Old Tactics - no longer used

[bucktail]

Funny old techniques and lures can come back into favour especially in pressured waters.

Guides like to cast and retrieve spoons on Lake Fork for largemouths now.

The last 2 winners on the B.A.S.S. circuit were using old style Carolina rigs.

Whats iold is new again eventually....kinda like fashion!

My brother used to troll a Diamond Jim...I think by Luhr Jenson...not sure...he caught some big fish on that ugly bait!

[Jigger]

How many have switched from grubs to tubes to senkos? I try and keep in mind techniques that have helped over the years. Last year I remember a real slow bite and was skunked up to this point. I found a pack of largemouth and threw just about every "modern" technique I could think of. Still the smell remained. I took out a pack of 7" power worms that had been sitting in the bottom of the box for I don't know how long and threw one on a 1/4oz ballhead jig. Wouldn't you know it, I went through the whole bag and caught largie after Largie. Since then, the jig and worm combo was brought back to life! Man I can't wait to get out there.

[Kerry]

I'm still tossin' a BIG O but in the chartreuse/white.Still clobbers walleye bass pike and even the odd crappie or perch will hit it.

As to the twitchin' rapala, I always have a soft spot for the old light perch Ripplin' Redfin with a more pronounced rip to keep it down a foot or so.Great for hot to trot bass and pike.

 

Kerry

[Beans]

WOW !...Jitterbugs, River Runts, Diamond Jims, Jointed Pikie Minnows, June Bug spinners...all pre Rapala...long skinny baits like Benos and Lazy Ikes for pickerel...

 

All we ever used for pike at West Lake at Wellington was Dominion 36 or 197 Willow Leaf Spinners...

 

I found a couple of "Rooster Tail" spinners way back in a box and will give them a try as I understand Dawg uses them with success...even calls himself after the color of one of them...

 

Great thread for memories...

Edited April 22, 2008 by Beans

[JohnF]

Hi All,

 

My fishy friends and I usually end up talking about this at least once a season.

"Techniques we used to use, that worked great, but we no longer use"

I know it sounds dumb but almost all my friends admit to the same thing.

For instance, when I first started Bass fishing something like 25+ years ago we used one technique almost exclusively.

Yes we'd throw grubs, rubber worms etc. but our "go to" bait and technique was what we called

"surface twitching Rapalas"

We used to take a small floating Rapala in a Perch pattern (4" Rapala I think).

On light line, about 8 lbs., with spinning tackle.

Cast her out, let it float for a few seconds then give it a good hard twitch / jerk, causing the bait to dive down about 2 feet. This was a very slow technique with fairly long pauses.

Wait for it to surface, leave it there for a few seconds, then repeat. How and what we did isn't my point.

My point is this used to work dynamite on Smallies all season. But then along came Chug Bugs, Sluggos, Tubes, and Spinnerbaits and before we knew it, the old "twitching Rapala" technique was long forgotten.

One of my friends laments how he used to use a "Big O" crankbait in white / grey all the time and caught everything from Salmon to Bass on it. "I always had one tied on" he said. Not in probably 15 years now though he admits. Lots of other friends have the same story too, just too many to list.

 

Funny. The guy who got me back into creek fishing after a 50 year hiatus is an old buddy from diaper days (the ones Bill has just moved away from) who never stopped fishing. He's an artist (not of fishing, of art) who spends the winters in the Everglades fishing with his kayaks and his summers wet-wading the Thames or Nine Mile Creek. He got me re-started a couple of years ago and introduced me to the grey floating Raps with exactly the technique you described. I have no idea how long he's used them but they're all he uses, and they work, for smallies and for pike.

