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As I pointed out in my last column, there are three primary variables associated with sports fishing we can actually do something about.
One is practice to develop mastery of your equipment. I covered that in my last column. Another is to match your equipment to the problems you’re facing.
Perhaps you're one of the few fishermen serious enough about the sport to have polished your casting skills. If you are you’re probably also aware of the second variable I’ve mentioned. It’s essential that you match your equipment to the problems you're up against. Here's another area where you can exercise a great deal of control over how many fish you put in the boat.
Lots of newcomers to angling figure they can purchase one outfit and use it to catch everything from bluegill to barracuda. It doesn't work that way. Without exception, the anglers who catch the most fish around this country are those who use equipment best suited to deal with the problems they encounter. Those problems aren't always going to be the same.
Not long ago I had a call from a guy who took a lightweight spinning outfit to a lake I often fish myself. He hooked a bass all right, but an experienced bass man who has fished that productive lake could probably guess what happened. That bass hesitated about two heartbeats when it realized it was hooked, then it headed for the brush. Ten seconds later it wrapped the line around an underwater limb and broke free.
That newcomer learned quickly if you're fishing bass around heavy cover you'd best have a rod and line strong enough to let you call some of the shots. That’s what I mean by matching your tackle to the problems you’re looking at.
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Fish for bass in heavy wood cover like that show here and you'll need a line of adequate strength on your reel. |
Ask anglers who’ve been to Mexico’s El Salto Lake what test line they generally use on that lunker-producing hot spot. Chances are they’ll tell you no less than 20-pound test and they may favor braids testing as much as 50-pounds. Use a line that heavy, of course, and you’ll need a rod sufficiently strong to handle it
The need to match tackle to problems isn’t restricted to just lines and rods. Much the same thing applies to reels. The open faced spinning reel was originally designed for lightweight fishing. It will still handle that job better than anything else you can get your hands on.
I dislike using monofilament line heavier than 10-pound test on my open face reels. If I do need line tests heavier than that, most of the time I’ll use a level wind reel that I’ve filled with a line of greater strength.
Some of the new braided lines, really strong despite their small diameter, do make it possible to use heavier line on a spinning reel. Power Pro’s great braided line spools and casts really well on both spinning and level wind reels. It permits you to throw a lightweight lure into fairly heavy cover and still have a reasonable chance of bringing a good fish out. Once again it’s a matter of matching your gear to your problems.
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| My good friend Bruce Holt is a world class angler. He has fished all over the place. Even so, he'll tell you he would never have succeeded in catching this beautiful Amazon jungle peacock bass without matching his tackle to the problems he was up against. |
There's no question that a relatively small number of fishermen get a large percentage of the total fish caught. It has been proven time and again. I’m convinced they do it because they control the controllable variables I’ve been talking about
Want to catch more fish yourself in the coming year? Perfect your casting skills and match your tackle to the kind of fishing problems you're up against. There's simply no better way to go about bending the odds in your favor.
In my next column in this three part series we’ll take a look at the importance of learning how to get the most out of the lures you’ve selected.
-To Be Continued-
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