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I don’t know how right I am, but it seems to me that a spinning player cannot be a “multi-stationer”. When fishing, there is no time to go through dozens of lures, even when they are all well known and have shown themselves from the best side more than once. Therefore, for each specific pike fishing conditions, it is better to choose one type of bait for yourself and improve in the technique of owning it. Confidence in your bait and impeccable technique of its wiring can often give a much better result than even a very catchy, ideally suited to a particular case, but unfamiliar, “unexplored” bait.
All fishing conditions encountered in autumn fishing can be conditionally divided into three types:
- areas with a relatively large depth and a clean bottom;
- areas with shallow depth and bottom overgrown with aquatic plants;
- areas almost completely overgrown with aquatic plants.
As for the first case, I already decided on it a long time ago. In such areas, I only fish with silicone, as it perfectly suits these conditions. In addition, I have some experience with these lures. Solid thickets of aquatic plants is a rather complicated topic. Until recently, one question remained open to me – what baits to use when fishing, if there is a need to catch areas with a bottom overgrown with aquatic plants? It’s not that in such conditions I can’t catch – there is some kind of concept. I quite successfully catch pike here on wobblers, on the same silicone, oscillating and spinning baubles. But I didn’t have one, “the same” bait that I could, without hesitation, put in such conditions and catch on it without a shadow of a doubt about its effectiveness.
Catching pike in the thickets on a turntable
And now the solution has come – a front-loaded spinner, or simply – a spinner. Immediately about what attracted me to this particular type of bait:
- A front-loaded spinner of all lures suitable for such conditions allows you to perform the farthest casting, which is important in active fishing conditions – without removing the anchor, you can catch a fairly large area. And with coastal fishing, casting distance is almost always very important. Only a spinner can argue with a spinner in this sense.
- Unlike wobblers and oscillators, the turntable can be said to be universal. As practice has shown, it is unlikely to be able to pick up one or two models of wobblers or spoons, which could be caught always and everywhere, if the depth does not exceed 3 m and there are algae at the bottom. And with turntables, such a “number” passes.
- The front-loaded turntable is well controlled. Even when a strong side wind blows, the line is always taut due to the high frontal resistance of the lure, due to which contact is always maintained with it. In addition, which is especially important, in a matter of seconds you can change the depth of the wiring, for example, raise the bait above the coastal edge, or vice versa, lower it into the pit. With all these manipulations, the front-loaded spinner remains attractive to fish.
And one moment. In recent years, I have “forgotten” front-loaded reels a bit due to my passion for silicone, wobblers, etc., but, nevertheless, these baits are not at all new to me – I have about twenty fishing experience with them. years. So there was no need to invent something, but it was enough just to remember the old skills and bring something “fresh” to them.
For quite a long time, I was faced with the question: which front-loaded turntables should be preferred when catching pike in the fall.
And, ultimately, the choice fell on the spinners Master. We often hear negative reviews about them – they say that they are hooked on every cast, and they don’t even catch fish. Regarding the first one, I can say one thing – if the bottom is cluttered, then by regularly lowering a bait with an open tee, and quite a large one, on it, the angler will inevitably lose it. But if the bait is led in the water column, there will be no more losses than when fishing, for example, with wobblers. Regarding the second part of the statement, I also disagree, fish are caught on them, moreover, quite well.
You can object by saying that the light did not converge on the Master, there are other front-loaded turntables. But it turned out that the Master, in comparison with them, has a lot of advantages. “Branded” turntables with front loading are most often catchy, but quite expensive, which does not allow them to be used as a “consumable”. You won’t throw such a turntable at random into a place where, in all likelihood, there are snags (and, as a rule, fish stand in them). In addition, these spinners do not have such a “balance” in terms of cargo, most often they are produced with a load of one or two weights. This makes it necessary to adapt handicraft goods to them.
It was possible to opt for handicraft spinners or Chinese analogues of branded ones – they are quite inexpensive. But when buying such spinners, you can always run into “outright substandard”. In addition, even if the spinners are working, for obvious reasons, it is not possible to always purchase exactly the same spinner.