 

After a few times on the river the gearpig virus caught me and I went out and bought plastic - fake Mann red worms on big Gamakatsu (sp?) hooks and they worked great. He started ripping me off for those and was very impressed that a newby like me figgered that out all by myself. I haven't told him about you guys yet. Then I tried gold curly-tailed grubs and discovered that when nothing else wants to play the rock bass will always try to eat them. That's a great last resort when nothing else was biting, if only for a chance to get some fishy smell on my hands to offend my wife when I get home. In any case the grey Raps are always our goto lures, we're never without 'em. I had no idea they were so antidiluvean. 8)

 

Speaking of gearpigs, I'm gonna screw my friend up totally once I learn to use a flyrod and the new baitcaster. He's been whining already about how I've totally corrupted him. He has no idea what's in store. After years of using nothing but really cheap Shakespeare spincasters with the cheapest line and really crappy rods, my new Quantum Energy spincaster and the complementary rod have spoiled him. He had to buy one of 'em. Now he knows he's gonna be getting a baitcaster and a flyrod etc - he's well on his way to perdition and damnation - and loving it. He's always fished alone. He had no idea that there was anything but grey floating Raps and really crappy reels. It's fun being an evil influence and y'all can take some of the credit.

 

JF

[Musky or Specks]

As a kid we use to fish for nothing but carp on the river till one day this older gentleman came down the river hammering these green and black fish that fought like stink. We asked him what he was using and what he was catching. He was kind enough to stop and explain the whole thing to a couple of ten year olds. This was the early seventies when tten yr olds could still disappear by themselves for the day down to the banks of a river and fish without them being reported abducted by their paranoid parents. He was using black and gold rapalas and he was hammering smallmouth. The amount of lawns we mowed and pop bottles we collected so we could keep ourselves supplied with them that summer was staggering.

[misfish]

June Bug spinners

Now dont that bring back the days out with my grandfather. My pop and he had a box full of them.

 

I was a hulla popper guy,then this sinko thing came along and then this thing called a tube and then theres the jerk bait. I wonder what would happen if one went back to the old school.Would they win a tourny or two?

[GbayGiant]

I've tried all the "NEW" in fashion techniques over the years and always fall back to the trusty all around jig and minnow or gulp now. It's what I'm good at and always works if fish are swimming. For me it's finding the fish, after that a jig will always work on almost every species. Certain situations call for different techniques but I stay tossing jigs all year and realized after trying everything else over the years, this is usually all I need and trust the most, majority of the time I only take a box of various sized/styled jigs and leave the extra weight at home. Musky or trolling is usually the only time I don't jig and even then it still works sometimes.

 

And the pros always tell you to change it up all day untill you find something that works, but all it is really is the rite time and place, chances are if you didn't switch baits you would have still caught the fish, not always, but a jig will always work if your on top of fish.

 

Anything that's shinny and spins is a close second.

[forrest]

I'll tell ya...way back in them depression years a lot of us used dynooomite.....yep......it worked real good. Fell out of fashion after all those fancy fishing lures started becoming more popular.

[tinbanger]

Live bait was our fav 30 years plus ago ( worms and frogs )

Picked the dew worms a night or two before and stoped along the way to see if we could catch a few frogs for them bass.

 

Havn;t used live bait ( except for perch,walleye) for years!

 

Still have my dad's old metal tackle box , lots of good memories there , dusty roads ,leaky wooden rental boats and the occaisional outboard fire !

In the mis 70'3 we 'upgraded ' to a 14 ' fibreglass my dad found on a creek , hauled it out, patched and painted her and it became 'our' boat for the next few years

Heavy as hell but stable.

Used to trailer it on a snowmobile trailer with an old tire under the keel .One of our backroad excursions had the tire flying off and headed down an embankment towards some coattages . Luckily the trees stopped it just short of the cabin .

 

Thanks for stirring up those memories.

 

TB

[fishboy]

jitterbug and the crazy crawler..

[danbo]

That Strawberry Vamp Spook was a Scugog musky slayer.

 

http://www.musky-lures.com/colcht.htm

 

The old Meadow Mouse was a bass getter on Chemong.

 

http://fishingcollectables.com/images/he326.jpg

Edited April 26, 2008 by danbo

[danbo]

I used a single frog's tongue on a small hook to catch 50 Rock Bass with as a youngster!

 

Sorta invented the 1st curlytail micro-grub with it! Lol. Honest to God..

[danbo]

Cisco Kid jointed perch was good too!

 

http://www.ustacould.com/lures/