Since 2003, I started to look for all types of carnivores with lures, whether in the sea or in fresh water and this technique allows me to trigger many attacks. In the stores, we have now an almost unlimited quantity of models, materials, sounds, colors...
What I particularly like with this species, besides the fights, is its search, imagine the place where it hides, throw with precision, animate, mark a stop at the right moment and take a violent strike, trademark of the big farios.
The different hard lures
There are three main types of lures:
- The floats, which go down only at the time of the animation, their characteristic is to go up at the time of the pauses, which can be practical to comb of long post calm in large river.
- The "suspending" lures, which remain on the spot at the time of the pauses, they will go down during the recovery until their depth of swimming. They have for me a big advantage, because at the time of the "stop" the lure remains motionless in front of the fish, which often triggers the attack.
- The sinking lures, which as their name indicates are sinking, often heavy, they allow to face strong currents, deep pools or simply to gain casting distance. The sinking oscillation effect during a pause is very efficient, and sometimes letting the lure go down to hit the bottom before resuming the animation works wonders.
Any particular reference?
I use in priority a hard lure of the DEX range from Berkley, the DEX Bullet Jerk .
This lure is available in 3 sizes, 5 cm, 8 cm and 11 cm. As far as I'm concerned, I opt first for the 5 cm size in order to target active fish on minnows or other small forage fish. If I do not trigger attacks and the fish are more apathetic, I opt for the size 8 cm or in some cases 11 cm, more volume to try to decide these carnivores.
The DEX Bullet Jerk is really interesting, designed in Japan, it keeps the Japanese quality and finishing standards.
It casts with precision thanks to its tungsten mass transfer and is "sinking" which gives it great versatility. It holds very well in the current, you can reel it in fast to keep it high in the water, but also slower to go deeper and seduce more difficult fish. It sends back strong visual, sound and vibration signals that are really hard for trout to resist!
And what about the animations?
For trout, one thing is certain, you have to make them move!
Unlike soft lure fishing which will provoke food attacks based on visual and vibration, our hard lure fishing will make the trout come out by aggressiveness.
You should not hesitate to use violent movements of the rods to make the lure go out of alignment and to make it snap. I have often noticed that a too light animation will result in follow-ups without concretization.
For the trout, there is another subtlety to take into account, it has a small mouth... often it will come out and hit your hard lure without stinging itself, no panic!!! We are often tempted to continue until we feel the weight in the rod ... And it ends very often with a fish in the feet, which leaves us quietly with palpitations and a certain rage.
My little plus : at the time of the first attack, I stop the twitch and I bring back in linear on 4 meters. This allows the fish to better target its attack and at the same time to bite properly.
In terms of angle, I fish ¾ upstream which allows me to animate perpendicular to the river and pass right in front of the fishes nose.
For this technique, I will use 12/100 diameter braids with a fluorocarbon leader from 18/100 to 28/100 (depending on the size of the river and the congestion) on a reel Mitchell MX7 size 2500.
As for the rod, I am oriented on the Traxx MX7 model of the brand Mitchell i often take two of them, one ML and one L, from 2m05 to 2m20 with casting powers in adequacy with the weight of the lures used.
I wish you all a great season and a beautiful opening!
