Image Above: The Prototype, magnetic weight shift balsa minnow lure
I knew I should I have stayed at home before I set off. It
had been raining hard for almost a day and a half before the weather broke and a
weak sun managed to hollow a disc in the clouds. The lake water had turned the
colour of strong milky tea, the kind of tea you would accept only in politeness
while looking for a plant pot to tip it in. Normally when the lake colours some
visibility remains even if it is reduced to a few feet but today I could have
been dropping my lures into molten lead.
I had come to test a new lure which in fairness is not the
same thing as fishing although catching a fish while not pursuing them is
always a bonus. The lure was a Phox Minnow with a new magnetic weight shifting system.
I wasn’t looking for distance particularly but to reduce or even eliminate the
tumbling that normally plagues lightweight lures on the cast.
I don’t
have a great record with prototype lures I have a tendency to test them to
their limits and then a little beyond so there is always a little trepidation when
tying on a new crash test dummy. Rigged and ready I found a nice open area of
bank and swung the rod, there was a sharp click as the internal weights shifted
and then the lure sailed out over the lake. There was no tumbled or spin just a
long arcing flight with the line pealing out like a vapour trail, I half
expected a thud and then the rumble of a distant explosion as the lure touched
down.
I am not used to early success so I casted again and again,
and then some more, and then a bit more and again and then after I had decide
to leave I stayed and casted some more. The lure worked again and again and despite
the water being a slightly wetter variety of mud and the chances of catching a
fish being slim to nothing I was enjoying myself.
I eventually left the lake and made the short walk up the
embankment to the canal. By comparison the water looked almost pristine but in
reality visibility was only a little over eighteen inches. There was another problem
to contend with; the wind had stripped the last of the autumn leaves from the bankside
trees and they hung in the slow moving water suspend like mines. I wasted too
long collecting flora.
Later I clipped on a spinner bait in the hopes of avoiding
the leaves and maybe luring out a pike by vibration rather than sight. Instead I
moved from flora to collecting the kind things that canals are more famous for
holding. A brief but not exhaustive list of my haul follows: A complete open
golf umbrella, a hood from a jacket, a pair of trousers, part of a pair of jeans,
an Asda plastic bag, a Tesco plastic bag, a cloth draw string P.E. bag (haven’t
seen one for years), part of a rod case, a long piece of what looked like video
tape. Eventually a pike made a feeble strike as the spinner passed but it missed and rolled at the surface before
returning into the murk.
