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If you can't beat them - join them

Don Corleone

Don Corleone got well and truly whipped by two of the better-known lure anglers on this site when he strayed into Peter Waller's backyard. Two months down the line and he's spoiling for a re-match. They do say if you can't beat 'em join 'em...

Don't tell anyone but I'm getting quite into this lure fishing lark. It started back in September, with a good old-fashioned hiding from Pete and Trevor down on Oulton Broad. They made it look so easy, that was the thing that swung it. 

By the time I'd drowned my sorrows over a Harris Angling catalogue, I was well up for a crack at it. The question was where to start. Harris sell literally thousands of different lures. But you don't have to fork out a fortune to get started. Even with my limited knowledge, I soon worked out the majority were different variations on a handful of basic types. 

I'd already worked out the venues for my first lure forays - a small pit and a couple of nearby drains with a good head of jacks. So I went for flashy spinner baits and floater/diver plugs and ended up with half a dozen for £30. Read the mags and you'd think you have to spend a wedge on the latest lure rod and reel. A quick trip to the tackle shop soon dispelled another myth. I got a light, crisp Daiwa spinning rod for £20 - meaning I was up and running for £50, which didn't seem bad for a completely new string to my bow. 

I didn't tell anyone to start with. I snuck out to the drain or the pit whenever I had a few hours, and I started catching almost straight away. None of the fish I caught were monsters. In fact, the biggest that came along in the first few trips was probably well shy of 6lbs. But several things hit home almost straight away. The first one was I was really enjoying it. And it wasn't just the challenge of trying to get my head round a new method. Within a few weeks, I realised my whole approach to fishing changed when I slung the bag and the lure rod in the car. Instead of three or four rods and the usual pile of gear that goes deadbaiting, I just took rod, reel, net and a little bag of unhooking gear, spare lures and odds and ends. Instead of trying to second guess the fish and land it on their noses I got mobile. Ten minutes tops in a swim without a take and I was on my bike. 

Lures allow you to really search a water, in ways even a wobbled dead bait can't compete with. I soon realised just how little water I actually covered in a day, even with my beloved drifters. More importantly, I quickly graduated from the mechanical fan casting beloved of text books to trying to work out where the fish would be and what they were up to. Peter's match the hatch catchphrase stuck in my mind. Doing it's probably as much second nature to Mr Waller as some retired colonel chucking dry flies on the Test. But it all seemed a bit out of my league to start with, so I boiled it down to hunting one of two types of fish. They were either actively hunting for food or resting up, I reasoned. When I knew they were out and about, I could usually nail a couple on floating Rapalas. When it was colder, I went for spinnerbaits twitched across the bottom. 

Like any other kind of fishing, it has its frustrations. A lot of lures have what my local tackle dealer calls built-in obsolescence, for a start. What this means in layman's terms (assuming my bank manager isn't reading this...) is they start falling apart after a few fish, so you have to buy another one. The balsa Rapalas are a classic example. Even a jack's teeth leave them looking like Al Capone's car. Half a dozen fish on one and the finish fell apart, leaving me £6.99 poorer next time I dropped in the tackle shop. Then there are the hooks on lures. I never actually managed to land anything on my Super Shad Rap. The trebles were like grappling irons, meaning they needed a lot of work with a sharpening stone to stand any chance of hooking anything. Even when I thought I had them sharp, the three or four fish which grabbed it before it got permanently welded to a snag on the Middle Level all came off on the way in. I didn't like the great rank barb on the Northland Reed Runner's single hook either, so I lopped it off. Exit one large zander I latched into, which felt like the biggest zed I'd ever had on the end before it shook its head and the air turned bluer than the top shelf of the newsagent's. The last few months have had their high points too. Once I plucked up the nerve to go lure fishing with other people, I had a spin around a few Fen drains with Richard Briscoe. Pulling up at a swim on Well Creek, I told him I'd never had a fish under double figures from it. Two casts in and Rick's got one on - or he thought he had. And he had too. A pike of about six ounces. 

Escaping from the kids for a couple of hours a few weeks later, I went to a gut instinct swim on a different drain and had five fish in my first five casts. Each was between two and six pounds, but I had to bend the rear treble on the plug back into shape after the last two. I lobbed it out again, wondering if I could make it six in six casts. And I did. Except this time the rod whacked round, a good double swirled on the top and the line went slack. When I reeled the lure in, a single prong was missing off the treble I'd just bent back into shape twice. Talk about feeling stupid - why on earth didn't I change that hook..? Boxing Day restored my confidence big style. With time at a premium, we were back on the Middle Level. I saw the Reed Runner come flashing into the margins and just as I went to lift it from the water for another cast a fish shot out from a raft of floating weed under my feet and socked into the lure in less than a foot of water. Talk about heart-stopping. I never thought an eight pounder could bring me that close to a seizure. A few lobs later I had my first lure caught double and it fought like mad on that little £20 spinning rod. Meant a lot that fish, all ten or eleven pounds of it. I went home feeling ten feet tall. And it was all down to Peter and Trevor. Roll on next September. Roll on Oulton Broad.