Mackerel Fishing With Homemade Feather Rigs

There are those rare times when I am fishing that a fear creeps in. It is not the fear of going home empty handed but the fear that it is all a dream and in a moment the lap of the water and the tension on line will fade and I will wake up in an office with only the hum of copier machine for company.  

Making Soft plastic Fishing Lures

A very bad fisherman

    When the pike hit the lure I did what I have been telling myself I shouldn’t do, instead of striking and setting the hook I reached for the button on my camera. The pike needless to say was camera shy and just as I got the video going it threw the hook and buggered off to recover. I gave a few more casts just in case it was having second thoughts but I guessed it had better things to do. Well this was my first outing with my new Sushi Whip Tailed Grubs, I hadn’t actually caught a fish but at least I had proved to myself that it had attracted or annoyed one enough for it to take a swing at it.

                Despite being five in the morning other anglers had begun to arrive and my open water was quickly reduced to small patch which felt only a little larger than the bath tub I had tested the lures in. Before long I was into something again and this time I managed to strike. Whatever was on the end of the line shot off stripping line from reel as the drag buzzed. Despite thudding away at my rod I was not convinced it was a pike, I thought maybe it was one of the fabled catfish or a foul hooked carp.  A few mutes later I was gaining on it and the back end of a very large eel emerged from the weeds.  

I suppose an eel foul hooked doesn’t count unless you are a really bad fisherman. The only compensation was that I didn’t have to get my forceps down its mouth to unhook it.  

Making a Beetle Fishing Lure From Plastic Spoons

I am not sure this lure project really made sense until I added water and then when a pair of eyes swam towards the camera I knew it had that spark.  The plastic spoon lure was an idea I had, had a long while ago and never got to building; mainly because I knew I could make the beetle part but I had no clue how to turn it into a lure. In the end I made the beetle last week and after working over the weekend in the city at the river festival, I came back to it with a plan. Rather just create another wobbler I thought about a drop shot rig which I have been using for pike in the winter when they tend to sit in the mud. As always I am a few seasons behind with my lure making but when weed dies back I should be able to bounce this baby a foot or so off the bottom without the constant fear of losing it.