Spinners Master combine the advantages of “branded” and handicraft spinners. They took a verified design and high catchability from branded ones, they were created specifically for our fishing conditions. An important advantage is the large “balance” in terms of loads, besides, spinners work really well with all these loads. With artisanal spinners, the Master combines their availability.
A little about spinners and their color
Even in my school years, when I mastered fishing with front-loaded turntables under the guidance of my father, he very often told me that the best colors are matte silver and matte gold. And indeed, as subsequent independent experiments showed, he was one hundred percent right. Oddly enough, a lure with a matte silver finish is much more noticeable in the water than a shiny, polished chrome one, moreover, in sunny weather it does not give a mirror reflection that frightens the fish. And Master spinners, as you know, have a matte finish.
So, spinners Master. How do I catch them. Since the task was originally set to choose literally a few models, and the smaller the better, I did it. What was the choice dictated? When there were no twisters, vibrotails, wobblers in our country, of course, we all caught on front-loaded turntables and spoons. And here’s what we noticed then. Pike often change preferences. Either she prefers “soaring”, easy-playing baubles, or “stubborn”, with high frontal resistance (however, she didn’t manage to figure out what her choice is dictated by). Based on this, models of each type should have been in my arsenal. Personally, for myself, I chose the following models: from the “soaring”, easy-playing – H and G, which belong to the “pike asymmetric”, from the “stubborn”, with high drag – BB and AA. At the same time, my choice could have stopped in the same way on other models of the same concept, but it was necessary to choose something specific. Therefore, I immediately say – the choice is yours, and my choice is not a dogma at all.
Weight of spinner
Since I use these spinners in relatively small places, and my “favorite”, that is, the most catchy speed of posting cannot be called high, loads weighing 5, 7, 9, 12 are used, and only occasionally – 15 g. Those anglers for whom the optimum is a fairly high speed of wiring, naturally, heavier loads are used.
Hooks for spinners
Many scold the spinners of the Master precisely because of the large hooks. Indeed, these hooks are prone to hooks, but they cut well and securely hold the fish when playing, and, most importantly, they do not unbend when using very powerful rods. Therefore, if fishing is carried out in relatively “clean” places, I use standard baubles. But if at the place of fishing it is supposed to have snags or “impassable thickets” of aquatic plants, I fish with baubles, which I equip with a hook that is one number smaller.
spinner tail
This is a very important element of the spinner. The standard tail is quite successful, but if you prefer to fish with light loads at a slow pace, it is better to replace it with a short voluminous tail made of red woolen threads or dyed fur. Such a tail balances the lure better with slow wiring, but it reduces the casting distance. As for its color, as practice has shown, red is optimal for catching pike. But I do not want to say at all that the toothy one will not be caught on spinners with a white or black tail. But if you have a choice, red is still better.
Wiring for front-loaded turntables
In principle, there is nothing particularly complicated in it. I use wave-like wiring in the water column, while making the rise of the spinner sharper than its sinking. But all simple things, as a rule, if you understand them well, have many nuances. The main one is how to ensure that the spinner is wired exactly in the desired horizon, that is, in the immediate vicinity of the bottom or aquatic plants that cover it. There are two ways here – the selection of the weight of the load or the speed of the wiring. I think it’s better to choose the first one. If you install a load that is too light, then normal operation of the spinner will not be ensured at a relatively large depth, if, on the contrary, the load is too heavy, then the spinner will go too fast and cease to be attractive to a predator. But the concepts of “too heavy” and “too fast” are, frankly, subjective. I have chosen a certain speed for myself and I try to stick to it, deviating slightly in one direction or another, depending on the “mood” of the predator. That is, for me personally, the largest number of bites occurs precisely at this speed of posting.
But my friend prefers much faster fishing, and where I would be fishing with a lure with a load of, say, 7 grams, he will put at least fifteen. And he has a great pike bite at this speed of wiring, although if I start to bait so quickly, then most often I am left with nothing. That’s subjectivity. In other words, if the angler begins to master fishing with front-loaded turntables, he must choose for himself some kind of optimal wiring speed. It is better, of course, if he masters several different speeds, but, unfortunately, I have not succeeded so far.
