Fishing Lures

Fishing lures are artificial baits designed to mimic wounded / injured fish on the retrieve to fool a predatory fish into believing it is a real fish and ultimately striking it to eat.

There are millions of different designs and styles of lures, but ultimately they fall into 4 main groups, for which are:

• Spinners & Spoons: Spinners and spoons are as the name implies, metal blades not dissimilar to a spoon with a single treble off the back, and are designed to spin / twist and flutter as you change the speed of your retrieval creating flashes off the silver or copper surface to imitate small silver bait fish. These are great for pike and perch and are a great all round lure. They will sometimes have small fibres to add that little bit of additional flash
• Soft Bait Lures / Shads: These are rubberised lures with a weighted jig head, to provide the casting weight. The tail of the rubber body then vibrates and shudders as it's retrieved to cause vibrations in the water, which also when you suddenly change the retrieval speed, the lure will dip and twist to mimic a wounded fish. Often the hooking pattern varies, with either a pair of trebles from under the body of the lure in the traditional set up, or a single hook out the back of the lure, to prevent it from catching in the weed, both have their advantages. You will also see weedless lures in the softbait ranges, where there is a small wire just over the hook, helping prevent the lure from catching in weed, but when a pike or perch bites into it, allowing the hook to be free to penetrate into the fish's mouth on the strike.
• Hard Lures: Including jerk / crank and surface baits: This is where we see a lot of variation in shapes and colours, along with different bouyancies each changing the way the lure behaves on the retrieve. They are often made from plastic, however, some are still made from wood. The trebles are then mounted on the base. They work via vane / fin at the front head of the lure, which as you retrieve the pressure of the water causes the lure to dive, so with many hard lures you wind in changing speeds of slow to fast, either short stop/ start bursts, causing the lure to dive and rise, and depending on the shape twist and keel. They are often marked to indicate if they are shallow or deep diving lures. You will also find surface lures, which work the surface film, and these can often mimic frogs, or even small mice rather than just fish. In addition, with hard lures, they can have rattles to produce more sound and vibration to alert a predatory fish's lateral line, and more recently some have a small LED also.
• Flies: The oldest form of lure, flies are designed to just mimic an emerging or hatching insect, with traditional flies for game species will fall into wet and dry flies, dry flies sitting in the surface film whereas a wet fly will often mimic a nymph. However, they can also be tied to mimic fish, and look unbelievably beautiful and realistic when done correctly, and are truly an art in their own right and then used for targeting pike.

Ultimately for trout, the best lure is the fly, for which the best choice is entirely on the conditions and hatch that is going on. However, they are also very predatory, so a small shad or spoon is also a great option.

Due to a basses' natural prey being sand eels and small juvenile mackerel, a small shad that mimics a sand eel or small silverfish, is often best.

Lures are made of a range of materials from plastics, wood, and metals, along with fibres when using spinners and flies. What colour lures to use when fishing? - There is no best answer for this, and it can change day to day, hour by hour. Changing light levels, or how tuned into the bait fish on the day, depth and even temperature all make a difference. Small silver lures might be key when the small prey fish are active, but going from something silver to luminous orange can sometimes trigger a strike on heavily overcast days.

There is no best answer for this, and it can change day to day, hour by hour. Changing light levels, or how tuned into the bait fish on the day, depth and even temperature all make a difference. Small silver lures might be key when the small prey fish are active, but going from something silver to luminous orange can sometimes trigger a strike on heavily overcast days.