When trout are locked in on mayflies, they are sometimes so single minded that they will even eyeball a live wriggling mudeye and swim off.
A real mayfly is too small to put on a hook but a good fly tier can represent a mayfly quite accurately.
Experienced fly anglers will catch the most trout when they are "on the mayflies": I've seen it happen too many times.
Flathead are another example worth looking at, those with experience would ague that in some scenarios plastics can out fish baits (even live baits).
Experienced flatty anglers usually have a large variety of plastics though to cover various scenarios they find in their travels.
You are starting in pole position if you can figure out what the fish are feeding on, in fact sometimes this can make or break an angler.
A critical lesson springs to mind.
After a week's fishing where a prawn on a jig head clearly beat a large variety of soft plastics, it dawned on my team to try a lure that actually looked like a prawn.
Watching anglers on TV using only standard curl and paddle tail plastics had sidetracked me from the obvious.
I put on a prawn star lure which is as close an imitation of a prawn that I currently know of and was absolutely amazed at the aggressiveness at which the bream were hitting them.
After hundreds of good casts using a typical plastics with only the odd bream hookup, it was a real eye opener to see bream regularly slam and crunch the prawn imitating lure.
Often this lure would get a bite from a snag even after a softie had just been there.
This lure was even giving the prawn bait a whipping, and there is an explanation why.
I was prawning the night before when the penny dropped.
The prawns were big ones at about six inches long, and they glided around head first along giving the occasional flip or jump when spooked, after which they would glide to the bottom for the cover.
I couldn't quite imitate this with a frozen or live prawn.
Luckily, somewhere in the back of my memory sprung up the under water vision from prawn star video.
That lure can be fished in a way that really looks like a prawn: more so than any other lure currently on the market.
A sense of urgency sprung over me like it always does when the code has been cracked.
OK I admit it: I almost felt stupid for not "matching the hatch" sooner.
A lure angler is just like a fly angler in that the more variety they have in their box, the more likely they can match the hatch.
The most interesting thing is that bream rarely refuse a well presented prawn lure and as a bonus you can predict when the bream are going to be most heavily feeding on prawns.
Prawns run from the estuaries to the sea each month under the cover of a dark moon.
Three or four days either side of the dark I reckon you'd be mad not to be tying on a lure that accurately imitates a prawn.
To summarise, you will never know what's better lure, bait or fly until you know what the fish are feeding on and which method best replicates the real deal.
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