There are also objective reasons, as I already said – the autumn “mood” of the pike. Sometimes she takes with very slow wiring, literally on the verge of a “breakdown” of the rotation of the petal, sometimes she prefers a higher speed than usual. In any case, the speed of wiring and its nature are important components of success that you need to experiment with, and not be afraid to change them radically sometimes. Somehow we went to a pond, where, according to rumors, there are quite a lot of small and medium pike. I began to “develop” it, to be honest, hoping for a quick success. But it was not there! The pike flatly refused to peck. I started experimenting with baits. Ultimately, in a shallow place, I noticed how the little beeval jumped out with lightning on a seven-gram Mugap lure, but just as quickly turned around and went into cover. Pike is still there, but refuses baits. Past experience suggested that front-loaded turntables should work best in such a place. But all the “tests of the pen” with the Master were unsuccessful. Ultimately, I took a Model G lure with a five-gram weight, which was obviously too light for such depth, cast and began to drive it evenly and so slowly that the petal sometimes “broke”. The first five meters – a blow, and the first pike on the shore, the second cast, wiring at the same pace – again a blow and the second pike. Over the next hour and a half, I caught a dozen and a half (most of them were released, since they did not receive serious damage during the fight). Here are the experiments. But the question still remains open, how to ensure the wiring in the desired horizon?
Until the “sense of spinner” has developed, you can act in this way. Let’s say I installed a seven-gram load on the bait, threw it in, quickly picked up the slack (at the moment the bait fell into the water, the cord was already stretched) and began to wait for the bait to sink to the bottom, while making a count. The spinner sank to the count of “10”. After that, I start wiring with my “favorite” speed, make several “steps” in the water column, after which, instead of the next rise of the lure, I let it lie on the bottom. If it does not fall for a long time, then at a depth where a lure with a seven-gram load sinks at the expense of “10”, this load will not be enough. So, by the experimental method, the range of time for immersion of the spinner with each of the used loads is selected, in which, at a given optimal speed of posting, the spinner will move along the bottom.
For example, at my speed of retrieval, the Master model H spinner, equipped with a seven-gram weight, goes along the bottom if 4-7 seconds pass from the moment it falls to the surface of the water until it sinks to the bottom. Naturally, a certain correction of the wiring speed is required, but it should be within reasonable limits. When all these experiments are carried out, there is no need to often lower the lure to the bottom. In each new place, this is done once – to measure the depth. Naturally, the bottom topography is often uneven. The mounds at the bottom immediately “manifest” themselves by the fact that the lure begins to cling to the bottom. In such cases, you need to roughly determine where the depth difference is, and on the next casts, increase the speed of the wiring in this place. It is often possible to determine the presence of drops visually, since, as already mentioned at the beginning of the article, we are talking about fishing in relatively shallow places, with depths of up to three meters. By the way, bites most often occur on these differences. In general, if there is an assumption that the bottom has significant irregularities, it is better to carefully measure the depth, lowering the lure to the bottom after every five to seven meters of wiring, and linger in this place longer – as a rule, such areas are very promising. It is clear that in places where there is a current, you need to make a reservation about its strength and direction of casting. But this applies equally to oscillating spinners and turntables with a core, and silicone lures. So we will not expand on this topic.
Spinning for pike
I will not say anything about the test range, this is a very conditional parameter. There is only one requirement – the rod for autumn pike fishing should be quite rigid and not bend into an arc when the turntable is being pulled. If the spinning is too soft, it will not be possible to perform the correct wiring. In the same way, it will not be possible to perform it with a stretchable monofilament line, so a line should definitely be preferred.
In conclusion, I want to say that not only the Master, but also other front-loaded turntables can have a much wider scope, and the role that I have given them so far is clearly less significant than they deserve. But everything is ahead – we will experiment. For example, it is very effective to catch dumps from the shallows to a depth of “striking” lure wiring.