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Predator Part Two

Spinning for pike with dead baits and artificials has long been a technique that attracts the restless angler, some one who must keep on the move, forever searching new swims, new waters, looking for the fish of a lifetime.

First written about by Isaac Walton in the Compleat Angler during the 17 th century he described it as a "walking-bait" and used a dead gudgeon or roach, but dismissed it scathingly by saying " moving it up and down in the water is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it".Things have changed a bit since those days when first the colorado spoon and wooden plugs and now spinner baits traveled across the Atlantic from the U.S.

The latter of these imports, the spinner- bait is probably the most underrated lure that can be used for pike fishing, and is very effective in a variety of conditions from highly coloured river water to clear pits and lakes. The lure is made up of several different attracting properties and the first is vibration that is provided by the blades, which can be of different shapes depending on the degree of vibration required and generally the wider the blade the more vibration.

The second is the visual attraction which can be provided by several different materials such as a plastic skirt similar to the sea anglers "muppet", jelly tails and lure tying materials such as Bucktail and Marabou. The third property does not stand alone but is the combination of the other two which, when joined together, out performs the individual components. The two parts of the lure are held together by a wire frame and the whole setup can weigh between 8 dms and 2 ozs 8 dms with the bulk of the weight supplied by the lead head on the main hook. If they are fished with single hooks they are fairly snag free, especially if the second stinger hook is set upside down and the whole combination of lead head weight and blade configuration can be used to control the depth and speed of retrieve.

The large Colorado blade will travel slow and deep when used with a heavier weight where as the willow leaf blade will offer little resistance and is better where a fast retrieve is needed so if you get fed up waiting for the bite alarm to go pick up a spinning rod, a hand full of spinner- baits and be prepared for some action.