rich mc said:
is there any situation that dictates which to use blade vs lipless lure. i have just started to use blades but have had alot of success with kastmaster jigging spoons that i doll up with stick on eyes and sometimes reverse the ends of the treble and tie on ring thanks rich mc
Simple answer, vertical jigging = blade, ripping = lipless. My response belwo got a little wordy.
The fish (my preferred species is Walleye) will tell you what they like on a given day and from my experience, they can be finnicky, persnickety and often suffering from lockjaw until you get the right combination of line, lure, color and presentation. Couple years ago, this fact was driven home and permanently etched in my mind.
Went out day 1 (november 19th) and quickly limited out using a chrome and blue jigging rap (a go to color on the particular lake). Day 2, no change in weather. water temp, water level. After 1-1/2 hours of no bites and numerous color changes, presentation changes and no keepers, I started trying everything in the box 5-6 casts, different presentation each time. My buddy was doing the same thing and finally picked up a couple shorts on a ripping rap the looked like it was covered with a Rainbow bread wrapper. Multi-colored dots on a white background.
I finally switched over to a Shad blade with black back, little white line, pink sides, little yellow line, white belly and red throat. Cast it out and it did not make it to the bottom and fish on, nice keeper, 10 casts later I was limited out. never took more than 3 vertical rips to catch a fish. During the same time, my buddy never caught a keeper. I handed him my pole and said you try. Half dozen other boats around us and no one catching anything. Short while later we were heading home it was amazing. He cleaned fish and I started making a dozen duplicate blades.
After fish cleaning (he is my neighbor) he brought my half of the fish and helped finish making the new blades. Next day. all excited took our new blades and zilch, ended up fish wanted gold the brighter the better with a black back. To this day, neither of us have caught another fish on that oddball color combo and we have tried. I fish 60 - 70 days every fall/winter and he is out about twice as much as I am.
My basic set up for fall winter is a 6-1/2 foot med - med heavy rod (rated for 1/4 - 1oz lures) spooled with 20# braid, a barrel swivel and ~3 foot 14# fluorcarbon leader. I fish a lot or blades, hopkins spoons, Kastmaster spoons, jigging raps rattle traps and ripping raps as well as variations of theses lures. Pretty much all the fishing is vertical jigging but, when I want to cover a wider area, I will switch over to the ripping rap or even a modified rattle trap and cast it out and rip it back 2-3 foot rips and let it sink to bottom and repeat. Most hits seem to occur as the lure sinks back to the bottom and most snags occur during the rips.
Some days, lighter leader is the key but we seem to get a lot more fouled hooks with lighter leaders. Having said that, I have spools of 6#, 8#, 10#
and 12# and do not hesitate to experiment. We fish a heavily targeted area and rarely get the spot completely to ourselves and have seen 40+ boats fishing the same football field sized area.
If someone catches fish, we know they are biting. If we are not catching, its time to change something. Often, the leader is first to go. We usually have 6-8 rods all rigged differently and change frequently a until we find the right set up
[/URL