Apart from surface lures which we usually need to work, do you tend to “animate” your diving, minnow-type hard lures?

I don’t know about you, but there are various moments in my fishing life which for whatever reason stick in my head and then resonate for years to come. It could be a particular fish in a particular place or it could be a certain lure that works in a way I never envisaged and so on, but here I’m talking about a trip to France to fish with the lads from Ultimate Fishing a fair few years ago now. I guess that via the Nantes show, the lure gear that Mick at Mr.Fish in particular was starting to bring into the UK, and then a red rod being the first “proper” lure rod I owned for my bass fishing resulted in a fascination in how the French guys were going about their bass fishing - I still am I might add - and it was noticeable how the anglers I met and/or fished with were firmly into animating their hard lures.

I remember at the time that it was mainly the killer DUO Tide Minnows and a few MegaBass lures like the Vision OneTen which was a lure I so loved the look of but never got to grips with it and I couldn’t catch a cold on the thing. At the time I was having such a blast fishing with and learning so much from this lad Graham who was living in SE Ireland, and we did this trip down to Belle Ile in France where Ultimate Fishing are based. For us the big new lure which had come into our fishing in a serious way was the Tackle House Feed Shallow, indeed I watched a lad from Jersey come to SE Ireland for a week or so and never once take the lure off his (red) rod for the entire trip and he absolutely frigging hammered bass. Anyway, so Graham and I are kindly taken out shore fishing by the boss man from Ultimate Fishing and because I’d be stupid not to I obviously watched how this guy went about fishing his local waters…………….

And he was constantly animating his hard lures. Out would go some version of the Tide Minnow range and he’d be twitching and pausing and twitching and pausing all the way in, whereas Graham would be fishing close by and whacking out the Feed Shallow and winding it straight back in. The boss man and I soon got to talking about this and he was surprised firstly at how we weren’t animating our diving hard lures and instead we were whacking them out and winding them and trusting in their inbuilt action, and secondly that Graham landed 10+ smallish bass in quick succession. It also happened to be a lure that Ultimate Fishing supplied to Europe but boss man had never actually fished with himself at the time.

I’ll put all sort of movements on the majority of my surface lures because to get them to “walk” I obviously need to, and a lot of the time I’m twitching and pausing and twitching something like a DoLive Stick because it works so well for me like this - but I tend not to do anything to my regular diving hard lures save for the odd twitch on the rod tip. Iinterestingly a mate who I fish with a hell of a lot is a frigging maestro with the Feed Shallow and I watch how he is always fishing this particular lure on a straight retrieve with a regular “kick” on his rod tip while he’s winding it in. Damn it works well for him as well and although I was away guiding in Ireland at the time and I so wish I’d seen it, Mark landed his biggest shore caught bass so far fishing a Feed Shallow in his own particular way.

I have always wondered whether my utter inability to catch a thing on the MegaBass Vision OneTen was because I got a bit confused with the advice I was given by one of the Ultimate lads to fish with a slash and a pause and then left it sink down backwards and I simply didn’t have the confidence at the time to persist like this so I ended up leaving the lure alone. For sure one can do any number of different things to any number of different hard lures, but another thing that has always stuck firmly in my head was something one of the DUO Japan guys said to me in an interview I did with him for Sea Angler magazine. I asked him whether he subscribed to how these French lads were almost like artists with the way they were working their hard lures and he said no, to which I obviously asked why. His answer was that DUO were designing their Tide Minnow range of hard lures with very specific actions and swimming depths on straight retrieves and he was therefore choosing and/or changing to specific diving lures because of those characteristics.

And it’s something I must admit that I subscribe to myself whilst obviously accepting that there are multiple ways to skin the proverbial cat. I’ll clip on something like an IMA Hound 125F Glide because over many years of fishing with it now I trust it to get me out there into the wind, to grip incredibly well in turbulent conditions, and however you might choose to try and describe the action of this lure on a straight retrieve it has always worked really well for me by doing just that. For sure I’ll play around with diving depths via my retrieve speed and rod angles, and I’ll slow down or speed up depending on currents and features and so on, but for me I’ve gone to that particular lure because it’s doing a particular job for me. It’s no different with a metal lure like the Savage Gear Seeker which I’ll go to for various reasons and then trust it to do its thing on a straight retrieve plus quite possibly some spin-stops in there. I did play around with the Seeker as a bit of a casting jig with some assist hooks on it but I prefer it as a metal that I can wind in and if I need a proper casting jig then I’ll clip one on.

There are any number of different ways to do things and I bet you we all fish the same lures in subtly different ways a lot of the time. If you’re catching fish then you’re doing something right, but one thing I always try to do is keep my eyes and ears open because even if I am catching fish by fishing a certain lure a certain way, I bet you there’s another angler doing something subtly different with that lure and getting different results. You all have a good weekend and guess bloody what it’s peeing it down here again and I have been out for my first dog walk of the day in my breathable waist waders yet again. Roll on spring anybody?

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