What am I going to learn if we are fishing the same colour lure in the same way when a few of us are fishing together?

Most of you here don’t know me personally, but I hope that if you read this blog then you have at least a pretty good sense of what makes me tick in fishing and indeed in life (family, the outdoors, Storm, good black metal etc.). I know I’m not the best angler out there, I don’t compete with my fishing, I am always happy when good people catch good fish, I am not a fish counter, I’ve got no time for experts who enjoy belittling newer or less experienced anglers, I like to think I am pretty observant, I ask a lot of questions because I’m interested, and I’m striving to learn a bit more about fishing every single time I go………….

And there is one thing I don’t tend to get, and especially if the fishing is not going well and the bass in our case here have a dose of lockjaw - if a few of you are fishing together, why fish the same lure as each other? Let’s say three anglers fish the Patchinko for three hours because it’s worked so well on a particular mark before, yet this time they blank. That was nine fishing hours on the same spot with the same lure with no fish. Was there a chance that a different surface lure with a different action might have caught something? What about trying something sub-surface because it’s something a bit different, instead of banging out the same lure as the two other guys because it’s worked before which means you’ve got three people doing essentially the same thing? And yes, there is always the argument that subtle differences in the way we might fish certain lures might account for better catch rates and so on.

But would you change lures when you’re all catching fish, and potentially risk catching less fish yourself because you fancy a bit of an experiment which might end up adding to your internal hard drive of fishing knowledge? I would tend to argue that the best time to try different lures or lure colours or fishing methods is when there are a few fish around. Surely if you’re not catching and you change lures or technique and you still don’t catch, you end up convincing yourself that the different lure or approach doesn’t work either. There are plenty of times when the fish simply aren’t where we thought they might be and all the loveliest lures and rods and reels in the world ain’t going to catch in a barren bit of water.

Personally I like trying to find out what other stuff might work when there are a few of us fishing and there are obviously a few fish around. Yes I accept that when a predatory fish like the bass is really switched on they can hit almost anything, but if lure fishing especially is so much about confidence and of course we default to what has worked where before, if I know for a fact that certain other lures have caught me bass at so and so location then when the fishing’s quiet again one day I have all the confidence in the world to make a lure change which I don’t consider to be a gamble - quite simply because it has worked for me before. Can you see why I sometimes tie my fishing brain in knots with the way I think about it all?!

For whatever reason (which might well be because it’s the lures which have been clipped on and cast out there!) the little Savage Minnow 10cm/16g in the Lemon Back colour has been producing a fair few bass recently, both the J-hook and the weedless versions. By no means am I saying that only this lure would have worked, but you can only catch fish on what you’re actually fishing with. So I know this lure in this colour works at the different locations I have seen it used (this is slightly cheating because I have obviously fished with numerous samples and generations of thes Savage Minnows, you get my point though), but because it’s the way I’m wired I want to see what else might work.

The other day I happened to outfish a couple of other lads using the lure I talked about above by trying the 20g Savage Gear 3D Jig Minnow which a very good fresh and saltwater angler messaged me about. It doesn’t make me a better angler because on that one session I caught more bass than them, but it does mean that I am completely confident that I’ve got another option to try one day when the fishing might not be going to plan - and with a good level of confidence as well.

It happened last weekend when we found a lot of bass in a feeding mood - the Patchinko was slaying from the off but I wanted to then try putting a (sub-surface) 30g Sandeel Pencil out as far as I could get because it looked like that was a bit of a back eddy out there. A few turns of the handle and bang, bass on. Now I am sure I’d have carried on catching on the Patchinko and in fact I did, but when I am back down there on some similar tides and in some similar conditions I will be carrying a couple of the Sandeel Pencils because of what they can do for me and also because I know for a fact that they work there.

If you do enjoy learning from anglers who seriously think about their fishing and all the different elements which come into it, then I implore you to listen to the podcast episode above. I happen to think it’s just about the most interesting and thought-provoking podcast episodes about fishing that I have ever heard, and it doesn’t matter a single bit that it’s based around striped bass fishing many thousands of miles away. It’s about fishing at the end of the day, and the angler being interviewed by Zeno Hromin of the outstanding Surfcasters’ Journal magazine is absolutely fascinating with how he thinks about things. I can’t wait for future episodes from this interview which I believe will be out soon. You all have a good weekend, please make sure to slather yourself in suncream and/or cover up when you’re out fishing in this glorious sunshine - or go out at night of course!

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